(In Memory of George Carlin, Requiescat In Pace)

When George Carlin died last year, I was deeply saddened.  He was one of the Great Comedians I had listened to from my childhood onward.  Indeed, I do not recall not knowing about Carlin, in the same way I do not recall not knowing how to read.

Anyway, the many obituaries and tributes that poured in paid homage to Carlin’s considerable talents, including his genius for skewering the human condition.  And, of course, they all mentioned his legendary “Seven Dirty Words.”  For a Black Baptist growing up in rural North Carolina, hearing these words was like discovering a lewd and truncated mirror image of the Ten Commandments.  (I should point out that my extremely devout grandparents, who would have cringed at Carlin’s unabashed use of the “Seven Dirty Words,” nevertheless allowed me to listen endlessly to Redd Foxx’s incredibly raunchy comedy records–on Sunday, at that.  Perhaps it had something to do with the way Black people tell stories.  Hmmm.  Methinks I have the subject for another post….)

Anyway, for some reason I felt inspired to write a little list of my own.  I have no idea why I chose politics as my canvas.  Perhaps the ghosts of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s recent resignation or the Monica Lewinsky scandal were clanging around in my head.  Who knows?  I humbly submit my “Seven Things You Can Never Say in Politics”:

1. “I will never raise your taxes.”
2. “Go ahead and follow me.  I have nothing to hide.”
3. “S/he was just a staffer.  I never knew her/him personally.”
4. “I welcome the opportunity to take my case before the American people.”
5. “I never accepted gifts of any kind from that individual.”
6. “I pledge to serve my full term.”
7. “I am looking forward to spending more time with my family.”

Looking again at my list, I no longer find it as amusing as I did when I created over a year ago.  I guess you had to be there. 

Do not worry, Mr. Carlin, wherever you are.  I have no plans to give up my day job and try to do what you made look so easy for so many years.  You, Sir, were the Michelangelo of Mirth. 

[Expletive deleted.]

It was the first day of a school in USA and a new Indian student named Chandrasekhar Subramanian entered the fourth grade.

Who said “Government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall not perish from the earth?”
Again, no response except from Chandrasekhar. “Abraham Lincoln, 1863″ said Chandrasekhar.

The teacher said, “Let’s begin by reviewing some American History. Who said ‘Give me Liberty , or give me Death’?”
She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Chandrasekhar, who had his hand up, “Patrick Henry, 1775″ he said.
“Very good!”

The teacher snapped at the class, “Class, you should be ashamed. Chandrasekhar, who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do.” She heard a loud whisper, “Fuck the Indians,”
“Who said that?” she demanded. Chandrasekhar put his hand up. “General Custer, 1862.”

At that point, a student in the back said, “I’m gonna puke.”
The teacher glares around and asks “All right! Now, who said that?”
Again, Chandrasekhar says, “George Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister, 1991.”

Now furious, another student yells, “Oh yeah? Suck this!”
Chandrasekhar jumps out of his chair waving his hand and shouts to the teacher, “Bill Clinton, to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!”

Now with almost mob hysteria someone said, “You little shit. If you say anything else, I’ll kill you.”
Chandrasekhar frantically yells at the top of his voice, “Michael Jackson to the child witnesses testifying against him- 2004.”

The teacher fainted. And as the class gathered around the teacher on the floor, someone said, “Oh shit, we’re fucked!”
And Chandrasekhar said quietly, “I think it was George Bush, Iraq , 2007.”

On November 19:

1600  King Charles I of England was born.

1805  Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and Suez Canal engineer, was born.

1816  Warsaw University was established.

1863 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery ceremony at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

1905  Tommy Dorsey, American bandleader, was born.

1916  Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn established Goldwyn Pictures.

1917  Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India was born.

1933  Larry King, American TV personality, was born.

1942  Calvin Klein, American clothing designer, was born.

1942  Battle of Stalingrad – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launched the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR’s favor.

1961  Meg Ryan, American actress, was born.

1962  Jodie Foster, American actress, was born.

1969  Football player Pelé scored his 1,000th goal.

1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat

became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel.

1984 A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien
In a new book, former President Bill Clinton said he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky because he “cracked under pressure.” When asked what he’s doing this weekend, Clinton replied, “Cracking under pressure.”

This week Chrysler announced it’s replacing its owner’s manuals with a DVD. In a related story, most Americans have replaced their Chrysler with a Toyota.

Starting today, gay couples can register as legal partners in the state of Nevada. So congratulations to the cast of Cirque de Soleil!

The Jay Leno Show
Yesterday at the U.N., Barack Obama told world leaders, “Don’t expect the U.S. to solve the world’s problems.” Whatever happened to “Yes, we can!”

Starbuck’s is going to start selling instant coffee. This is for people who want the quality of Sanka, but want to pay the high Starbuck’s price.

Late Show with David Letterman
It’s the 60th anniversary of China. We’re celebrating in the United States because they own all of our debt

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Sarah Palin’s new autobiography – that doesn’t come out until November — is already #1 on Amazon. And if you go to the Web site, it says, “People who bought this book also bought . . . no other books in their entire lives.”

I thought this was nice: Out of good sportsmanship, the foreword to Sarah’s book was written by a moose.

Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, will receive a 53 million dollar pension when he retires at the end of the year. But he can only get it out of an ATM — 20 dollars at a time.

From 8/11/08

An auspicious day,  the Chinese proclaimed. The sequence 8-8-08 portended harmony and success and it worked – except for the eruption of civil war in Georgia and the antics of former US Senator, vice-presidential candidate, and White House wannabe John Edwards. As if calculated to slink below the

John Edwards

Olympic Games opening headlines, Edwards ‘fessed up to an affair with a video photographer who worked in his presidential campaign in 2006. Claiming his success gave him a swelled head (pun intended), Edwards has stood firm that the love child inconveniently on the scene was not his, claiming the father was married campaign worker Andrew Young.

This is a Gold Medal performance, with Edwards lapping the field in the Ego Sleazeball Triathlon to take home the first medal as the opening ceremonies were underway in Beijing. Since the ancient Olympics were re-established in 1896, the US lagged behind perennial champions Britain and France in les affaires de couer. While our political leaders demonstrated strong ability at corruption and stupidity, we kept losing the sex sweepstakes: the Profumo affair in UK; Mittterand’s illegimate offspring popping up in La France – overshadowed US efforts. It was Bill Clinton’s clear victory in two four-year intervals in the 1990s that catapulted America to the Gold and made us competitive.

But not even proven sexual athlete Slick Willie would go to extra lengths to concoct a plot claiming that someone else was diddling Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. Edwards has raised the bar by setting up a campaign worker to play the beard and take the rap. It will be a Herculean task to take the medal from Edwards, whose acts of treachery and deception place him in a new class all his own. Preaching hot hell and freezing snow about the plight of the poor, Edwards, a trial lawyer multi-millionaire who just couldn’t give up the niceties to attain credibility, has finally unfurled his true colors: he has been and remains a charlatan of the highest order.

And he was two heartbeats away from the presidency, so it was fitting that Fox News invited reporters from the National Enquirer on air to give them credit for digging up the dirt on Edwards. Rupert Murdoch is the king of tabloid sleaze, which explains why his cable news shows focus on the lurid while seemingly providing “fair and balanced” news coverage. The only legitimate programming on Fox is Brit Hume’s All-Stars; the rest is local crime, how-to instruction for the intellectually challenged, and sex wherever it occurs. But the question begs, why did the “mainstream” media refuse to cover the Edwards scandal: Because they didn’t want to stain one of their own. No wonder the New York Times and its kin are on the skids.

Meanwhile in Beijing, the public spectacle of the Olympic opening ceremonies also attained unprecedented heights, lifting public entertainment to a new level. The synthesis of communist central control – laced with a dose of newly discovered capitalism – produced a spectacle of magnificent human achievement. But in between the intricate segments of pyrotechnic choreography, other interesting details unveiled glimpses of the inscrutable Middle Kingdom.

The most notable symbol on display was the chummy visage of Mao Tse-tung, the most notorious mass murderer in human memory. Why the party nomenclatura deem it necessary to keep the old criminal around is a mystery. With capitalism transforming the world’s most populous nation, creating shortages in the West by sucking oil and supplies out of the world market, I can only guess the Great Helmsman is retained as a threat, to remind citizens the central government can unleash terror against its own people any time they feel like it.

Those Chinese fortunate enough to have survived the Chairman’s foray into agricultural experimentation in the late 1950s – as usual couched in mellifluous terms: The Great Leap Forward – lived through a famine estimated to have killed 30 million people. To cloak this monumental mistake, he released the Red Guards to punish the “intellectuals” as scapegoats. In Jung Chang’s estimable biography Mao The Unknown Story, the author states: “Mao…was responsible for over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other 20th century leader.” I’d venture his record covers all of recorded history, so why can’t the new, snappier Chinese leadership condemn the old devil to the dustbin of history, to borrow a phrase from the bad old days of world communism? Tells me they are not to be trusted.

President George Bush doesn’t. To his credit he criticized the Chinese for suppressing religious and political freedom in situ, the first US president to attend the Olympic Games outside our shores. Then he settled down to pull for the American teams but found time to talk with former Russian president Vladimir Putin, urging restraint in the Georgia civil war where the Russkies have intervened on behalf of the separatists and against their former Soviet puppet. Bush is the Man.

During the march of nations, the US received loud applause; Iraq did too, but not Iran. And each delegation, with the exception of nations in tribal dress, wore a coat and tie in the sweltering heat. The French sported natty fedoras and the US white berets designed by Ralph Lauren. Could it be the fashion to dress properly at the Olympics will set a much-needed trend in the US? We may be the richest people in the world, but have devolved into the worst-dressed.

The National Basketball Association is vilified by most Americans, and rightly so. Overpaid behemoths behaving like barbarians on and off court is hardly savory behavior for kids to emulate. It was with great trepidation I watched an interview with NBA superstars Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, in Beijing as the “Redeem Team” – a play on the nickname “The Dream Team” that was defeated in 2004 after much hoopla.

Memories of Mexico in 1968 when American black athletes shamed us all with their unpatriotic antics – and numerous similar displays of anti-American angst – raced through my head. In what I hope is a red letter day in US race relations, both athletes spoke softly and politely and made it clear they were here as Americans to retain the country’s honor. It was a stunning moment. Hats off to the players and to Duke’s Coach K who is leading the team in Beijing.

Chinese numerology has merit after all: On 8-8-08 the US rid itself of John Edwards. — Bernie Reeves

Here is yet more evidence that you are a reflection of the company you keep.  In this case there isn’t much of a reflection since floating excrement in a cesspool doesn’t reflect very well.

Here’s more insight into the long laundry list of thugs, murderers, socialist, and communists with whom our pretender to presidency CHOOSES to associate.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/7949/

If You Are Known by the Company You Keep, What do Obama’s Associates Say About Him?

In the Aesop’s Fable, The Ass and His Purchaser, a man looking to buy a donkey wanted to test the animal before completing the purchase. So he put the donkey in his field with the other donkeys to see what would happen.

The donkey immediately strayed from the majority of the herd and cozied up to the laziest donkey of all.

Seeing that, the man led the donkey back to his owner. When the owner asked how he could judge the donkey’s character so quickly the man explained, “I didn’t even need to see how he worked. I knew he would be just like the one he chose to be his friend.”

A person is known by the company he keeps.

Fables are popular because they tell the story of the way things in life really work. In business, when someone takes over a department or company, that person promotes those he or she likes to positions of authority. The new manager seeks out those who have a philosophy, work ethic and disposition similar to his.

One would expect a president to do the same thing. After all, a president is elected—supposedly—based on the vision, ideas and proposals he championed during the campaign. It would then make sense that he would put in place those who supported his vision and would therefore be enthusiastic in working to achieve it.

So who are President Barack Obama’s friends, and who has he put in charge of the effort to enact his policies? And what do the friends he has chosen and the people he has put in position of authority in his administration say about him?

Following, in alphabetical order, is a list of some of Obama’s friends, advisors and people charged with enacting his policies:

• William Ayers—Now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ayers spent 10 years as a fugitive in the 1970s when he was part of the domestic terrorist organization known as the Weather Underground. In the early 1970s the Weather Underground was responsible for bombing the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., and setting a bomb that didn’t go off at a military induction center in Oakland, Calif. The group also murdered two policemen and a Brink’s truck driver in a botched armored car robbery, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) website. Ayers surrendered to face charges in the 1980s, but the charges were dropped because of improper surveillance. Coincidentally, on Sept. 11, 2001, Ayers was being interviewed about a book he had written and he told the interviewer he didn’t think the Weather Underground had done enough. Ayers and Obama first crossed paths in Chicago in the 1990s and served together on the board of the not-for-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a boondoggle to spend tens of millions of dollars for their pet “education” projects. Obama downplayed his friendship with Ayers as casual, but evidence indicates their relationship was much more. Many now believe that Ayers penned Obama’s “autobiography” Dreams from My Father.

• Carol Browner—Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Browner is an avowed socialist. She served as one of 14 leaders of Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for global governance and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change, according to an article in The Washington Times. The group supports socialism and has been harshly critical of U.S. policies. She is also a supporter of smart growth policies, as we have described previously. Browner also served on the board of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, though her name was scrubbed from the site after Obama tapped her for the director’s position. Not surprisingly, Obama’s transition team told The Times Browner’s membership in a socialist organization was not a problem.

• Frank Marshall Davis—You won’t find Davis’ name on an organizational chart of White House staff, but he was instrumental in forming the political philosophy of Barack Hussein Obama. Called “Uncle Frank” in Dreams from My Father, Davis was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), according to a 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii. Obama has admitted to spending time with Uncle Frank—who he cryptically describes as being a person of some modest notoriety at one time—and listening to his poetry and getting career path advice. Davis may also have been a pedophile. Writing under the pseudonym Bob Greene, Davis wrote a debased pornographic novel entitled, Sex Rebel: Black (Memiors of a Gash Gourmet), in which he describes group sex encounters and sex he and his wife had with a 13-year-old girl named Anne. Davis died in 1987.

• Anita Dunn—As White House Communications advisor, Dunn has been seen a lot lately as the face of the Obama administration’s strategy to try and discredit Fox News. She is described on Politico.com as a veteran Democratic strategist and top advisor on Obama’s presidential campaign. As the war between the Obama White House (see more under Rham Emmanual) and Fox has escalated, videotape has surfaced showing Dunn gloating over how the campaign “controlled” the media. Another videotape surfaced showing Dunn speaking at a June high school graduation ceremony where she praised Marxist/Communist Chinese Premiere Mao Zedong as one of her favorite philosophers and one of the two people she turns to most. It’s difficult to understand how Mao had time to philosophize as he was busy killing somewhere between 50 million and 70 million of his country’s citizens during his 27-year reign of terror.

• Ezekiel Emanuel—The president’s Special Advisor for Health Policy, Ezekiel is brother to White House Chief of Staff Rham Emanuel. Ezekiel is the source of Sarah Palin’s death panel idea. This Emanuel has written that he believes many healthcare treatments should be denied to those under 15 and over 65 to save money, the rationale being that only people between 15 and 65 are beneficial to society.

• Rahm Emanuel—Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Emanuel is a thug Chicago politician who once sent a two-and-a-half foot long, dead and decomposing fish to lobbyist Allen Secrest to express his displeasure. He’s known for his full-time use of gutter language and once told then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair just before an appearance with Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “This is important. Don’t f**k it up.” He also coined the phrase, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” He’s also behind the ridiculous policy of starting a fight with television news agency Fox News.

• Chai Feldblum—Nominated by the president to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Feldblum signed a radical 2006 manifesto which endorsed polygamous households and argued traditional marriage should not be privileged “above all others,” according to a report in Catholic News Agency. According to a statement from the White House, Feldblum has worked on advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights…” She is co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she described at a UCLA symposium as a homosexual rights group that aimed to change the American workplace and revolutionize social mores, according to a report on the WorldnetDaily website.

• Patrick Gaspard—White House Political Director, Gaspard was formerly a lobbyist for Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the organization that sent its thugs out to disrupt Tea Party protests and stir up trouble at town hall meetings in August. Prior to that, Gaspard worked as national field director for American Coming Together (ACT), a sub-group of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACT was fined $775,000 in civil penalties by the federal government for various voter fraud offenses. You can read more about ACORN here.

• Eric Holder—The Attorney General of the United States is an anti-gun racist who earlier this year referred to the United States as “a nation of cowards” on race relations. He also has an interesting take on justice. He worked to convince President Clinton to pardon billionaire fugitive Mark Rich (convicted of fraud and racketeering), Weather Underground (where have we heard of that organization before?) terrorists Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans, and he declined to prosecute New Black Panther brutes who stood over a Pennsylvania polling station with baseball bats intimidating voters. Oh yes, he also wants to bring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the United States.

• John Holdren—Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is not only an abortion supporter, he is an abortion nut who believes that compulsory abortions could be sustained under the existing U.S. Constitution if a population crisis arose. He also supports mass sterilization of the U.S. population through lacing the country’s water supply with drugs. Holdren authored with two other people a book called Ecoscience promoting their loony ideas about population control and One World Government—or what they called a Planetary Regime—to regulate international trade, the food supply and determine the optimum population for the world.

• Valerie Jarrett—The New York Times called Jarrett, Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, the ultimate Obama insider. She has also been called the other half of Obama’s brain. She’s another one of those Chicago thug politicians who has gamed the system—including operating as a slum lord—for her own benefit. Her company, Habitat, Inc., managed the Grove Parc housing complex which was located in the district represented by State Senator Obama. As state senator, Obama coauthored a bill to give tax credits for developers which Jarrett used on the complex. As U.S. senator, Obama pressed for increased federal subsidies for like projects. Despite receiving government funds and tax credits, Grove Parc was ordered demolished because of its deplorable condition. She also served the administrations of Chicago mayors Harold Washington and Richard Daly, both scandal-plagued. Washington, by the way, was backed in his bid for mayor by Chicago’s Communist Party and the local branch of the Democratic Socialists of America. Called by the Washington Post a tutor to Obama and his wife Michelle, Jarrett is the step-daughter of Chicago journalist Vernon Jarrett. Vernon Jarrett was an associate of Frank Marshal Davis, Obama’s mentor, when Davis lived in Chicago prior to moving to Hawaii.

• Kevin Jennings—This former school teacher and long-time gay rights activist was named Obama’s Safe Schools Czar. He has accused Baptists, the Boy Scouts and sports fans of anti-gay bias, and advocates a special high school for gay teens and gay-straight alliance clubs for every high school in America, according to a report in CNSNews.com. He believes that kindergartners should be taught to respect all sexual orientations while insisting that “ex-gay messages” and “Christian values” are misused to isolate or denigrate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and have no place in the nation’s public schools, CNSNews.com reported. Oh yeah, he also supports pedophilia. While Jennings was a teacher, a minor student told Jennings that he was having gay sex with an adult. Jennings covered it up. He also has praised Harry Hay, a defender of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.

• Van Jones—Once Obama’s White House Environmental Advisor, Jones was fired in the dead of night on a holiday weekend after a video surfaced in which he called Republicans a bodily orifice, and after a controversial document he signed was revealed. That document accused former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of either planning or knowing about ahead of time the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In addition to being a 9/11 Truther, Jones is an avowed Communist. He was appointed to his position by Valerie Jarrett, who has been seen on video praising Jones and saying she and Obama had been watching Jones for a long time.

• Mark Lloyd—FCC Diversity Czar, is also known as the man who wants to stifle free speech in America like Hugo Chavez does in Venezuela. He has been videotaped saying the Chavez revolution in Venezuela was almost lost because of the privately-owned media. Chavez, of course, is the Marxist dictator of Venezuela, personal friend to Communist dictator Fidel Castro of Cuba and Islamic terrorist dictator Mahmoud Ahmadenijad of Iran. In 2006, while at the liberal Center for American Progress, Lloyd wrote a book entitled, Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America. In it he presents the idea that all private broadcasters should be charged licensing fees at a rate equal to their operating expenses and that money should go to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). In a 2007 report entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, Lloyd complains about the fact that people want to listen to Christian and conservative talk radio rather than liberal radio, and lists ways the Federal government can fix the “problem.” His solution would include caps on the number of local stations a corporation can own, ensure greater local accountability on radio licensing and require owners who fail to fulfill their obligations to pay a fee to support PBS.

• Cecelia Munoz—Now White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Munoz was previously Senior Vice President of The National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic lobbying organization in the country, which has called national anti-immigration groups “hate groups.” La Raza, which literally translates The Race, funds extremist groups and supports illegal immigration as a way of obtaining political power. The group advocates taking the Southwest U.S. for the purpose of creating a new Hispanic state.

• Cass Sunstein—Recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is a Harvard Law School professor and dingbat who has—in writings and speeches—called for a ban on all hunting and claims that animals should be represented by lawyers in animal abuse cases. He is a socialist who has advocated for gun control and heavy regulation of the Internet. He also wrote in his 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, that he believes people’s organs can be harvested without their consent. Sunstein would like to see personal email communications regulated by the government and believes the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing.

• Rev. Jeremiah Wright—Obama sat in Wright’s church for 20 years yet claims to have never heard any of the hate-filled racism that crossed his lips. Wright’s anti-Semitic, anti-American sermons came to light during the campaign. Among his claims: the U.S. government was responsible for infecting blacks with the virus that causes AIDS, America was responsible for the 9/11 attacks—“the chickens have come home to roost”—and Jews are responsible for ethnic cleansing in Gaza and are pressuring Obama associates to keep Wright and Obama separated.

These are just a few of the folks who have occupied or currently occupy Obama’s inner circle. He was passed off by the mainstream media as being a centrist and moderate, but many of friends are anything but that, and some are quite radical. And when you parse some of his words or find video or audio from several years ago you know that Obama himself has some radical views.

But the media ignored Obama’s ties to radicals and communists. That, and Obama’s soaring rhetoric led many otherwise thoughtful and good people down the primrose path, and they voted for him without realizing what they were getting.

But as the truth gets out about his associates, the cover is coming off. He’s becoming known by the company he keeps, as well as his own deeds.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

In 2006, I did an internship at a now-dead investment bank in New York.  During my first week in orientation, I remember sitting in a large auditorium with the rest of my summer analyst class.  We had just endured several hours of listening to men in ties drone on about insider trading, compliance issues, and SEC regulations.  Finally, a woman stepped up to the podium… hello, HR!  We were talking about sexual harassment.

As interns, we would only be at the company for ten weeks… but apparently, we all needed a lengthy lecture about appropriateness in the workplace.  The sexual harassment talk is akin to the private parts talk that mothers give to their five-year olds: “If someone tries to hug you, run away… No one should ever touch you there, except for the doctor… If someone does try to touch you, tell the ombudsman immediately!”  We listened to the woman outline the company’s sexual harassment policies, then went off to happy hour next to a strip club for drinks with our new managers.

Last January, when I started my full-time job, I had to watch another sexual harassment tape.  (Companies must hire the same video production company to produce their ’80s-style anti-groping propaganda…  Every single video has at least one woman with frizzy hair and Coke-bottle glasses who serves as the object of a mustached man’s affection.)  I also had to fill out several online forms, in which I answered survey questions like, “Should Bob put his arm around Sue?”  And, “Is Sue allowed to kick Bob in the groin?” (My recollection is fuzzy on the exact wording.)

So, given my extensive immersion in the rules of sexual harassment, I figured that other places would have similar policies.  Like CBS.  Or, ESPN.  Or… the White House.  Then again, who can say no to Dave Letterman, Steve Phillips, and Bill Clinton?  “Yes, Bob, please put your arm around me.  And more.”

Then again, after witnessing the indiscretions of my fellow summer analysts with their bosses/mentors/HR reps in those ten weeks, I suppose the harassment talk didn’t serve as much of a deterrent during my internship.  And in my current company, work couples (or “inbreeders”) are common.  In fact, if you aren’t dating a colleague, then you’re likely to get laid off; as they say, it’s all about who you know.

Clearly, sexual harassment education isn’t working.  We’re still seeing predatory white-haired males hit on chubby young females.  We’re still  dealing with desperate, ladder-climbing women trying to leapfrog from cubicle to front office.

So, what can we do to reform the system?  Should we ban hugs from the office?  Give philandering men an attractive, no-strings-attached, government-sponsored public option?  Or maybe we just need to make better sexual harassment videos… Well, I hear that a writer, a production assistant, and a former TV host (Mr. Personality!) are all looking for jobs… Once we find an unemployed, mustached predator with white hair, we’re golden.

You know, ACORN and two of its employees  have exhibited unprecedented gall by threatening to sue the “pimp” and the “prostitute” who stirred up a political hornet’s nest with their undercover videos.  To be precise, the attorneys for ACORN are relying on Maryland’s wiretap statute to bring a lawsuit against James O’Keefe III, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart.Com LLC, for the video recordings which revealed ACORN’s more than willing assistance and counsel on establishing a brothel which would feature underage girls trafficked in from El Salvador.  The lawsuit should fail, however, because it attempts to misapply the “wiretap” statute to the legal recording of a non-protected conversation.

As an example, do you remember Linda Tripp who recorded Monica Lewinsky’s sordid tales of her encounters with then-President Bill Clinton?  They tried to prosecute her under this same law.  But she was a more valuable witness for another case, that being the impeachment of a President.  She was given immunity for her testimony, but I daresay that they would have found it extremely difficult to prosecute her under that law anyway. 

 You see, the Maryland state law is not a “wiretapping” law per se.  It’s an “interception” statute that regulates the “interception” of communications, and that is spelled out precisely in the law.  In Linda’s case, it was her own phone that she was using.  And she didn’t intercept a communication, she was participating in the conversation.  In that same vein, it is easy to see that there was no “interception” of communications by O’Keefe and Giles.  In fact, it was, as with Linda, their own conversations with ACORN employees. 

If this law is used successfully to prosecute O’Keefe and Giles for exposing the corruption within the ACORN organization, then people with cell phones that capture videos and records voices had better turn off their phones while in Maryland to avoid the temptation to break this law at some party or event!

But ACORN has other legal issues as well, this time on the defensive side.  When ACORN went to Las Vegas and started playing what they called “Blackjack” or “21,” the activist group was making a far greater gamble than it could ever have guessed, or so think the Nevada prosecutors who are, by the way, Democrats.

There’s nothing wrong with playing the tables in Vegas, but the authorities claim that ACORN was using the common names of popular casino game as a cover-up term for paying workers bonuses to sign up voters as part of a quota system which is illegal in Nevada.  As a result of an extensive investigation, a preliminary hearing in the Clark County courthouse has put ACORN on trial for the first time as a criminal defendant. 

Until now, prosecutions for voter registration fraud have focused on the ACORN workers themselves rather than the organization leadership, and yes, the authorities have secured guilty pleas from several workers who have admitted to falsifying voter registration forms. But when investigators from Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller’s office raided the ACORN Las Vegas office, Ross says they found a paper trail that not only was ACORN organization itself aware of this practice, it was actually promoting this behavior.

In an interview with Fox News, Miller said, “We came across policy manuals that outline their policy of creating a quota system, which is against the law.  This, in fact, was something that was widespread and something the organization itself knew about, and it’s important to hold the organization criminally accountable as opposed to the individual field directors.”

ACORN, of course, has consistently denied that it had a quota for the number of voter registration forms, and that it required its workers to turn in a certain minimum number every day.  The organization does say that there were “performance standards” — that standard was “an expectation” that workers would find 20 new voters each day.  But prosecutors say ACORN paid a $5 bonus to workers who would sign up 21 or more voters per day.  That’s where the “code” name “21″ or “Blackjack,” came in.  It was an alleged quota system that Miller says is the first step toward corrupting the entire democratic system. 

“These charges strike at the heart of having integrity of the electoral process. That’s something that is important in Nevada and the entire country,” he told FOX News.  “By filing these charges we are sending a clear message we are not going to tolerate these kinds of activities. We have seen voter registration abuse before and we are holding these people accountable.”

With the undercover videos from several offices done by O’Keefe and Giles, and the search and seizure of such incriminating evidence in the Las Vegas ACORN office, pressure from all sides has been mounting on ACORN in recent weeks.  But it seems that the “lame street media” would rather focus on the alleged illegal actions of two young people rather than go after the organization that counsels people to commit obviously illegal activities and cheat on paying taxes. 

There has been some other fallout from the expose’ done by O’Keefe and Giles, and the revelation of the manuals and documents discovered in Las Vegas.  The IRS and Census Bureau have since severed direct ties with the group, and even the inspector general of the Department of Justice is reviewing its own involvement with ACORN.  Other state and local authorities are also beginning to distance themselves from ACORN, while others are watching them closely, including Maryland’s own attorney general.

As of this writing, I haven’t heard or read anything further on ACORN’s lawsuit against O’Keefe and Giles.  But Las Vegas officials are proceeding with their case against ACORN.  And if ACORN is convicted, the Nevada ACORN operation could lose its tax-exempt status and that would have national implications for the organization as a whole — meaning that ACORN would end up with a losing hand!

Name// Bill Clinton
Occupation// Politician
Where// Dunno source
Why Pouting// feeling guilty maybe? – Bill Clinton got puh-lenty of mileage out of the expression in 1998 and 1999 after publicly denying – and later admitting – that he had an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Someone out there either has too much spare time or is deadly at Scrabble.
(Wait till you see the last one)!

PRINCESS DIANA
When you rearrange the letters:
END IS A CAR SPIN

MONICA LEWINSKY
When you rearrange the letters:
NICE SILKY WOMAN

DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM

ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER

THE EYES :
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH :
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE

SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES – LET’S RECOUNT

SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z ‘S

A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
I’M A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE

GAUTENG- when you re-arrange the letters you get:
GET A GUN

AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:

CASTER SEMENYA
-YES A SECRET MAN

These articles appeared in Sri Lankan media. Please note we cannot verify the independence of the information in these reports.

SL envoy summoned by State Dept
PM’s remarks on Monica Lewinsky attract US Protest
The United States has lodged a “strong protest” to Sri Lanka over remarks by Prime Minister, Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, on state radio that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has forgotten the “Monica Lewinsky episode” and should “put her house in order.”

Sri Lanka’s Ambassador Jaliya Wickremasuriya, was summoned to the Department of State to be told of the US Government’s displeasure. Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary, South and Central Asian Affairs, had expressed ”great concern” over the remarks and wanted to know whether this was the official position of the Government of Sri Lanka.
Click here to read full article

Clinton has forgotten the Monica episode- PM Wickramanayaka
Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka, in a live radio interview this morning, said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to have forgotten the Monica (Lewinsky) episode and should focus on her own backyard instead of making allegations of women being abused in other countries.

The US Secretary of State, who had stirred controversy last week after making a statement saying women had been raped in war countries that were at war including Sri Lanka, is the wife of former President Bill Clinton who was at one time himself in the spotlight after being accused of sexually abusing his staff member Monica Lewinsky.
Click here to read full article

Oh boy is that subject line going to get me some hits.

But that’s beside the point. So I shall now move on to the point.

Unless you spent the weekend on Mars, I am sure that you know David Letterman announced last Thursday that he had engaged in affair(s?) with female staff members and subsequently been blackmailed over it. To be fair, affair probably isn’t the most appropriate of descriptions. He doesn’t seem to have been married at the time. Though he was in a long term relationship with his now wife. So what say we leave all that between Letterman and his wife.

The point of this post is that, since shortly after 11:35 p.m. (EST) last Thursday the so-called 24 hour “news” channels, truth be told everyone remotely associated with “news” is covering it, have covered little else than the fact that David Letterman slept with staffers and got blackmailed. Hourly updates at the least are still all but required. I find this to be the continuation of an alarming trend.

Legitimate news organizations are far too obsessed with the sex aspect of any story involving anyone of note. This often happens to the point of all but ignoring true news like health care reform and the war in Afghanistan.

I think it all begins with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I vaguely remember Candy Crowley of CNN breathlessly reading the sex bits of the Starr Report. More recently we’ve seen John Edwards, Mark Sanford, Elliott Spitzer, John Ensign, David Vitter and that California assemblyman who couldn’t have made MSNBC news any other way.

My opinion of this is that there are far more important things going on in the world than who David Letterman had sex with. Unless a crime can be proven (likely Ensign and possibly Sanford/Edwards), it isn’t news. Though to be clear, a crime was committed by the man who tried to blackmail David Letterman. Letterman is a victim. The staffer(s?) he involved himself with seem to be consenting adults and there have been apparently no complaints about him. The news story is the blackmail, not the sex.

Monica Lewinsky turns 44. Can you believe it?

It seems like only yesterday she was crawling around the White House on her hands and knees, putting everything in her mouth.

They grow up so fast, don’t they?

Letterman redogör för sina affärer.

David Letterman släppte något av en bomb på sin publik i veckan när han redogjorde för utpressningsförsöket han nyligen utsatts för, och inte minst de bakomliggande affärerna han haft med kvinnor som jobbat på The Late Show. Det är naturligtvis helt förkastligt det han gjort, men jag kan inte låta bli att imponeras av Daves karaktär när han utan att slingra sig erkänner att han har haft sexuella förbindelser med kvinnor som jobbat på hans program (vilket känns lite märkligt eftersom otrohet lite känns som ett tecken på dålig karaktär), till skillnad mot exempelvis Bill Clinton vars odödliga formulering “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is” som svar på varför han inte ljugit när han talat med sina främsta rådgivare om Monica Lewinsky och slagit fast att “there’s nothing going on between us”.

Clinton och Lewinsky.

Fortsättningen på citatet inför åtalsjuryn är för roligt för att låta bli att citera: “Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”

Att Clinton hade helt sjuka mängder is (no pun intended) i magen råder väl inga tvivel om, men att Dave skötte det hela lite snyggare kan vi väl enas om?

Ett namn som snabbt dök upp i mitt huvud när jag först såg videon var Stephanie Birkitt som under ett par år i början av 2000-talet var med i programmet i princip dagligen och pratade med Dave i telefon i långa samtal, ofta uppåt tjugo minuter åt gången. Hon var även den som varje vecka ställde den klassiska frågan “Did you see or touch any monkeys?” till den senast utröstade deltagaren i Survivor.

Senare dök hon upp i diverse maskeradkläder (och varierande grad av missnöjd min) under CBS Mailbag-segmentet av programmet. Ständigt med en något underlig spänning mellan henne och Dave (som inte blev mindre underlig av att Dave vid ett tillfälle övertalade henne att låta honom trycka ner hennes ansikte i en tårta [det kan ha varit tvärtom, det blev av någon anledning aldrig av så jag har inget riktigt att gå på, men märkligt var det]), vilket gjorde att hon var en av mina kandidater till kvinnorna i skaran.

Birkitt bakom Letterman.

Och mycket riktigt blev Birkitts Wikipedia-sida genast lite längre dagen efter erkännandet då det visade sig att det var hennes ex-sambo, Robert “Joe” Halderman, producent för CBS-programmet 48 Hours, som hotade att skriva ett filmmanus (med tillhörande bok!) om Lettermans affärer.

Jag är som sagt lite kluven av hela historien. Trots att jag inte tycker det på något vis är ok vad han har gjort så har jag väldigt svårt att inte förlåta honom. Antagligen för att erkännandet sköttes så snyggt.

Vilket jag antar gör mig till något av en alldeles för lättpåverkad stackare. Jag väger upp det genom att tycka att Roman Polanski, som jag hyser hyfsat stor respekt för, är en fegis som gömt sig i Frankrike de senaste 31 åren istället för att ta sitt straff (vilket är märkligt då våldtäktsmän ändå inte brukar dömas till något särskilt).

We’re just going by the number of posts in the past 24 hours (this tally includes Defamer): 7 (so far). Here’s our favorite, a compilation of the Monica Lewinsky jokes David Letterman told on his show over the years:

Letterman haunted by the Ghosts of Monica Lewinsky Jokes Past

We don’t blame Gawker for posting a bunch of this stuff, but we wonder: Is it as big a deal as they’re making it out to be? Dunno! Stay tuned!

If there is one Democrat we have a love/hate relationship with, it’s previous-First-Lady-turned-Senator-become-Secretary-of-State-and-Monica-Lewinsky-butt-kickin’ power house Hillary Clinton. It’s true, we love to hate her and hate to love her all in the same breath.

Why, you ask. Because one minute she’s about to become the leader of the free world, and the next minute she’s…

…not having such a great day in Africa. I mean, we all have bad days. But Hillary’s episode on her African tour was not flattering, even if you’re a glass half full kinda person.

Whether you support Hillary or not (Told Ya So likes to keep things bi-partisan), you have to admit that she is one powerful lady. And powerful ladies wear powerful clothes. And powerful clothes can sometimes cause temporary blindness to even the most fashion forward of thinkers (RE the First Lady of Cameroon).

Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen:

I’ll give you a minute to think this one over. Soak it in. It’s a doozy.

And while you think, let me just say that Hillary’s jacket is so retro chic that it almost isn’t. I mean, what was she thinking?! The year of the coke party has come and gone, my friend.

The pattern and look of the material make us think she had another one of those African bad days. She must’ve reached deep into her closet and pulled something out from the 1980 campaign (of which she had no affiliation). Or better yet, she recycled something she received on a diplomatic mission to Peru from this woman:

The Huffington Post went to town on our culturally sensitive Secretary of State, so instead of commenting about how she must be celebrating Black History Month or attending another one of Drew Barrymore’s 80s themed parties, we’ll just let you read what they had to say.

Celebrating fashion of all ethnicities,

Told Ya So

What is it? Why it is the vast right-wing conspiracy. Or so says Bill Clinton. And he says that it is out to get Obama, just as it wa  sout to get him. Short refresher course. It was then first lady, Hilary Clinton, who first came up with term during the Lewinsky years of days gone by. She told Matt Lauer that this amorphous thing, this conspiracy, was after her husband.

So, now the term has resurfaced, about 12  or so years later. I believe if I were Mr Clinton, I would have chosen another phrase to describe this idea of his . The first thing it does or should do is to bring back memories of times that were not his finest. Why he used that term, who knows.

He says that it isn’t as strong but it is just  as virulent as ever. This in an interview on  Meet the Press with David Gregory. This was on Sunday, just a few days after a great and glorious New York meeting hosted by Clinton. At that time the President hailed him as a person “… who has helped improve and save the lives of millions.”

Now it is Clinton a bit morose, but just a bit. Interestingly, he talks about  the Republicans actions ( and makes  a veiled Limbaugh reference) as  being    not very good for the country. That echoes what Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said just a few days ago. It brings me back to this thought. What  does Clinton, et al want Republicans to do? Vote aye on all the Democrats proposals, cheer Obama on the world stage or just quietly go away? What did Democrats  do when they were the ” loyal opposition” ?

You are loyal and you oppose, right? How much and what do you oppose? Who decides how much opposition is alright? Sure, any party in power wants  as little opposition as it can get. Where is the line and who draws it?

It was also a bit amusing to note that some disagreed with Clinton and almost called the conspiracy, not  diminshing in size, but rather growing. So said  Lawrence  O’ Donnell on MSNBC. Who knows? Is there really a right-wing conspiracy, who belongs,how does one join, how does one even knew if they belong?

Alas, probably only ” The shadow knows.”