no fair looking it up

in a editorial this morning in the new york times, gail collins started her piece with this paragraph: "rudy g. and john edwards both dropped out of the race yesterday. guess which one is going to dedicate his life to helping the poor. no fair looking it up."

that's funny. (i may not have the wording exactly right but ...)

listening to right wing radio today and it was a hoot. they don't know who to hate more, john mc cain or senator clinton. they haven't gotten around to hating senator obama yet...but they will if he is nominated. they are so full of hate and fear that i wonder how they sleep (and how they ever get laid). there seems to be no joy in their heart or life. manohman. must be a dreary life always looking for enemies and trying so hard to protect an illusion of superiority. fearing what is different and worshiping at the alter of money. manohman.

it is supposed to be in the low 30's here tonight which is very cold for houston and, don't you know, i didn't bring a heavy coat. mumble mumble.

when i hit town yesterday, i called my friend, brookie and she and i and lauren, the first black lead ballerina in the houston ballet (and one of the first in america) went off to our favorite mexican food joint and scarfed down loads of food between good conversation and joyful laughter. lauren is one of the most intriquing human beings i have ever met, beautiful, talented, intelligent, thoughtful, aware and so full of energy that she wears me out just being around her. brookie and i just sort of sit back and observe, listen and laugh. great fun. hopefully, lauren and her musical genius jazz player of a husband will be able to make the show tomorrow. brookie came last night as did one of the people from radio mucic theater, which as you know, is my favorite stage show in america.

next week we should start taping our radio show and, i must admit, i am very excited over it. we will rock and fucking roll!

houston

back in houston, grimy, sweaty, polluted and humid houston, one of my favorite cities in the whole wide godforsaken world, full of good people and good times. it is a real case of don't judge a book by its cover. in the summer it is miserable and in the winter it rains; periodically flooding large parts of the town. every eight or nine years a hurricane will hit and the mosquitoes show up as blips on a radar screen. they have cockroaches that will carry off small, unattended babies and the traffic is as bad as it gets and it gets more than its fair share of crime. with all of that, still one of my favorites because you just can't beat the people here. it has good theater, great ballet, 5 comedy clubs and enough beer consumed to drown the british isles. if you can't find a party or get laid in houston there is something wrong with you. it is basically a blue colllar town with a great attitude. they don't take themselves too seriously and have a good time not doing so.

had a great show tonight, maybe one of my best ever. wish you had been here.

flip flopping johnny wins in florida

so johnny mac now looks like the one to beat. "the straight talk express" what a crock of shit. the republicans can be so hypocritical it is amazing. they love to talk about "high spending democrats" yet they consistantly spend more than the demos, consistantly put us deeper and deeper into debt and now they are going to run one of the all time flip-floppers.

at one time: now.

in favor of gay marriage not in favor

called falwell an "agent of intolerance" gives commencement speak at liberty u.

against bush tax cuts in favor of bush tax cuts

believed in amnisty for illegals jail 'em

believed in health benefits of illegals fuck 'em

against border wall kill 'em if they climb the wall

the republicans think that mc cain can beat hillary and probably obama. they are so wrong. the iraq war is mc cain's downfall, he will not be able to run away from his unending support of an illegal, immoral and unwinnable war and the american public is not going for it. he will lose against either, against obama in a landslide and against hillary by 3 or 4 percentage points. besides there are many republicans who do not like john mc cain and will sit this one out. also, the repubs think that many independents will come over to j.m. but here, once again, they are wrong, it's the war and it's the economy and the republicans fucked up both. they are counting on people hating hillary and wouldn't vote for obama because of his skin color. it is the republicans that hate hillary and the racists are all republicans anyway. hate to tell you, but there are considerably more democrats than republicans and they are coming out to vote this year.

what the democrats need to focus on is winning a big majority in both houses of congress. if we do that then we will be able to get the country back on its feet again regardless of the republican opposition. the moderate republicans will work with us and the neo-cons, the racists, the obstructionists, the warmongers and the suckers-of-the-corporate-cocks will, hopefully, be put out to pasture and become a small sidenote to history. bush will be remembered as the worst president in modern history and his tenure in office a national disgrace and the republicans cannot run away from that fact.

so goodbye to mitt and rudy and mike, we didn't want you anyway. ron paul will go back to texas where he will remain inconsequental to all but a very few. na na na na na na hey hey hey goodbye.

off to houston, see you there. my old home town, full of fond memories and good friends.

the shock and dunbar show is a go!

well, whadda ya know. today i talked to the people at vavoom media and they offered me a 13 week contract to co-host the SHOCK AND DUNBAR SHOW! the story today is that we will get on serius radio but won't be live there until april or thereabouts. in the meantime we will be on some obscure radio stations and on some websites. will get more information next week about when and where you can hear us. they offered both kathleen and i, while not great, decent money and we will sign contracts tomorrow. john paden and bruce dyer have done a great job on getting things going there so maybe this is going to work out big time. hell, at the very least, we are getting paid for 13 shows come hell or high water.

am off to houston day after tomorrow so hope to see some of you guys up at the laugh spot. come on out, i usually rock that room.

the fox apocalypse, webcasts and more

the monte carlo caught on fire friday as i am sure most of you know but what you may not know is just how bad the local fox news was on the reporting. monica jackson, co-host of fox morning show, had workers trapped on the roof and the bellagio and city center being evacuated. even after fire officials had said publically that there were no trapped workers ever, she had them being rescued. the bellagio and city center were not effected in any shape form or fashion. reporting such as this could cause panic and lead rescue workers into danger. some of her reports were picked up by other news organizations out of town. FOX NEWS: FAIR AND BALANCED AND COMPLETELY FALSE AND MISLEADING.


in more good news for the democrats, the two leading republicans are arguing over who will leave the troops in iraq the longest. this is while 64% of the american public want the troops home now. the republicans are going to run on the economy, which they have fucked up, and the war, which they lead us into. great strategy!

seems like mc cain and thompson were united in one thing; their intense hatred of mitt romney. i think fred stayed in long enough to cripple huckabee and then go out and i think he did it on purpose.

rudy, the great strategist himself, is running fourth in florida where he has all his eggs. he, of course, is running on 9-11 and lowering taxes for the rich. pssst, rudy, lowering taxes on the rich helped get us into this mess. but rudy doesn't have to worry, 9-11 made him rich. (no wonder he wants lower taxes on the rich)

it is raining in las vegas and we have had, for us, a fairly wet winter so far which means that the desert will bloom this spring. if you are here in april or may take a drive out into the mojave by lake mead and you will see hills covered in color.

we are going to talk today to a man who has 4 webcasts out there and is making money on three of them while the fourth is really just a labor of love for him and he never counted on a profit from it. from some of the comments i have recieved on the blog, i am finding the idea of webcasts really interesting. the two people i met with last night are of the belief that they are the media of the future.

obama is primping
hillary is spinning
mc cain is flipping
mitt is flopping
huckabee is preaching
rudy is wondering

bush is going to talk about his legacy.

and the red queen is speaking backwards.

sirius, obama, patriotism

we did the demo for the radio show yesterday and, my friends, we blew the place away. it was fucking great! everyone at the offices were fired up and full of compliments.


if it does not work out with them, i am thinking of shopping the idea to serius or xm myself or barring that doing a broadcast here on my website myself. to do that, i would have to upgrade considerably but this evening am talking to a computer whiz who may be just the man to do the work. we shall see.

what a win in south carolina tonight by obama! he more than doubled clinton and edwards. whether this will help him on super tuesday is iffy but i think his campaign just took a gigantic step forward. the thing about senator obama is that he can inspire people very much as john and bobby kennedy could inspire people and right now our nation is in dire need of some inspiration.

i repeat what i said orginally about senator obama, i think he is the man that can bring the country together. together, americans can do anything. we have the man power, we have the brain power, we have the technology power to make this the country everything that it COULD be. working together instead of fighting each other we can rise above our problems and our differences to advance all of us together towards a better life. a more prosperous life. a healthier life. an energy independent life. a more co-operative life. we have the power inside of us as a country to do all of that and i think senator barack obama is the man who could get us to use that power. power that is not used AGAINST other people but FOR people.

but, regardless of whom you support, get involved this year. we cannot continue on the course we are on. that course leads to destruction and madness. vote. work for a candidate. it is your country too. take some responsibility for it.

patriotism is not jingolist bombast, it is doing something to help your country move forward. patriotism is not littering. patriotism is being energy conscious. patriotism is being color blind to our fellow citizens. patriotism is in volunteering. patriotism is in a million little things none of which involves killing other people from other countries and other cultures. to quote john f. kennedy, "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." some on the left think that any comment about 'patriotism' is some kind of move to the 'right.' i hate to tell you this, but love of country does not a fascist make. do i think america is perfect. fuck no. far from it. sometimes so far from it i could just stand on my rooftop and scream, 'WHAT IN THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH US????". would i, however, wish to live somewhere else? fuck no. am i willing to work to help move us forward? fuck yes.

words to ponder when you ponder who to vote for

"the ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. in fact, violence merely increases hate....returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend."

"a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.""

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

bribing us into prosperity.

i see the government has had a sudden realization that we "may be heading towards" a recession and are scrambling to find a cure. the fed cuts the interest rate by 3/4% which, they say, will stimulate borrowing and borrowing leads to spending. brilliant. it was stupid borrowing that got us into this mess. ah, but not worry, they are also going to send all of us, with the exception of the poor of course, a check for, pick a number, 300, 800, 1,500 dollars. basically, they are going to try to bribe the american public to somehow forgetting we are in a recession. now where they are going to get this money from has not been said. no-one has suggested we quit spending billions upon untold billions of dollars in iraq and afghanstan and elsewhere in our bloated military budget and spend it here at home fixing our schools, our roads, our trains, our bridges, our water supplies, our public transportation. god no. wouldn't want that and all the good jobs it would create. no talk of getting help for american companies to build american factories on american soil employing american workers paying wages that would allow the factory worker to buy that thing that they make. (which is the problem with sending jobs overseas or south of the border, the workers in those countries are not paid enough for them to buy that thing they make. see, it is not lifting their wages so they can buy american things, it is, in fact, lowering american wages so that, in the long run, we won't be able to buy them either.) oh no. wouldn't want that. there is talk of giving more tax breaks to business so to encourage them to invest and thus hire more people but what companies really do with "new money", wherever it is from, during hard times is to hold on to it. why should they invest to build if there is no one to buy?

i have also noticed that the bush administration has publically stated that they are not looking for a long range plan but a short term stimulus. heaven forbid we think long range. the only long range planning the republicans seem to be doing is planning on us staying in iraq for decades. decades! how much will that cost? and to whom?

and final thought:

incidently, fyi, ky jelly comes in 5 gal. containers. who needs 5 gallons of KY JELLY? either a nymphomanic with a real tight pussy or the government because both plan on fucking a whole lot of people.

two hands = big profits

in limit poker to win, say, 5 x your buy in you would have to win many pots over the course of the session; with no limit you can win two pots and accomplish the same thing.

i am on the cut-off with a pair of red 4's with 5 callers in before me and no raise. i call. the flop comes 4s, 4c, 7c! now how to get some money in the pot plus there is a big bonus for quads at mandalay bay but you need 20 dollars in the pot to qualify and at this time with 7 callers there is only 14 dollars. but not to worry, it is bet by bb and called in 4 places before it gets to me so the 20 dollars is a done deal. i, of course, call. the turn is the Qc and bb goes all in for his last 60 dollars and is called in 3 places and i, of course, call. the river is a blank. first player to bet, checks, next player bets 50 dollars, next folds, i raise all in and one folds and the calls. BINGO!

i am in the lb with pair of two's. flop comes 2-Q-Q. as it turns out two people had queens and i got both their stacks. BINGO!

i love the internet tournament players coming into the cash games. they play c.g.'s as if they were a tournament. they lose their money. god bless 'em. keep coming.

off to play.

p.s. on my quitting smoking campaign, i have made one pack of cigs last 3 full days and i still had 3 left over this morning so i am getting very close. it is amazing how little i want to smoke. usually when one is quitting this addictive a drug the desire for it can be overwhelming. not only do i not really want one when i do, more out of habit than desire such as drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning, they don't taste good and there seems to be little or no satisfaction. odd but good.

republicans 8, democrats 1

in a letter to the editor in the las vegas sun section of today's newspaper a reader made a very good point: since the great depression we have had 9 major recessions in this country. 8 of them have come under republican administrations! hmmmm. fiscal responsibility is a fine slogan, shame the republicans don't believe it.

hoover, "prosperity is just around the corner" brought us the great depression.

Ike brought us two.
nixon had one
carter had one
ronnie r. had two
ghw bush had one
gw bush now has us in his second. (and this one is going to be bad)

want more recession? vote republican. want to put us back on a firm financial footing? vote democratic. those who ignore the past are condemned to repeating it. the republican party is for the rich. the democratic party is for the rest of us. look at the track records. regardless of how many times the republicans will use the term, "tax and spend democrats", prosperity comes with a democrat in the white house. the republicans count on the american people not remembering; prove them wrong in november.

nevada, south carolina and the angel from heaven

well, caucusing was interesting and our little neighborhood had a turnout of about 160 which i don't think was bad at all considering that the caucus idea is new here (and should be replaced by a real primary...but that is another story). at our place it was 8 delegates for hillary and 6 for obama and edwards did not get enough to qualify. everyone was cordial and happy to have such good choices. (we did hear of one caucus location where the hillary and obama camps got into a shouting match and the chairperson just closed the caucus and sent everyone home)

mc cain in south carolina may spell the end of the huckabee threat. i don't think he has the money or organization to carry on. same for thompson but i think he may stay in until florida but south carolina was supposed his bellweather state and he came in a distant third which does not give him much credibility.

i am down to about 5-7 cigarettes per day which is great but the damn pills make me so sleepy that i can't get anything done and haven't even gone to play poker because i am too drowsly to pay attention at the tables and that would be costly. no limit requires paying attention. in limit i could play half asleep and win but not at this game.

one of my chantix dreams was really cool on many different levels. i dreamed an angel came down from heaven with beautiful white feathery wings and we went together to a fundalmentalist church where they were quite freaked out since the angel was a monkey.

and with that, a good night.

LOTUS OF SIAM FOR A BIRTHDAY

tomorrow we go caucusing for obama. tonight we had a great meal with a fan of mine and his girlfriend who had brought him to vegas for his birthday and had gotten in touch with me and asked if i would go to dinner with them. well, we (rhonda and i) took them to LOTUS OF SIAM which is, in my and many others opinion, the finest thai food in america and we had a feast! chicken dumplings and a minced sausage salad for beginners and then off to mint and chille shrimp, pad thai, crab fried rice and northern thailand pork stew topped off with desert of coconut icecream, fried bananas and sticky rice. rhonda and i had raved about LOTUS to them and it was better than we said it was going to be.

so, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOSH! it was a pleasure meeting you and Jolene; we had a great time!

i am going to be real curious of how tomorrow comes out for demos here in nevada and the republicans in south carolina. the republican race is wide open and please let it be someone other than romney or huckabee. even rudy would be better than either of those two and rudy would be horrible as president. if you liked bush and all he has done for the country, rudy is your boy. i am still waiting for rudy to just implode right on camera, maybe it will happen in florida; hell everything else weird happens there in politics. even better, rudy will leave his wife at a press conference and take up with kathleen harris.

the polls have hillary way ahead here in nevada but the polls had obama way ahead in new hampshire. we shall see.

sirius radio, serious politics, little dick hillary haters and more on maverick

the sirius radio show looks better now that i have more information about the people involved. the man i would be working for has a multi decade background in radio and the money people behind it are heavy duty plus the head of this channel seems to have a close relationship with the second in command at sirius itself. in addition, i came with high recommendations from the man in charge of the tv side (which i may end up doing a show there too). this is a new start up channel similar to the playboy channel on tv but for radio. it will be offered as part of an add on package for subscribers to sirius with the goal of being part of the general package in the long run.

i am supposed to meet the head honcho for lunch tomorrow or friday and hopefully cut demo tape at the beginning of next week. according to my sources, if the demo goes well we, kathleen and i, will be offered a contract on the spot. here's hoping!

for my fans in the atlanta market i will not be going back to the funny farm this year and don't know about next year. i may call the punch line there but if the radio show comes to be i probably will not do any road work except at my all time favorites. once again, we shall see. the speaking tour is, as of right now, on hold because we failed to get together this past month due to scheduling problems on the other side.

the candidates will soon be off to south carolina where the republicans will, once again, try to convince working people to vote against their own self interest. the only reason republicans have any chance of being elected dog catcher is the evangelical vote which, not thinking for itself, will blindly follow what they are told. the bush years may signal the end of the neo-con right wing of the republican party since their candidates are more to the middle this year. hell, rudy has a horrible family history which should make him not exceptable to the religious right but their hypocricy knows no bounds and they may vote for a thrice married candidate. (so much for FAMILY values...voting for a man who has public affairs while married and whose children HATE him)

and for all the people who are so enamored of ron paul, you ought to look into his racist writings in his news letters over the past couple of decades. while he has some good ideas, ending the war in iraq immediately, ending the so-called war on drugs (which is really a war on civil liberties), and admiting some fault for 9-11 because of our constant meddling in the middle east his views on race and immigration make him unfit for the presidency. he is a fringe candidate and should remain so.

i am amazed at the venom spewed forth against hillary clinton. there are some people, mostly men, who are deathly afraid of a woman being president. they attack her for being ambitious. well, duh. all politicians are ambitious. merely by wanting to be president of the united states of america labels anyone ambitious. i think most men who are against her must have really little dicks and are afraid she has a bigger one. i, for one, like hillary clinton and would not mind her at all being president. besides, it may give rush limbaugh a heart attack or at least up his pill addition to 100 or so per day. but then again, anyone who takes that man seriously has a real problem with critical thinking 101.

maverick had his stitches taken out today and we are having some blood work done to check his "counts" but i think he is fine. we will know for sure tomorrow afternoon.

as soon as we figure out how to do it, we are going to post some pictures here on the website or on the blog and many will feature mr. maverick.

conspiracy of the parts

all things happen for many reasons
but
the underlying reason is the ONE
and
everything moves to creative harmony
and when
some part of the everything
is working against the principles
of the ONE
the rest of the parts of everything
conspire
(so to speak)
to straighten that part's ass
up

johnny mac and poker

johnny mac has taken over the lead in the republican party race which is, i think, good news. why? well because the others in the repub race are just too scary to contemplate as president and at least with j.m. i feel we would have a man with at least a smidgen of common sense and some empathy for the common man which is more than i can say for the rest especially mike, mitt and rudy. (except to his hard core law and order fans, it is obvious that freddy just really doesn't want the job, all he is doing is upping his speaking fees)

i was in a poker game last night that was filled with drunk idiots and morons and they beat me to death. one good player walked with over a thousand dollars in profit in less than 3 hours while i, fool that i am, could not catch a card or when i did it was second best or, even worse, i would enter the hand with far and away the best, aces in one case and queens in another, and get beat on the river, a flush against the aces and k-7 off suit beat my queens on the river. mumble mumble, grumble grumble. but you know what? i just said, "nice hand, sir" and did not go on tilt in any way. took my beating like a man and will head back out this morning.

in the movie "ROUNDERS" the main character says, "most people can't handle the swings" when he is talking about no limit hold-em and to tell the truth it took quite a while before i could. no limit will test your attitude and your real belief in yourself. there will be times when it seems that the poker gods have deserted you and that you are doomed to a future of second bests. other times you will feel you are the best player on the planet. these two extremes come from the cards, first when they are running bad and second when they are running good. as i have said before, when they are bad minimize your losses and when good, maximize! but always play your best game every game, every hand.

dirty trick by democratic national committee, obama and maverick

rhonda and i went to see senator obama this afternoon at a community center here in las vegas. the event was a "private" one for the "precinct captains", of which i am one. the speech was part his regular stump speech and part local issues that effect us here in nevada. he did make a comment about the dirty trick that the democratic national committee pulled here this week; the d.n.c. had set up caucus meeting places on the strip so that the people who were working that saturday could participate without having to leave the strip area but this was before the cullinary union came out for senator obama when it had been assumed that they would be in the clinton camp and when the news hit of whom they endorsed the d.n.c. sued to shut the strip caucus areas! just dirty politics against one of their own. the party poopahs desperately want hillary as the candidate and are doing everything they can to keep the nomination from obama. just why i don't know other then they are so tied to the clinton political machine.

one of the things that struck me at the event today was the fevor of the crowd for obama. he has the ability to fire people up and it showed. also, the diversity of the audience was striking, the only thing that worries me is that there were not nearly enough hispanics there. hillary has courted the hispanic vote and has done so quite successfully here and that bloc may push her over the top in nevada; we shall see.

my dog, maverick, is now fine and the danger has passed. i cannot express just how much i love my dogs and the thought of possibly losing him before his time was eating at my heart. all is well that ends well.

for those of you who have been following the posts and the comments you will have noticed that a couple of three people have written in critizing senator obama. each one of these people i asked just whom are they for but none had the courage of conviction to say. reminds of the words to a song i heard today and with them i shall end this post.

what kind of man
won't take an honorable stand
what kind of cynic
won't offer an alternate plan?

republicans and reality

the republicans in the debate the other night (with the exception of ron paul, of course) all spoke of tax cuts and continuing the war in iraq. john mac went so far as to say that the "surge is working." i wonder just what universe they live in. not the one of reality obviously since their statements when compared to the facts are ludicrous not only on the surface but on all levels.

the surge has driven the iraqi fighters out of badghad but that is just moving pieces around the chess board. no real gains have been made as far as making iraq a" stable government that will be an ally of the united states in the middle east" to quote the great decider. they are not stable, they have made absolutely no progress on the so-called "benchmarks" and, in my opinion, regardless of what government eventually ends up there iraq will never be, for generations to come, an ally of the united states. we attacked them without provocation, destroyed their cities, poisoned their water, bombed their schools, killed hundreds of thousands of their citizens, overthrew their government and put their country into a seemingly endless series of conflicts, bombings and overall chaos. do the republican candidates really believe that the iraqi people will somehow learn to embrace america as a FRIEND? if the situation was reversed would the american people think of iraq as a friend? of course not. a child could figure this out but our want-to-be 'leaders' can't. we have but one option in iraq and that is to leave, issue an apology, give them some money, wish them the best of luck and come home. the republicans talk as if they are willing to leave american troops there forever. are you willing to have your country occupy another hostile country where we will lose troops every week, every month and every year forever? is that what you want? every day we stay we create more people to hate us and some of those people will take up arms against us. is that what you want? an endless low level war against civilians across and around the world.

and in one of our more stupid moves in iraq we are now arming sunni groups to fight al kayda. well al kayda has such a small number of people in iraq that they really aren't a problem and, incidently, it should have been noticed that overall, people in the middle east, generally don't like islamic extremism as practiced by al kayda. they are a small fringe element similiar to the kkk here in the united states. they are a bunch of criminals who pulled off one of history's all time lucky punches in 9-11. (and if the cia, faa. fbi and the military here had been paying attention at all 9-11 would have been twarted way before they even got on the planes)

one republican wrote me and told me how the bush tax cuts had indeed helped the economy and how he (bush) had paid down the national debt as he said he would. jesusfuckingchrist. let us look at the FACTS:

when the great decider came into power the national surplus was 127 BILLION dollars. last year's deficit was 163 BILLION dollars which is about half of it's lowwater mark of 3 years ago. ah, but here is the kicker, BUSH DOES NOT COUNT AS PART OF SPENDING THE MONEY SPENT ON THE WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANASTAN!!!!!!!! a little bookkeeping bullshit designed to hide from the american people just how far in debt we really are.

helped the economy? yeah, okay. ask the man on the street just how far ahead he has gotten under the rule of bush II. our economy is about ready to tank and we all know it. the stock market had the worst 5 first days of any year in history. millions of people will be thrown out of their homes THIS YEAR. job creation is flat and that is with bush's figures and i think when we find out what the figures really are we will see a decline in the job market. it has to be so because millions upon millions of people in some way or another were employed in the home construction business. from the carpenters to the loan officers and those jobs are gone. where are those people to go? macdonalds? burger king? starbucks? welfare?

and as far as lowering our taxes, bullshit again. we are paying a "tax" at the pump every time we fill up. as i have said a dozen times over the years here in the blog, when idiot george came into power gasoline was selling at 1.46 per gal. today, we are twice that and it was predicted yesterday that gas will hit 3.50 per gal by the spring. this is a direct result of bush's wars. the disruption of the supplies in the middle east allowed opec to raise prices and raise them some more. now, who benefited from this? why, the oil companies who have been recording RECORD PROFITS FOR THE LAST 5 YEARS!!! bush is an oilman. cheney is an oilman. hmmm. you cannot cut taxes and conduct an expensive war at the same time and hope to have your financial house in order. only ron paul on the republican side seems to understand this.

ask the housewife who buys the groceries if her bill has gone up more than her pay has. they don't count food and gasoline in the inflation index...cool huh? and they only count as unemployed those people who are applying for or recieving unemployment benefits and do not count those who have dropped out of the market or have had their benefits run out and do not count at all any independent workers who do not pay unemployment taxes so they cannot file for them. slick huh? once again, go ask people on the street just how well they think our economy is going. or listen to the republicans who will tell you everything is just hunky dory and if we cut the taxes on the rich it will be even better.

LAS VEGAS COAST TO COAST RADIO SHOW SATURDAY

i did a radio show this morning that will broadcast saturday night on a.m. radio in over 100 markets it. it is called, i think, LAS VEGAS COAST TO COAST or possibly just COAST TO COAST. it runs for three hours 10 to 1 est and, once again, i think, 9-12, 8-11 and 7-10 respectively heading west. check your local am listings. it revolves around vegas so i did one hour on playing poker and the second hour on show business stories. while not the best radio i have done, it was, all in all, pretty good. the host is a friend of mine, rob sherwood, and they are getting some good guests, ray ramano, carrot-top, joan rivers and the producer said they want to get ringo starr on with me. that would be just too cool.

i have a recording of both hours and if rhonda can figure out how to do it, we may put segments on the website. we shall see.

have been through a scary couple of days with maverick. his red blood count was way down and the white was up too far and he wouldn't eat so he kept getting sicker and sicker and weaker and weaker. we, the doctor, rhonda and i, all think it was a reaction to the antibiotics that he was orginally given. finally, yesterday he was off them and i cooked up some hamburger meat and he ate some but not a lot; this morning he ate some bisquits and we went back to the vets and the blood counts were both going in the right direction and this evening he ate a pound of meat so we, hopefully, look to be over the hump. losing a pet comes in only behind losing a child, mate or close family member in the sorrow factor and even though you have to be aware of that when getting a pet, when the time comes it still hurts beyond the ability of words to convey. the thought of losing maverick before his time scared me today.

tomorrow, i will address john mc cains claim that "the surge is working" statement in the republican debate tonight. on that subject, i once again thought ron paul came across the best. i did not watch it all since we went out for good old fashioned southern bar b que instead but johnny mac did alright, romney looks shiftier and shiftier, fred looks grumpy, rudy is creepy and paul is a voice crying out in the wilderness. just don't feel like disecting them tonight.

dreams, roger the dodger, injured dogs, granite state

now on my third day of chantix and am smoking less than a pack per day, which is not good i admit, but it is better than two packs per day or a pack and a half, which is what i was putting away. they say that some people have vivid and disturbing dreams with this stuff, but what i am getting is just the vivid part. last night, in the dream, i was performing in canada and unlv basketball was showing on tv and carol montgomery (a great comic and friend of mine) showed up for the show. the gangster with the gun was subdued and thrown out of the club and had to leave town on the next train. all the while, unlv was blowing out north carolina. (that is when i knew it was a dream) lol.

roger clements sounded and looked like a big bullying liar on 60 minutes. the guy is almost done in his early thirties and then, all of sudden, he regains his youth, gets bigger and stronger and goes on to win multiple cy young awards pitching much better than he did in his twenties and early thirties. on tv, his eyes shifted, he gulped between sentences and he drank more water than a thirsty camel after two months in the saraha. hey, roger, go sit over there with that other cheater barry bonds. mother fucker. at least andy pettite had the balls to come out and say what he did. roger's excuse that he thought it was vitimins just doesn't make sense. and his tape recording of the trainer was so lame and even then roger never said, "why did you lie about me?" never once. mother fucker.

big surprise in the granite state yesterday! interesting to listen to edwards, huckabee, rudy, etc. put their spin on their disappointing showings. huckabee tried to sound like he won. amazing.

looks like the savior of the republican party, fred (what am i doing here?) thompson, may be gone soon and rudy is running the oddest of all campaigns.

michigan is the next big test for all, not counting the nevada caucus, which is going to go to hillary because of the culinary union's support here. while they haven't officially come out for her, they are going to, and that will move enough supporters to her side that she will win handily.

maverick, the great dane, was severly injured on sunday and had an artery sliced open so we had to stitch him up and now he is recuperating here in the house. the cut is on his leg so he cannot run around or play with annie d. dog and he is quite unhappy about all of this. he keeps giving me "the look" as if to say, "just what in the hell is wrong with you? how come i am not outside with my girlfriend?" also, i have to take him out to the back but first i have to lock annie up and then come back and get him and then make sure he doesn't run so i have spent much time out in the cold watching my dog take innumerous pisses and giagantic shits. today we go back to vets to check how it is all doing.... this injury came about because two kids were walking their big dogs by the house and they broke away and charged the fence. maverick was jumping up and down and apparently cut his foot on the top of the wrought iron gate. people should not be allowed to have big dogs that they cannot control. you must be able to stop your dog with your voice because a dog is much, much stronger than a human pound for pound. these were 10-12 year old kids walking 80 pound dogs and they had no chance in a physical contest. i couldn't control maverick physically, he weighs as much as i and is 3 times as strong but "no" means "no" to him and he obeys right fucking now. it just takes training. oh well.

blah, blah, blah.

I WANT YOU TO BE A REPORTER FOR SIRIUS RADIO SHOW!

had more conversations this morning about the sirius radio gig and so far so good. what they are looking for is POLITICS or POLITICS INVOLVING SOME KIND OF SEXUAL CONTEXT. so, my brothers and sisters, i would like your help. if, in your town, there is some kind of political scandal involving sex write me and let me know the details. if i use it on the air, i will give you credit on the air. (that is if you want it). be a scout for me. every town has their little sexual scandals and many times it involves elected officials. let's get 'em!!!!

fox news censors ron paul

i see where ron paul was denied by fox news from being in the next republican tv debate. FAIR AND BALANCED. my ass. they just don't want r.p.'s message to be heard by the people because it might actually make sense to them. end the so-called war on drugs. end the war in iraq. admit we have made mistakes in the middle east. (and heaven knows, america the great never ever makes mistakes..everything we do is peaceful) so fox news in keeping with its facist owner's policy censors the voice of dissent.

huckabee in the last days of the iowa campaign announced that he would not air an attack commercial on romney but then, this little hypocrite invited all the press to view the tv spot thus insuring that it would get air time. christian. my ass.

there is a possibility that i am going to get a radio show on sirius satellite radio. the show will be on SEX AND POLITICS and i would be co-hosting with kathleen dunbar. i know her and we would be great together on the air. it is just in the talking stage but one of the honchos is a friend and fan so there is a shot here. we shall see. could change a lot of things.

today's paper said that obama was leading in new hampshire by a good margin. i think his message of unity is getting through to people. it is his main asset; the ability to draw people together.

what ever happened to the great savior of the republican party, fred, i don't really want to be here, thompson? rudy is down in florida working on voting machines i guess. and, of course, mentioning 9-11 as often as possible. hell, he should, 9-11 made rudy rich. rudy is as big a sleezeball as bush and that is saying something. he is a self-promoting, hypocritical, war monger. probably get elected.

gotta go. poker calls.

george will on mike huckabee

i do not have the style, vocabulary nor experience of george will so let me quote a paragraph from a editorial of his in the las vegas paper today:

"huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the republican 'establishment.' a creature already negliglible by 1964, when it failed to stop barry goldwater's nomination. the establishment's voice, the new york herald tribune, expired in 1966. huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his iowas success "and it's not a human one. it's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." god so loves huckabee's politics that he worked a midwest miracle on his behalf? SHOULD SOMEONE SO DELUSIONAL CONTROL NUCLEAR WEAPONS?" (caps mine)

(and i am not sure that Jesus the Christ was a "little boy" at the time of the sermon on the mount.)

george will then goes on to disect john edwards as well lumping both of these men under the label of populists.

there have been quite a few comments on these political posts of mine and i would suggest you read them if you, like me, are political in nature. for those of you who are not political, become so; it is our country here we are talking about and, brothers and sisters, we are at one of those crossroads of history where futures are determined and disasters are either avoided or experienced.

let's meet in the middle

i am pleased by the results in iowa on several levels; obama and edwards were at the top of the democratic side and huckabee (more on him later) overcame the monied campaign of mitt the hair man. also, the turnout was very high for a caucus, especially on the democratic side. if nothing else the disaster of the bush years has energized people from all sides of the political spectrum to seek some kind of release from 8 years of war, fear, corporate greed, (dare i say the word?) recession, doubling of gas prices, (american motorists paid 400 billion dollars for gasoline last year, in 2002 we paid 200 billion) and endless warnings that we should be afraid, very, very afraid of a man who lives in a cave on the other side of the world and who has, at most, maybe 5,000 followers. i think and hope we, as a people, are starting to turn inward and look at our own problems, which are many. obama is rather "right" than most democrats and huckabee is rather "left" than most republicans. i take this as a good sign. the only place we can meet, folks, is in the middle. as i have said before, like it or not, we are all in this together and to quote one of the old men of our country, ben franklin, we shall all stick together or we shall all hang seperately.

i cannot pick a football bowl game for shit; i had vt and the over. lol

hocus pocus bogus caucus

we are getting down to the nitty gritty of the 08 campaign for president and we start by having the caucuses in iowa and nevada with a primary in n.h. the caucus idea is just plain anti-democratic and an idea that is so outdated that it is a genuine detriment to a fair election.

the way a caucus works is that each candidate must get people to go to a "place" at ELEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING ON A WORK DAY and stand around holding signs. the candidate that gets the most people to come stand around and hold a sign wins. well, not really, because the candidates who do not get enough people to stand around to make the cut (top three, i believe) can then have their people standing around holding signs to move over to one of the front runners and then stand around with them and hold their signs so, theoretically, the third place finisher could then get enough standingaroundersholdingsigns to move to his/her group and move up to second or first. hocus pocus.

the problems with this are so obvious that it seems inconceivable that this system is still in place. most of our voters WORK FOR A LIVING. they can't be there on a work day and stay there for the majority of the day. what happens then is that the caucuses are filled with out-of-work people, retirees, students, homeless, jobless and the workers for the various candidates they get vans and drive people to these things picking up as many people as possible and herding them to their standing place. consequently, we get no real idea of how the people in the caucus states really feel about these candidates but instead we reward the candidates who have the most success in herding people (but not necessarily voters--the demos here in nevada will register you at the caucus.) we end up with the candidates who have the best field people and that, of course, is the candidate who has the backing of the PARTY itself. the democratic party and the republican party both have organizations in place in each state. those organizations already have a list of people they can count on to blindly follow whatever they are told.

govenment of the people, by the people and for the people as lincoln so beautifully phrased it is a thing of the past. we have a govenment of the parties, by the parties and for the largest contributers.

obviously, the primary states at least give a much better idea of the people's will than the caucus states do. in the primary states, are you ready?, people VOTE. the voting goes on all day so many more people can participate.

speaking of which, why do we have voting for something as important as the president of the united states only on a tuesday? why not have it over a week-end so that literally everyone can find the opportunity to vote? by having it only on one day and that day in the middle of the week we effectively eliminate millions from voting.

oh well, i can't change it by myself and no one else seems interested.

on to more:

a couple of people have posted reasons why obama should not be my choice. you can read their posts and my answers on this blog if you want. one thing i would like to point out is that i said to each of them, "since you are so against barack obama, just whom are you for?" they did not answer that. makes me suspicious. they tell me that he would not be a good choice and that i shouldn't be recommending him but they are not willing to put their candidate up for consideration. do they have one? are they republicans who are just out there demeaning any democrat? are they just people who will never find a candidate that meets their standards? are they just arguing for the sake of argument? i don't fucking know, they won't answer. this little paragraph should draw them out though. we shall see.

this is not to say that i can't be wrong. i have been wrong before. i will be wrong again. maybe not this time, though. one of these people say that barrack obama will be just another war monger. i don't believe that and god, i hope i am not wrong.

you can write me and tell me i am an idiot and i will keep that post up. the only post i have ever erased was one that attacked my wife. she is not fair game here. i am, she is not.

oh well, i do have one new year's resolution that i will share with you. THIS IS THE YEAR I QUIT SMOKING. there ya go.

happy new year to all of you and may 08 be great for you!

rock and roll

ron