April 8, 2011
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Excuse me for asking, but what the HELL is a government shutdown???
The Daily News
1 Everybody talks about the weather, but...
2 Ah, thank the heavens for the weather.
3 A couple of days ago I was in one of those deals where you sit at a table with people you don't even know, so it was <high pitched> AWD-ward.
4 Some elderly dude who has game said, "So...what about that rain?"
5 Instant bonding.
6 Yeesh.
7 I often praise the Lawd for the weather.
8 If you are ever in a party sitch with strangers, just bring up the weather, and your conversation will have broken the ice.
9 It might be a cheap icebreak, but it will work every time.
10 My whole deal is that it is worth breaking the ice, because some of my best talks with strangers began with the weather.
11 Moving on, Part the First: It's actually not moving on, in a way. Yesterday morning, as I rolled along the Expressway, I looked to the east hills.
12 Okay, so I might have been hallucinating, but I thought that I saw a funnel cloud shaping its swirl directly in my path.
13 I had the radio blaring, but heard nothing about tornado warnings in the local area.
14 And yet...
15 This thing kept swirling and looking menacing.
16 As the clouds formed and the hills became darker, I saw that it was just a cloud mass.
17 The radio blasted, and no news of tornadoes, but it still was strange.
18 I have seen documentaries of tornadoes, and this swirling mass looked a LOT like one.
19 I wondered if we would be warned to evacuate or what, but the radio just talked about a bunch of other stuff.
20 I almost took a pic, but I know the highway patrol is all over cell phone use this month.
21 Anyway, no tornado. But honestly. I thought I was in Kansas. And as a guy with no brain, I almost yelled out my window, "It's a twista!"
22 Thank goodness we're all safe.
23 Well sort of...
24 Moving on, Part the First: Speaking of Tornadoes: Can somebody kindly tell me what a government "shutdown" is?
25 Because really?
26 In my lifetime I've never heard a sitting President talk like that.
27 How many people will be put out of work?
28 What services will stop abruptly?
29 What of people who depend on the government for daily living?
30 As a kid, I was told that the government was We the People.
31 Well, I don't want to shut down.
32 Confused. It is the business of politicians to lie and to confuse.
33 Don't worry; I won't go there today. I rant about twice a year, and then realize I don't have much to say about this stuff anyway.
34 But we do have some say. I read some optimistic stuff in Family of Secrets yesterday. It was about how scared George HW Bush got when the film JFK came out in 1991.
35 I didn't know that the film forced a bunch of secret docs be sent to the National Archives for public scrutiny. Public outrage following the film prompted Congress to pass the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. This act forced every federal agency to send all documents remotely associated with the assassination to the National Archives to be made available to the American public.
36 Amid those documents was a smoking gun that showed Bush was in Dallas the night before Kennedy was killed, despite his inability to remember where he was. His story switched several times, but this letter, as well as a follow-up by his wife Barbara, placed him there.
37 Hmmm. If you were CIA at the time, which Bush has denied but which is clearly evident to anyone who has picked up any serious investigation into that, AND you ran around with guys like Allen Dulles and George De Morenschildt (who was the CIA "handler" of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald AND a good friend of George HW Bush!), AND you were in Dallas on November 22, 1963, AND you were running for political office...
38 You would remember where you were the day JFK was shot. Period.
39 Chilling.
40 And Bush rose to become the head of the CIA despite his claim of not having any background prior to his 1976 appointment by President Gerald Ford, who was not only on the Warren Commission, but who, along with Arlen Specter, came up with the "single-bullet theory", a preposterous theory that made it look like one lone nut killed JFK. Hmmm. Scary.
41 Ford had been hand-picked by his predecessor, Richard Nixon, when Nixon was scandalized by the break-in of the Watergate Hotel, a scandal that had "ex" CIA operatives crawling all through it like dark spiders.
42 I won't go on, but Bush eventually became Vice-President during Ronald Reagan's Presidency (I won't go into the "October Surprise" that kept hostages in Iran until after the election, making then candidate Jimmy Carter look weak), and eventually President.
43 Who couldn't remember where he or she was on November 22,1963, if they were old enough to think? Well, to this day George Herbert Walker Bush can't remember that he was in Dallas on November 21,1963. The very next day, someone, or some group blew JFK's head to smithereens. In Dallas. But George Herbert Walker Bush can't remember where he was. Talk about a government shutdown...as I said, chilling.
44 Moving on, Part the Second: I absolutely can't believe that tonight is the home Opener for the Giants. I'm pretty excited about it, even though it flies the entire other way from what was in the first part of today's DN.
45 I was born a Giants' fan. I had nothing to say about it.
46 I used to talk Giants with my grandfather. It was always my favorite thing to do with him. My grandparents lived in the Excelsior District in San Francisco, a quaint little neighborhood with well-kept stucco houses and backyard gardens.
47 I loved going up there. When my maternal grandmother passed away, my grandfather came to live with us. My job was to cheer him up, and the best way to cheer him up was to talk Giants.
48 I also worked in the Giants' organization for years, and in perhaps the best job a young guy could have: being a seat vendor, where I could make great money, get excellent exercise, AND watch the games simultaneously.
49 So to say that last year's World Series triumph meant a lot to me would be a grave understatement.
50 Ironically, I'm helping a group of students tonight. They're putting on a fundraiser for leukemia victims, and to offer support, both financially and spiritually. It's a fundraiser featuring several local bands. I'm really a marginal player, but I will probably help keep things organized.
51 But I'm at the school today from 8 a.m. to probably nine or ten at night. I won't be able to see the game.
52 Those are the little things you do though. I can record all the shenanigans and watch it later without commercials. Besides, the season has already gotten underway.
53 I just wanted to watch all the hoopla.
54 It's funny. Spell check just corrected me on "hoopla". It also corrected me on "teh" (the), "twista", "De Morenschildt" which it corrected. I had left out the "c" and it righted it, and it also corrected "Specter", which I had spelled with an "or" and it corrected both those names. Huh?
55 That's a tad weird if you ask me.
56 Moving on, Part the Thoid: Okay, it's almost 5 a.m. as I finish this up, so I think I'm going to bow out here. Long day ending a long week.
57 And spell check just corrected "thoid". It's wrong. That's how it is spelled. Beotch. Somehow it got De Morenschild and Specter right, but corrected "beotch" to "botch". Made my day.
58 Have a great weekend.
59 Peace.
~H~
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