Weekend Tids and Bits

START SPEADING THE NEWS . . .New York City may indeed have eight million or more stories to tell, but they better not be about smoking in public parks or on beaches if the city’s health commissioner, Thomas A. Farley gets his way. New York has already banned smoking in the workplaces and in bars and restaurants. Farley wants more. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who would like to keep his city job – not that he needs the dough – was taking a nuanced approach to the idea. One of the unspoken nuances probably was that if Farley does any more of this stuff during an election campaign, he’s getting politically smoked, workplace, bar, restaurant, park or beach be damned.

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FAILURE TO BALANCE was the problem with an Associated Press report earlier this month that said it cost Alaska taxpayers at least $40,000 to cover former Governor Sarah Palin’s resignation and the swearing in of her successor. Not a mention could be found in the September 4 story of what it might have cost Alaska taxpayers had Palin stayed.

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TECHNOLOGY FOR THE BIRDS might be a fair characterization of the internet in South Africa after an experiment pitted a pigeon carrying a data card against a Telkom internet line in transmitting the card’s data over a 50-mile distance. Reuters says the pigeon did it in two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds. In the same time interval, Telkom had transmitted only four percent of the data. South Africa hosts the soccer World Cup next year, but no word whether the plans include upgrading technology or building more pigeon nesting boxes.

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OPERATION BOOTLICK? The Washington Post reported that there were 2,200 fewer Washington lobbyists than a year ago. Cynics might say they were victims of the policies they helped create. Others, most probably at the behest of lobbyists, say they performed a vital public function. Reports of charities collecting used boots so that out-of-work lobbyists could keep their job skills fresh could not be confirmed.

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BACON, LETTUCE AND WHAT? The UK’s Daily Mail enriches us all with a report citing Finnish scientists who say a mixture of wood ash and human urine produces tomato crops four times larger. The technique works on other plants, too, says the report, which avoids getting into the marketing implications, which may be even more than four times larger.

Last Week’s Lessons Reviewed:

· The Obama administration’s top-secret Doofus Directorate floated into view when the Coast Guard discovered that scheduling an anti-terrorist exercise on the Potomac for any future September 11 might not be such a swell idea at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/09/top-secret-no-more-doofus-directorate.html

· Mainstream Media, those tireless watchdogs of press releases, discovered that President Barack Obama is black and some racists dislike him just for that. Their reaction to the shocking news may be found at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/09/mainstream-media-shocked-stunner-obama.html

· Dummies got an important new defense last week when one South Carolina person said it was acceptable to say dumb and disrespectful things if you were too damned dumb to know the difference. Clarifies “The South Shall Rise Again,” by admitting difficulties in figuring which way is up at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/09/harpootlian-defense-dumb-ass-rights-for.html

· “I can see clearly now…” has its drawback when the sight of someone who first heard that song in 1972 is restored, but the rest of him isn’t. The mixed results are at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/09/medicines-iffy-gifts-modern-medicines.html

· Good fences may make good neighbors, but good bribes might make better ones is the suggestion offered at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/09/uncle-sams-fencing-skills-those-tempted.html

Have a great weekend!

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Uncle Sam’s Fencing Skills

Those tempted to let Republicans get their way on health care reform should look at the results of the last time Republicans got their way, the border fence between the United States and Mexico that was started during the Bush administration.

The fence was started because the Republican Howler Chorus then was baying that illegal immigrants from Mexico were “invading.” Fences and walls have lousy records against invaders going back to Roman times, but Howlers don’t let facts spoil their music.

And so Uncle Sam launched an effort to build a fence along the 1,969 miles of border between the United States and Mexico, ignoring the fact that excellent ladders were widely available on the Mexican side, as well as wirecutters, axes, shovels and other handy implements.

If you want to wade through the details, start here, but the short course is that we’ve built 600 miles or so of fence for $2.4 billion, which doesn’t include the more than $4 million we’ve spent fixing the thousands of holes already punched through it.

Now not even the federal government is dumb enough to attempt a physical fence for the entire border length, so much of the rest will be a technology-based fence, at least if funding and technology for that effort materialize.

Until then, the worth of a “virtual” fence against a “real” fence crosser is open to debate.

All of which surfaced in media stories this week of a Government Accountability Office Report pointing out that in addition, we’ll spend $6.5 billion maintaining this marvel over the next 20 years.

So let’s review –

We’ve bet more than $2.4 billion so far, we haven’t funded the rest and it’ll suck another $6.5 billion just keeping even with what we’ve got.. Of course we are doing this to keep out the roughly half a million illegal immigrants each year who arrive to join the 12 million or so already here. So that’s $8.9 billion and climbing for keeping out illegals.

If we keep them out. With 12 million strikeouts, our batting average isn’t anything to brag about.

So let’s stop fencing them out and try buying them out. About 40 percent of Mexico’s population tries to get by on about $550 a year. If we offer the half million who try to come here each year another $550 to stay right where they are, it only costs us $275 million a year.

Which means over 20 years, it would cost $5.5 billion – lots less than what’s projected now, never mind the costs of the yet-to-be funded (or invented) technology portion.

Poor Mexicans are happy because they’ve doubled their incomes and didn’t have to leave home. American taxpayers are happy because they’re paying less per head to stop illegal immigration. Even Republicans might be happy, at least behind closed doors and in the privacy of their own homes.

Sure, fence companies and the folks that sell ladders and wirecutters are going to face rough times, but they can always cut lawns or clean houses or process chickens to get by.

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Medicine’s Iffy Gifts

Modern medicine’s gifts are many, but some should have a Return For Store Credit option.

Decades of wearing glasses had accustomed me to getting a new pair every few years or whenever Wife or Daughter’s yaps about “you really ought to get a checkup” became more annoying than the trip to the eyeglass store.

And, truth be told, I’d come to enjoy the experience as newly immigrated optometrists and I figured out the strange words together.

And those were just the insurance forms.

The last time was different. For one thing, the guy flipping the lens widget was an MD. For another, he said the reason things had become fuzzy was a cataract, not, as I had theorized, too much reading from the Republican National Committee’s guide to health care reform.

So cataract surgery was the suggestion and I agreed because the Code of The Guy says you can’t wuss out in front of another Guy, although you can certainly endlessly fret and whine later to your wife.

Days before The Event, I worked to put my affairs in order – seal-coating the driveway, putting the air conditioners in storage, doing the lawn, all the stuff you gotta do to build your creds with Wife for enjoying a period of choreless recovery. You know – the kind where you gamely try to reach for the TV remote or get another beer so you can follow the orders about proper exercise and nutrition.

Event day arrived, and in the space of two hours I was able to lie about following the fasting instructions, get shot full of happy juice and have Nature’s foggy eye lens replaced by a crystal-clear one from Bausch & Lomb.

Which is the problem.

Not the lens, of course, or the work that put it there. It’s the result – I can see clearly now.

Colors are much more vivid, so I now know that what I thought was the ruddy glow of good health is really the flaming-red face of an out-of-shape old guy who took the stairs instead of the escalator.

Distance vision is improved so I now can see clearly the smirks on the faces of cute young things I pass on a walk.

Field of vision is improved and it is now confirmed by observation that my toes are in no danger of sunburn, but my navel better up the SPF.

The mirror’s pleasantly hazy mature guy that walked into the eye surgery clinic has been replaced by the crystal-clear old man who now flashes wrinkles, age spots and sags. Not to mention grey hairs.

It’s all a miracle of modern medicine, I know, but forgive me if I don’t fall to my knees in thanks.

Besides, although knees hurt going down, they hurt even more when you try to go up, or so some old guy told me.

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The Harpootlian Defense

Dumb-ass Rights For All!

Liberty’s bell got a new note in the debate over South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson shouting “You lie!” to President Obama during an address on health care.

The House rebuked Wilson on Monday and former President Jimmy Carter was quoted as saying Wilson’s act was “based on racism.”

But then the Associated Press quoted Dick Harpootlian, South Carolina’s former Democratic party chairman as saying “I think Joe's conduct was asinine, but I think it would be asinine no matter what the color of the president.

“I don't think Joe's outburst was caused by President Obama being African-American. I think it was caused by no filter being between his brain and his mouth," the AP reported Harpootlian said.

And so is born the Harpootlian Defense, which excuses persons saying rude, crude, possibly racist and evil things on the grounds that they are too damned dumb to know any better.

The Harpootlian Defense opens up whole new venues in interpersonal relations, whether on the private or national stage.

Suppose your wife has announced that your mother-in-law is coming to spend the next six months and suppose you have blurted “why can’t that wide load find her own parking lot?”

Prior to the Harpootlian Defense, you would have spent at least six months not having to worry much about birth control. Now, thanks to our friend from South Carolina, you can say “Honey, I know you’ll forgive that stupid, dumb-ass remark because you know me to be a stupid, dumb-ass guy.”

Skipping over the implicit accusation that she married a dumb-ass, what woman’s heart would not be melted?

In business, the Harpootlian Defense would be a Godsend. Instead of announcing Christmas Eve layoffs without explanation, corporate executives could say “I know that this unexpected and cruelly timed announcement will wreck the lives of thousands of families, but that’s the kind of guy I am” and thereby be absolved. Except maybe by the families.

The possibilities on the Harpootlian Defense are truly endless. Bloody dictators could be excused on the plea that they are bloody dictators. A defense against murder charges would be that murder is what murderers do.

Or theft is what thieves do.

Or, to generalize, crime is what criminals do.

Which is where we get to the flaw of the Harpootlian Defense.

If we won’t forgive criminals who commit crime because they are criminals, then we need to think twice about forgiving the asinine because they are asinine.

Unless we’ve elected them to Congress, which is something some citizens in South Carolina ought to think about in the coming weeks.

And the rest of us ought to think that if Joe Wilson is perfectly representing his constituents, the next time South Carolina declares itself out of the Union, we ought to let them go.

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Mainstream Media Shocked!

Stunner: Obama Is Black!

President Barack Obama is black, a stunned mainstream media discovered last weekend, followed by the equally-shattering news that racism is alive, well and getting elected to Congress.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote in Sunday’s editions that “boy” was the unspoken third word when South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson bellowed “You lie!” during the president’s health care address.

In the world of red states and necks, “boy” is the preferred white term of reference for a black male of whatever age. It’s employed by any white with an age higher than they can count and an IQ not challenging that counting limit.

As Dowd and other have reported, Congressman Wilson wanted to keep the Confederate battle flag flying atop South Carolina’s capitol and has been a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Letting the Sons of Confederate Veterans speak for themselves, their website says: “The citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution.”

Right -- the 1776 revolution was about “all men are created equal,” while the second revolution was preserving the liberty of some men to deny that equality to others, which showed America’s best qualities.

To mainstream media, this theme from Wilson’s past was a horrible discovery. They didn’t – and don’t – understand Wilson’s constituents, those weren’t sins, they were qualifications. Good ones. As in Good Old Boy.

So last weekend marked the mainstream media discovering that the racism they declared dead in Obama’s ”post-racial” election is alive and well. They also discovered that never mind the stated excuse of birthers, anti-socialists, death-panel alarmists and others, most of the opposition to Obama and his programs springs from the politics of pigmentation.

As in the President of the United States of America is black and some Americans don’t like, can’t like and ain’t ever going to like black people.

Or immigrant people.

Or educated people, rich people, Jewish people, Not My Sect Christian people, or any other poor folk who happen to get slopped by that mental mud.

Well, this has been hard for mainstream media to bear, but they are struggling mightily with their burden and some say they look forward to new challenges as they rush to educate their waiting audience about their newly discovered truths.

Of course one of their new challenges is that the audience they’re rushing to educate is increasingly not there.

And another is that whether there for the media or not, almost all the audience knew those truths since they were old enough walk, talk and hate like grownups.

But please don’t tell the mainstream media about that just yet.

After last weekend’s thunderbolt, they need some time to regroup.

Hell, they were just barely recovering from those disturbing facts about Santa Claus.

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Top-Secret No More

Doofus Directorate Revealed

WASHINGTON – A previously top-secret arm of the Obama administration came to light late last week when the workings of the Doofus Directorate were discovered.

The revelation came after the Coast Guard’s scheduled September 11 anti-terrorist drill on the Potomac rattled nerves. The nerves rattled belong to the FBI and Secret Service, who get all jumpy about folks bouncing over the Potomac with machine guns while the president is nearby laying a wreath – especially when they get no advance warning.

Web chatter indicated possible White House ties, and LBS Impact Journalism put the focus on Stool Number 3 of a bar that declined to be identified near the National Press Building. There determined Inferential Reporting (IR) investigators found a 60-something white guy in a serious relationship with a glass of bourbon.

Under probing questioning, the source identified himself as Haffington A. Bubbleshy. After IR bought another round, he revealed himself as CFO (Chief Fubar Officer) of an Obama administration group so secret “even Vice President Biden couldn’t remember it.”

Asked for more than such an obviously long list, Bubbleshy tap-danced to another IR-funded bourbon and explained that he worked for the “Doofus Directorate at the White House.”

Ordinary reporters, under accounting pressure on bar tabs, might have stopped, but the IR crew pressed on, learning that the Doofus Directorate was a secret group charged with tagging the Obama White House with mistakes.

“They need us to seem human,” Bubbleshy explained. “I mean, here’s an administration headed by this black guy who’s a law professor with enough ivy on his resume to go into the landscaping business. Everything he touches seems to work eventually. You know what kind of hate and envy that’s going to generate? “

Intense IR training prompted reporters to ask “What kind?” and Bubbleshy said “The kind that comes from everyone who screws up when they see a guy who never does – so that’s where we come in.”

Keen Washington reportorial instincts prompted “Come in to do what?”

“To screw up!” Bubbleshy proudly declared. “Those Secret Service guys are always talking into their sleeves about taking a bullet for the president. Hah! We take pratfalls for the president!”

Asked for examples, Bubbleshy’s emotions were obviously a mix of caution and pride. “This is off the record, right?” he asked. “It’s not gonna be like I’m naming a CIA op or anything, right?”

Reassured with a motion for yet another bourbon, Bubbeshy smirked” You guys remember that Manhattan Air Force One flyover with those two F-16s tailing?” IR reporters nodded skillfully and Bubbleshy crowed “well that was our work!

“Just think about it!” he almost bellowed. “After the World Trade Center attacks, an apparent passenger plane flying a weird pattern over Manhattan chased by fighter jets? Panic? A White House seemingly without a clue?”

Bubbleshy paused to let his point sink in. “Don’t say so because this conversation never happened,” he said, “but you can thank the Doofus Directorate for that.”

Well, what about the Coast Guard drills, the IR reporters demanded. Was the Doofus Directorate also claiming credit for that?

“Well, no, not exactly. . .” Bubbleshy said quietly, swirling his bourbon. “That was kind of spontaneous from the Department of Homeland Security.”

“Does that bother you?” an IR reporter asked.

“Of course!” snapped Bubbleshy. “We’re getting paid to make the President look like his guys stumbled, and then these amateurs come in. What’s that gonna do to our job security?”

“You mean you have job worries?” IR reporters asked.

“Geez , don’t you guys read the papers?” said Haffington A. Bubbleshy of Plumb, VA.

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