Just another compound tragedy...

I learned, this past weekend, about the death of the second of my partners at BAYLEY LEIGHTON & RYAN, the firm I left to my remaining senior partner Pat Bayley in 2005, when I relocated to LA to marry Lisa.

Pat died just before Christmas 2011, quickly and sadly years before her time...and this weekend I heard that Glenn Ryan, just turned 60, had been discovered inside his Staten Island apartment after being dead for more than 2 weeks...  Glenn had left the company in 2003 to pursue a teaching career.  He was a sweet, intelligent and caring man who loved animals and people, and who was a raging alcoholic.  I only mention this because it is what killed him.  He died alone, accompanied only by his 2 cats, Monty and Fergus, probably from total liver failure.

He had contacted his brother sometime in the mid-summer to tell him that he was having very dark "tea colored" urine.  When urged to go to the hospital, he refused because he was worried about who would take care of his cats during his absence.

The compound aspect of this tragedy is that Monty and Fergus have been doomed, despite Glenn's concerns, to a stunningly cruel and lingering death by starvation, thirst and broken hearts.

On Tuesday 11/6, shortly after Sandy hit SI, Glenn's neighbors were alerted by the yowling and howling of his cats.  When the police gained access to Glenn's apartment, they found his badly decomposed body--he had to be formally identified by dental and x-ray records.  Then the police, despite the fact that the cats had sounded the alarm, proceeded to seal the apartment WITH THE CATS STILL IN IT, and then simply drive away.  Animal Control was supposed to have picked up the cats, but they dropped the ball due to being overwhelmed by the storm and logistical problems.  Then, to complete this dark comedy, the police proceeded to LOSE THE KEYS TO THE APARTMENT so that Animal Control, once ready to pick up the animals, couldn't gain access to the apartment.  Furthermore, a court order would have to be filed to allow any access to the apartment, and this--in case you've forgotten--was a long weekend due to Veteran's Day...

So there are two loving animals, two souls, which are languishing--or have ceased to languish--suffering from starvation which has gone on for at least 3-4 weeks, thirst which can only be abated by drinking from a hopefully-accessible toilet bowl, and the broken hearts brought on by total abandonment.

I am very sad, and very very VERY ANGRY...at Glenn for his self-destructiveness...at the NYPD for its blatant stupidity--albeit they had an overload of issues to deal with, to not even note the presence of the animals in their incident report is beyond dereliction of duty--and at the long list of people...creatures with prescient brains, two hands and two legs, who have failed to come to the rescue of these helpless creatures.

Windows are made of glass...BREAK THE FUCKING THINGS...Supers have keys...GET THE FUCKING THINGS AND GO IN THE DOOR...  In other words, act!  I am 3500 miles away from the scene of this moral crime, or I would have done all of this myself by now.

To Monty and Fergus:  God bless you, and rest your souls.  I hope you found solace in each others' company at the end, and that you went simultaneously.  To have to linger alone after years of companionship would be too cruel to contemplate.

That's a fact, Jack...

To Rep. John Boehner:

Yes, it's true.  Despite the billions, with a capital "B", spent by your pals in the Right Wingnut underground, America has overwhelmingly rejected the message of hate, mistrust, misogyny and falsehood being puked out by you and your Republican brethren in the Tea-Party-cult...  You cannot hide behind the skirts of the well-paid pundits who have promised you that they would produce an electorate too stupid to care about truth, facts and common sense and allow you to continue down the path of obstructionist politics.  You and your grey-faced table-thumpers are exposed to be the bigoted, know-nothing, perversely anti-American fools that you all know you are, deep in the dark recesses of your narrow minds.

I suppose you can take small comfort that Michelle Bachmann squeezed out the smallest of victories in her attempt to return to the table...you can have coffee together during recess and lick each others wounds...

But take this to the bank, because it's a fact, Jack:  we are all going to be watching you over the next few months, and any attempt to pull the crap you foisted on this country for the 24 months prior to this election will result in a purge, with a capital "P", of your side of the aisle in the House of Representatives.  Just try having another 300+ filibusters, or voting down another Jobs for Veterans bill, and see how fast you are directed to the exit door.

Trust me.  We are watching, and waiting, and eager to fulfill the promise of ridding this country of politicians like you and your fellow Teabag Shaker-dancers who have been whirling like dervishes for the past two years, chanting your mantra of hatred and lies and pseudo-science and bad math.

Enjoy being the Mad Hatter at the party while you can, Speaker Boehner, because your days at the table are numbered.  That's a fact, Jack.

The beat of a very different drum...

I have grown used to being on the outside looking in...  As an only child, I learned about a persistent isolation from my fellow man, which was heightened by my being a child actor/singer and, thus, an object of ridicule and exclusion by my peer group.  Luckily for me, I have found, throughout my life, kindred spirits to make this bumpy journey more tolerable.

But now I feel a terrible isolation from my fellow countrymen.

I was shooting a small film last weekend on the campus of a faith-based Christian university...an isolating enough experience for a lapsed-Catholic agnostic like myself...  What made the experience particularly chilling was an event being held in a neighboring classroom.  A large group of Hispanic Evangelicals were gathered for a lecture.  The subject of that lecture:  Los Cuatros Caballeros des Los Apocalypse... These earnest Latinos had gathered together, taking time from their campaigning for the ultra-Right Wing right-to-life candidates they support, to swoon over the coming Rapture...

I left that shoot with a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I have watched this country be infested, like roaches overrunning a tenement kitchen, by a hate-mongering, pseudo-Christian Right Wing mentality with all of its attendant self-fulfilling prophecies...among them the inexorable march towards the apocalyptic vision of Nostradamus, with armies flooding the plains of the Tigris in their final battle...  I have watched, like a stunned motorist going the opposite way on a freeway, the inexplicable high-speed frenzy with which the Red State Tea Party supporters have created a pile-up of obstructionist legislation in Congress, and have deluged our airways with their 501C(4) junk "issue" commercials, filled with lies--and watched a hungry populace eat those lies like candy...

I have watched the navy of plutocracy seal our harbors and shell us into submission...

I will vote my conscience on November 7, but I fear that this will be a futile gesture...like a wounded animal rearing on its hind legs...which will do little more than feed my delusion that I still live in a democracy filled with other than self-centered, self-delusional automatons who never fact-check, never think outside their own box, and never question "authority", as long as it is Caucasian, regardless of its lies...  Imagine their shock when and if they ever awaken from their anesthesia, and find themselves in a fascist state, with a puppet Supreme Court pledged--like the Republican Congress--to the will of Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and all the other grey-faced functionaries who are so effectively delivering this country to the special interests of the uber-wealthy.

Once again, the beat of that drum is asynchronous with my march, and I cannot follow that parade. 

"That's Federalism!!"...er, no, actually, it's not...

Watching "Morning Joe" yesterday, waiting to fully wake up, I heard Joe Scarborough huffing and puffing about how things like healthcare shouldn't be the venue of the Federal government, but should be left to the states.. "Let the states do what they want...they know what's best for them...that's FEDERALISM!"

Actually, no, Joe, it's not.  It's Anti-Federalism, a movement which plagued the Founding Fathers (which Joe and his fellow Conservatives are so fond of identifying with) during the drafting of the Constitution.  The anti-federalists wanted all power to remain with the states, so that they (the wealthy plantation-owners) could control the matters in their own areas.  That argument may have been more attractive in the days when everyone's life centered around one locale--most people never traveled more than 10 miles from their homes--and when they basically mistrusted the folks from the next village, let alone the neighboring state.  It is not remotely feasible in this era of extreme mobility, when many people make a daily commute to work across state lines.

This is supposed to be a nation of Americans devoted to a common cause, and regardless of how the pseudo-intellectual factions of the Conservative movement want to pervert and misrepresent that fact, this is a simple and long-held belief.  This is why men and women from Alabama fought alongside men and women from Illinois on the battlefields of the Argonne, or the jungles of Viet Nam, or the deserts of Iraq.  It is the reason why these same men and women deserve a national system of healthcare which extends beyond parochial state lines and has national scope.

I, for one, am sick to death of the perversions of truth which have been vomited from the Right during this campaign, whether it is the "60% growth of the national debt during Obama's term" (how the hell does 3.3 billion equal 60% of 16.5 billion???) or the Socialist labels plastered on this President's efforts...  I expect this kind of crap on Fox News, but can't tolerate it on MSNBC,

Christmas in July...?...

My new puppy has kennel cough...so I stayed up with her in our casita (read garage converted into studio) so my wife and other dog could sleep undisturbed through the night...  The point is:  my resulting insomnia led to an all-night-into-early-morning sojurn through old movies on TCM...pre-war comedies, wartime musicals...all great stuff...leading to this morning's showing of the Preston Sturges film CHRISTMAS IN JULY...made in 1940, when this country was still struggling to remove itself from the Great Depression...

In one of the opening scenes, Dick Powell (playing a guy with big dreams but a dead-end, low paying accountancy job) is daydreaming at his desk, and his supervisor (played by wonderful character actor Harry Hayden) calls him into his office.  Hayden's character gives Powell a pep talk.  The gist of it is that Powell has to think of himself as a success, or he never will be one.  The gem of this speech is as follows (with apologies to Sturges, who says it a little differently and a lot better):

"No system can succeed if only one-half of 1% of the parts are a success, while the rest of the parts are failures!  All parts must be successful for the system to succeed!"

I sat there dumbstruck.

Here, coming off the screen in a film made 72 years ago, reflective of a time where economic struggle and the fear which accompanies it were spread across all classes in this country, was a razor-sharp and cogent message for our time.

If ever there was a message for the Democrats and Progressives to adopt in this fight against the Right-Wing, class-warfare mongers who want to see more wealth distributed to the wealthiest while the rest of us are left to scramble for the crumbs, this is it!

Please, Lord, let somebody on the DNC have been watching TNC this morning, and take this message to President Obama, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and all the other warriors in this battle, and let their speechwriters and ad campaign managers get the soundbite of Harry Hayden's speech from this film, and play that 10-15 seconds over and over and over again on every station in this country.

Then, it would turn out that the title CHRISTMAS IN JULY would be particularly meaningful, if it turned out that Preston Sturges' words gave a great gift to the Progressive cause in the defeat of the Republicans in the upcoming election.

At the risk of pissing of the NRA...

Twelve dead, 52 wounded...  Anyone who has ever handled a weapon, let alone been faced by someone shooting at them, knows the kind of massive firepower required to accomplish this kind of damage in a matter of less than three minutes...  That's what some psychotic, worthless coward did to a movie audience in Aurora, CO at midnight tonight...and then--as one would expect from a coward--didn't even have the balls to shoot it out with arresting officers.  Just surrendered meekly...so now we have to feed and house this little weasel bastard for the next God-knows-how-many years, while his defense will probably be paid for by the National Rifle Association...

When the hell are we going to stop pussyfooting around the goddamned NRA (No Rational Association) and stop defending the "constitutional right" to own assault weapons?  Screw the "Second Amendment"!  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the right to go to a sleazebag death merchant at a "gun show", or a "sporting goods' shop, and purchase an AR-15 with a 100-round magazine and all the necessary hardware to modify it to full automatic, and to go online and purchase body armor which should be reserved to SWAT officers!!  The purchase of the items should be, if not totally illegal, red flags to all law enforcement agencies (including Homeland Security) and put the purchaser on a close-watch list. 

I am so damned sick and tired of the American Public--even more so of American politicians--rolling over and playing dead, like possums, in the face of hate and death mongers like the NRA, and Ted Nugent, and all the other right-wing-facist-motherf**kers who are puking their vitriol all over Fox, and their badly-written blogs, and everywhere else they can get access.  Take their frigging assault rifles, shove them up their butts and pull the trigger, and see if they still defend your right to bear arms.

In the interim, stay home--  Malls, theatres, parks...any place of public assembly...are the hunting grounds for all the psychofreaks with their AR-15s, Uzis, AK-47s and whatever other "arms" they can "bear" as part of their "constitutional right" under the Second Amendment.   Just don't expect them to fulfill the true meaning of that amendment:  the right to be part of a militia, in defense of their country.  That would require actual balls, something that all of them seem to lack.

Aaron, we have missed you...

Just viewed, courtesy of a friend's post (thank you Betsy Scholl) the opening of the new
Aaron Sorkin show NEWSROOM....

I don't get HBO, so can't view the show as it airs, but seeing this piece makes me want to call
DIRECT TV and change my subscription.  This is writing at its best, with ensemble acting
to match.  Not since WEST WING have I seen this kind of quality--which makes me believe
that the public, in its predictable reality-tv-soaked stupor, will reject both the message and the
messenger and the show will be canceled after one season.

I wish I wasn't such a pessimist... more than that I wish I could have a shot at being part of
this ensemble, even in the smallest of roles.  It would be an honor to work with these people
--and that, at this point in my life, might just be enough to change my attitude and outlook on life.
Slim shot, but who knows?

At all events, kudos to all involved in this groundbreaking show.

Remembering...?...

It's another Memorial Day...   A few parades (fewer each year) attended by a dwindling group of
survivors, men and women who served in this country's military sojurns across the globe and across the decades...a salute to their nobility and sacrifice, and to those who were left on the battlefields...

My wife Lisa called her Uncle Al in Albuquerque to thank him for his service...he was a colonel in WWII and Korea in the Army Air Corps and, like my father, survived those conflicts to return to a grateful America rife with parades and waving flags and cheering crowds.  She thanked him for his sacrifice for our nation, and  remembered her adoptive dad who served in the Pacific on board naval ships during Iwo Jima and Saipan, and mentioned me for my service during Viet Nam.  Uncle Al was deeply touched, and then fell very silent.  When he was finally able to speak again, he said "nobody thanks us anymore...they don't seem to care anymore..."

Lisa came to me and said she was shocked and troubled by this lack of gratitude.  I, however, was
only too aware of this trend.   I returned to a nation which spit on me and my comrades in airports,
and  looked upon us (especially post-My Lai) as "baby-killers."  But then, in the 80's (almost two decades after my service), they staged a massive celebration for us with a parade down Wall Street (we were--mostly--still young enough then to make the route on foot) and crowds and streamers and marching bands.  It was gratifying, if late in coming.

There was one great difference between then and now: namely, the demographics of those serving in the military.  Viet Nam was the end of the draft and, hence, the end of the era of the citizen soldier.  Men of every walk of life and every strata of economic class served together in that, and preceding, conflict.  This is no longer the case.

Today, our army, navy and air forces are peopled by "volunteers", a pseudonym for people who--due to their lack of access to economic or educational opportunity--are facing such limited options that they have no choice but to enter the military.  Once there, they are further enslaved by a system which does not--as it did in my day--release them from their service obligation after 2, 4 or 6 years of active duty, but rather keeps them in a loop of continuous service in the "reserves"...sending them back into war zone peril for second, third, fourth and fifth tours.

Unless and until the draft is reinstated, and the burden of sending their progeny into 
harm's way  is shared equally by all American families--regardless of their economic status--there will never be enough people saying "thank you" on Memorial Day.   Defending this nation will be "someone else's job" and, like the maintenance crew which cleans your office bathrooms, will go mainly ignored.

God bless us all, and rest well all those who did not return.

Give you a break?....

Where would you like it, Mr. Speaker?  Your arm, leg?  Your head?  Your ass (where I would find your head)?

You accuse House Democrats of politicizing the "war on women", when you and your I-was-a-car-salesman-but-now-I'm-a-Congressman Tea Party morons are clearly and openly and proudly waging that war, right out in the open, and on C-Span to boot????

By all means, you Red State Jackoffs, let's cut more money from cancer and STD screenings for women and poor people of both genders, then lets sit back and watch as the uninsured overrun the already flooded ERs for their medical treatment, and lets watch healthcare costs really skyrocket.  Great idea.

I know I'm just another (mostly ignored) voice screaming in the forest, but if there is a woman who
sincerely thinks the Republican Party holds anything but disdain for women, the poor, and yes--
the future of this nation, I wish she would respond to this writing and enlighten me.  I am at a loss to see it.

It's bad enough that the poor have had to bear the burden of manning our military in this era of
global deployment, and re-deployment, and re-re-deployment.  The sin of poor women
disproportionately mourning the deaths of their sons and daughters lost in this nation's military
follies is bad enough; to ask them to bear this pain while dying of ovarian cancer or
heart disease--maladies made treatable by early detection--is a sin of cardinal proportion.

"May you all rot in hell" is the phrase that comes to mind...but I fear that such karmic justice just
may not be in the cards for the evildoers.  In the meantime, they want our poor men and women to
rot here on earth, from corrosive disease.

Oh, if only what went around did, indeed, come around... 

Slim pickins...

Ted Nugent...that draft-dodging, lousy-guitar-playing, lying (yeah, right..."Journey to the Center of the Mind isn't about drugs!!!"), punk-ass, pussy-faced. drooling idiot is the latest dog-of-war to be
unleashed in the Conservative War of Words against Liberals in general, and President Obama
in particular.

Not that this is the first time he has spewed diarrhea from that stupid slot above that ridiculous
pubic patch he calls a beard, but this time he has delivered a "call to arms" to the plaid-shirt-clad
army of neo-Nazi morons he calls his fans.

"Obama, Hillary Clinton are criminals...ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off..."

This, from a sleazeball scumbag who, when called before the draft board, wore his clothes for over
a month and showed up at the board smelling of feces and urine(how appropriate) so that he would
not get drafted.  Criminal??  Nugent, if you ever saw a battlefield you would piss your pants;
but, then again, you would be comfortable with that attire...

If your adoring tribe of Neanderthal, "America-for-the-Americans," gun-toting sycophants
really took your character and past into consideration, they just might tell you to ride
your machine-gun into oblivion, after shoving it up your ass and pulling the trigger.

PS--why is it that every NRA-pin wearing "gun-lover" I have met here in California never
served a frigging day in uniform in their lives?

Ah, screw it...

To bake, or not to bake...

Unless you've been living under a very large, soundproofed rock, you have been subjected to the barrage of commentary on Ms. Rosen's quick-tounged quip about Mitt Romney's wife not being the ideal person to ask about women in the workforce and their economic/social struggles...

MY GOD!  ARE THE REPUBLICANS THIS DESPERATE FOR SOMETHING TO GRIPE ABOUT??

After all the apologies by Rosen and the White House (for a comment which, after all the smoke
clears, is accurate and hardly insulting) the RNC and their cronies continue to bleat and beat their
breasts about how all stay-at-home moms have been insulted by the Democrats...

Which is, of course, pure bullshit...

My mother, along with obviously millions of others (look at the divorce rate in this country and figure it out for yourself) had no choice but to hold down a full-time job and raise a family...  Luckily, the household contained an extended family, 4 generations, which helped in the raising of the children....but they all had full-time jobs, too.  There are military wives who "stay home" when their husbands are out on a 3rd and 4th tour in war zones, and these women "stay home" (often working at paying jobs simultaneously) not by choice but from necessity.  There are countless numbers of single-parent households in the same situation.  It has given rise to a lucrative and ever-growing industry in this country--daycare centers, preschools, etc.--which further deplete the parent's resources in the effort to raise their children...

For Romney to need his wife to act as an interpreter of women and their mystical needs is baffling.  For him to chose a wife who has lived a life of privilege and luxury for that task is even more perplexing.

For this to be turned into some kind of rallying call to all those Red State women who hold bake sales, make scrap books, and generally live the stay-at-home-soccer-mom life to march in unison behind the Republican Party is the true insult here.  Those women have access to their bank balances, and they know how hard they are struggling to put Walmart clothes on the backs of their kids and how many coupons they have to clip to feed their families....

Enough of this crap...from both sides...   In fairness (even though the preponderance of asshole statements have come from the Right--Rush Limbaugh included), my Progressive friends are making too much of  Foster Frieze's comment about "bulletproof teleprompters" for Obama...
I heard the comment,  and it had nothing to do with assassination of the President.  It was about the Republicans now focusing their  "guns" at Obama and not at each other now that the candidate is chosen...

So let's stick it back in our pants...or where the sun will never shine...and get back to the issues...

Eye in the Sky...

Listening to KNX Radio (yes, the Republicans are right on one thing:  the media is an evil influence...)  On comes an ad touting the new version of GARMIN...that wonderful little GPS/Direction/Best-Chinese-Restaurant-in-the-current-neighborhood device...

One of the main new features?  "It also displays your speed," the announcer joyfully said.  Hmmm...

Won't be long now before the same is said about ONSTAR, or any of the other little mamas-little-helper devices on our dashboards or hanging from our visors...  Then it's only a matter of time
before Big Brother really becomes Oz, the man behind the curtain, and starts to subcontract
things like speed violation enforcement, outsourcing them to Raytheon and friends...

After all, your subscription to the service means they have your id info, probably your
car's VIN and registration, and a credit card or bank account on file for payment...

It's a short leap to sending that info about you doing 45 in a 35 on Highland to Culver City Police,
and a nice prepaid ticket arriving at your home address...

Let's not forget that info is already being gathered by insurance companies ("Snapshot" being an example) and it plays a large role in your renewal premiums...  So, double whammy, your insurance premiums skyrocket...

BUY A MAP, STUDY IT...DO A GOOGLE EARTH SEARCH...then take off for your location.
Screw Garmin...half the time it gives you instructions to make a left at a no-turn intersection anyway.

Just a thought...

From my cold dead hands...

Watching the "progressive" cable channel "Current"--a documentary on the guns being used by the Mexican drug cartels which are purchased here in the US...mostly at "gun shows" without any type of background check or documentation...and hearing the comments of the "gun lobby" about not constricting our SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS (which have to do with militias, not individuals) to curtail the murders in Juarez...

I am so sick to death of hearing this "2nd amendment" argument as an excuse for our flooding our streets, and those of neighboring countries, with automatic weapons...  Seven dead in Oakland yesterday...five wounded in Mississippi...Thirty-five dead in one swoop in Juarez...  "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is the most lame of all the platitudes mouthed by these John-Wayne-wannabes...  The NRA with its nearly-billion-dollar lobbying is the most insidious organization since the SS...

I think it's ironic that the AK-47, the favorite weapon of my friends in the NLF who (luckily) shot at us with bad aim in Nam, is the sweetheart weapon of the NRA right here at home.  Thanks to those cretins, we are more likely to be killed here than we were flying over the DMZ...  Thanks, guys.  Love you, too...

Gentrification...

Watching BBC News this am...it seems the folks in Berlin are unhappy about the nature
and composition of the city changing as all the money and the people who make it
are flooding into their city, driving out the hippie/grunge contingent which, since the demise
of The Wall, has recently given the city its counterculture energy...

Welcome to my nightmare...

I watched, personally and closeup, as my Manhattan went from a trans-European, multicultural
Nirvana, composed of working-class (and hard-working) immigrants and their children, to
a Disney/Starbucks/Gap, Vegas-version parody of itself, populated by overpaid, over-dressed,
self-appointed Ubermensch with little but cash-flow to contribute to the lifeblood of the city.

I witnessed the destruction of all the little ethnic neighborhoods, from the Irish to the Italian to the
Eastern-European Jew to the German, with their walk-up apartments with bathtubs in the
kitchen and 6, 7, 10 people living in them--mostly happily--and saw the city hemmorage as it
suffered the transplantation of its vital organs, replacing them with Armani and Gucci
and Patek Philippe-adorned mannequins..

It's the way of the world, it seems...  Los Angeles, the place I live now (God help me), has suffered
a similar fate, of sorts...  Of course, to call LA a city is kind of a joke...it is a loosely-knit, over-
populated amalgam of lots of different, independent but interdependent cities/towns with their own
police departments and city councils...but DOWNTOWN LA (another misnomer) has suffered
this kind of gentrification, driving out the homeless who used to roam its streets after dark, or
the vagrants who roamed the pier locations of Santa Monica...  But that is hardly the same
as the forced diaspora of employed, working class people who were made to leave the
dwellings where they bore, birthed and raised children...where they tended to and, eventually,
laid out for burial their elderly...  That was the singular fate of the New Yorkers of
Little Italy, or Greenwich Village, or the Lower East Side, or Chelsea, or Clinton, or
Yorkville...

I am sure other cities suffered similar fates, but I do not come from Chicago, or Boston, or
Oakland...  If you have similar stories to share, then please do so.  I am sure that the slow
and inexorable death of cities as havens for the middle/working class is pandemic, marching along
in perfect step with the slow and inexorable death of the middle/working class...

Mandate, Schmandate...

The Supremes...that off-tune, badly-dressed group of mentally and physically decaying
lifetime-appointed cretins sitting on The Bench (if only they were only bench-warmers) in DC...
seem to be concerned about the big, bad government forcing broccoli, or burial, upon the
poor citizens of this country.  One of them, shamefully named Kennedy, is concerned that
this mandate will change the relationship of government to the citizen...
he says that forcing the citizen to do something against his (possible) will is unconstitutional...

WHAT???  Has this idiot heard of INCOME TAX?  AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE??  PROPERTY TAX???  THE FRIGGING DRAFT????????  This country has a long history of NECESSARY EVILS
being forced upon its citizenry since its inception.  IT'S CALLED BEING A CITIZEN.  IT'S CALLED ADULTHOOD. 

Ah, crap....who cares?  Why bother?  Go back to sleep, Richard...

Usery...(no, not "sic")

So...I recently canceled all my credit cards...let's say voluntarily...and started living on a cash-only (including debit cards) basis...  For practical reasons, however, it was deemed wise to acquire a secured credit card (try renting a car without a cc)...  I applied for, and was approved by, an outfit called FIRST PREMIERE BANK...very high "independent" ratings from consumer bureaus--yeah....  I sent them a certain amount of money, allocating that $50 of that money be used for their "annual membership fee", and waited to hear that all was ok.  After about 3 weeks, I called their "customer service" number and was assured that, yes, all was ok and I would be receiving my card "soon."  Another 3 weeks passed with no card arriving.  Then, yesterday, I received an email to which was attached a copy of my BILL for a minimum payment of $30...for a card I had never received, let alone used.  True, the card did arrive later in the mail, but the fact remains that it was never used, and that there should have been no charges against it, hence no minimum payment due.

I called the lovely folks in Kansas or some other Red State to ask what this charge was all about, and I was told that there was an unpaid balance of $50 charged to my card...  "What?", I asked.  "The fifty dollars for the annual membership was already paid, and with MY MONEY, not yours, so why do I owe anyone anything??"

This line of questioning went unanswered, with the customer service rep parroting an
obviously-scripted response to a question doubtlessly heard hundreds of times a day.

To make matter worse, if I (like countless others) decided to only pay the "minimum payment due"
of $30,  I WOULD HAVE AN UNPAID BALANCE OF $20 ON WHICH I WOULD THEN BE CHARGED 19.5% INTEREST!!!

So...I have placed myself in a situation where I would have pay usurious rates of interest to SOMEONE ELSE for the use of MY MONEY.

And people wonder why banks are hated more than lawyers.

CAVEAT EMPTOR.  Stay away from First Premiere Bank if you can, although I imagine they are no worse than the other vultures in this game.

Smile...

I got a FB response from a friend...it seems she was shocked that I put a "smiley face" on my post to her timeline...and it kind of perplexed me.  I am a "professional curmudgeon"...an old, bearded fart who grunts and snorts and generally provides the "Ed Asner" note to the proceedings...but people who really know and love me know I'm a softie who loves to laugh.

Perhaps my readiness to smile broadly is tempered by my progressively lengthening upper teeth...a cross between Milton Berle and Mr. Ed...brought about by years of not flossing, heavy smoking and a dental insurance establishment which is criminally skimping on plan payments.  It would take about $6-8 thousand dollars to fix my problem...some painful and expensive gum surgery followed by a nice bridge or implants to make my upper teeth look as good as my (already done) lowers.  I'll never be George Hamilton, but they would look acceptable in this LA-land of overdone cosmetic dental work.

The problem I, and about 30 million other Americans, face is that the dental insurance companies have yearly limits of between $1000-$1500 on what they will pay, and astronomical exclusions on procedures which, if they pay for at all, they pay ridiculously small amounts.  It means nothing if, like me, you haven't used their services for 2-3 years...there is no "roll-over" (like cell phone plans)...the yearly limit remains the same.  So you can't "bank" the money to use at a later time.  Use it, or lose it.

So, if (again) like me you are broke and unable to fork over large amounts of cash to oral surgeons, cosmetic dentists and the like, you are screwed.  Going for cleanings is a waste of time now, and that's about all your dental insurance covers.

I hope Obama-Care looks at this problem and comes up with a solution.  All the current thinking, and all the current research, shows that dental health is crucial to the health of other bodily systems, including heart and blood vessels.  I've never understood why DENTAL INSURANCE is not pooled in with HEALTH INSURANCE...is this someone else's mouth??

One body, one system, except to CIGNA, Blue Cross, Met Life and the like.

Someone please explain, because I am at a loss...

Parenthood...

As some of you may know, my days are made bearable by my bringing my furry, 4-legged and ever-so-sweet canine daughter Whimsy to her daily (firm commitment--I tell casting directors I have a conflict if they try to bring me in during the appointed time slot) play date with her friends Riley Rooney (a handsome Irish Setter) and Peaches (a zaftig Anatolian Shepherd).  We all meet at place nicknamed The Dunes, a relatively-wild and unspoiled patch of land running a course about 1 1/2 miles long above the shoreline of El Segundo.  The dogs love it, and it passes as exercise for the owners, so its a win-win for all...

Today a ton of dogs were there with us, all having a ball and behaving well, when a middle-aged man came along walking far ahead of a very young puppy--a 2-month old version of Peaches, actually, albeit male--and paying very little attention to the safety and welfare of this little dog.  Of course, this new (and puppy-smelling) addition to the pack drew the attention of all the other dogs, who gathered around it sniffing curiously, causing the poor puppy to cower in fear.  The man just kept walking.  The puppy tried to crawl into the thick underbrush and bushes to escape the inspection of the larger dogs, but the dogs just kept pursuing him.  The man kept walking.  Finally, in my finest and most-exasperated New York high volume, I shouted "hey, man, how about looking after your dog!!??" while pulling Riley, Peaches, Sammy, Dante and 3 or 4 other adult dogs away from the bushes, trying to give the puppy an escape route.  (It should be noted that Whimsy, my girl, did not participate in the puppy-terrorism event...she was a very timid and submissive puppy herself, and she is especially sensitive to dogs who show fear).

The puppy-owning (or at least the puppy-monitoring) moron simply stopped, turned around and stood there, making no effort to retrieve the little guy and assuage his fears.  When the puppy (named Fargo) finally saw his chance and made his escape and rushed to his "protector", the man just turned again and started walking, leaving the puppy to trail behind.

Question:  what kind of idiot do you have to be to be that insensitive to the plight of any creature,
let alone your "best friend"?  And an infant at that?

I know that all kinds of people have children they shouldn't have,
and treat them in ways they shouldn't be treated, but it takes an especially clueless jerk
to be blind to the plight of a puppy.  Go home and kick your kids, abuse your wife...
but be nice to your dog, asshole, or I will find you and make your life a living hell.

That's it.  Have a nice day.  :)

To Facebook or not to Facebook...

I had to post to Facebook, because there was no place else for me to rant about this, but:
I was watching a rerun of LAS VEGAS (yes, I was that bored) which dealt with a Marine who was being forced to go back for a third tour in combat, and was freaking out over it--ultimately committing suicide...

The headlines are full of stories about the Sergeant who killed 17 Afgans, including 3 children, recently...it turns out he was being sent back for a FOURTH TOUR in that shithole...  Now, I am a Nam-era vet...in my day you did one tour and you didn't get sent back unless you volunteered, period.  But, then again, we had the draft in those days...  As flawed as it was, it was a system whereby ALL citizens of a certain age were placed in a pool of available and ready recruits...cannon fodder for the boys in the Pentagon...but at least it was reasonably fair and provided a TRUE CROSS-SECTION of the population of our country.  I served with Latinos, Blacks (yes, this is before they were called African-Americans), poor white trash from the bayous and swamps, and rich kids from Long Island.  We all placed our asses on the line and took an equal share of whatever shit Westmoreland and his cronies threw at us, and we came out either dead or better men for it.

The point is this country can't function without a pool of citizen-soldiers, and you don't get that
without a draft.

Now we have a mercenary army, composed mainly of the poorer classes in the ranks and (mostly)
rich kids in the officer corps--or, if not rich, at least privileged enough to have gotten college degrees prior to enlistment...

So now our troops, or at least those lucky enough to survive their first tour with body and--hopefully--mind intact, are being thrown back in the cesspool for another, and another, and ANOTHER tour of combat!!  This is unconscionable!!  If we insist on having a "global military presence" we have to be able to sustain our pool of combat-eligible soldiers, and that has to come from a draft.  If the children of privilege belonging to the "1%" aren't exposed to the same risks and responsibilities as those of the 99% (actually, it's more like the lowest 25%), then the whole system stinks and is out of whack.

God save these poor kids today.  And God damn the politicians who are afraid to even mention the
word "draft" in their national political campaigns.

The start of the rantings...

This is the first day of the rest of my life, and the first day of this blog.  Facebook isn't really the place for this volume of verbage, and it has too many restrictions on content.  So, I will post that sort of stuff here, and hopefully some dialogue will come from it.  At all events, hello Reader.  Feel free to comment here or email me, but be kind, please...  Ah, screw it... Be kind, be brutal, whatever; I can handle it...