a teaser

so, on the way home, i am sitting next to a gentleman who is reading CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR and we get to talking about the book, but not to any great depth.

when i get home, i realize that i haven't read the last two chapters of the book. i read them. tonight, i read them. man oh man.

next, i am going to go see the movie this week and see how close to the book it is.

the book is akin to one of my "stories" in as that, it seems to be just this great story that is going to have a happy ending, so to speak, but, wait! unintented consequences rears its ugly head.

i don't want to go into it tonight without having seen the movie.

sunday afternoon in atlantic city

atlantic city
sunday, the last day


god, i will be glad to get out of this town. that is what i think everytime i am here; seven days is about 3 days too long for atlantic city.

in most places when you see someone talking apparently to themselves you know that, in fact, he/she is talking on a cell phone; here in atlantic city, they are really talking to themselves. a comic once said, "every day is halloween in atlantic city!" in vegas we have high priced call girls walking through the casinos; in ac it is crack addicts wandering in.

once we had a condo here that was several blocks from the trop. you either went in a group or you took a cab, right off the boardwalk atlantic city offers up slums for your pleasure. when the casinos came to ac they promised (snicker snicker) that affluence would come to all the residents of the town. yeah, right. it didn't. it is still a dirty and dangerous place except for the boardwalk.

will say this though, there are a couple of really great places to eat that are inexpensive and amazingly good. TONY'S BALTIMORE GRILL on iowa streeet serves up great pasta and meatballs and makes a fabulous thin crust pizza. THE WHITE HOUSE on mississippi and artic has the absolute best cheese steak sandwich i have ever eaten. both cater to locals and have a great atmosphere. my complaints about this city do not extend to the working folks here, they are a cool yet cynical bunch.

over the years i have come to like new jersey, a state that gets a bad rap thanks to a couple of horrible towns (you know of which i speak) where crime and murder seems to be a way of life. the rest of the state is pretty cool and the shore is just fucking great. i have met some wonderful, aware and fun people in new jersey and have had some good times with them. my bitches about ac do not reflect on the rest of the state.

glen jensen, tim walkoe and i have just torn this room apart! it has been one great show after another, maybe the best show i have been on here. if you ever get a chance to see tim, do so. one night we had a guest set by jay black, a young man who has been working the college circuit and now wants to expand to clubs. this kid is fucking great! he is the real deal. wonderful writer and puts together a set as well as anyone i have seen. if he comes to a club near you, go see him, you won't be sorry.

in vegas, it was reported that 88% of the students were failing math. they will grow up and get only minimum wage jobs and then spend their paychecks at the slot machines. it is somehow fitting that the students in vegas are math illiterate since the casinos are successful thanks to people's inability to figure odds and understand the value of the edge. if people understood math they would never put a penny in a slot, they would never play roulette, they would never play blackjack, they would never spin that wheel. but they don't understand and the casinos build palaces on quarter slots profits.

looks like we may have a final four of all number one seeds. it will be, i think, the first time that has happened. i, like many, are pulling for davidson today against kansas only because they are such an underdog. memphis better be careful with texas which has one of the best guards in the country and ncaa's are won at the guard position. also, memphis can't shoot free throws and in a close game that could come back and bite them.

what a surprise; it is getting worse in iraq by the day. hey, johnny mac how is the surge looking now? of course, the worsening situation in iraq will be used to justify keeping the american troop level high and not bringing our boys and girls home. there is no possible 'VICTORY" in iraq. none. matter of fact, VICTORY has never been defined. just fuck me. and fuck you. and, most of all, fuck us.

oh well, another missive comes to an end and am off to watch basketball.

ron

repeating history. and it ain't pretty.

when they are not drawing out on me, i compensate by playing bad. been a horrible week at the tables. may not play until i get back home.

there are 297 days left in the reign of bush, the stupid. my only worry is that if certain polls are correct, the supporters of senator clinton will not support senator obama if he gets the nomination and the same goes for his supporters. i cannot say strongly enough just how stupid that position is. to think a democrat would not support our candidate against john, bush light, mc cain is beyond me. you fucks better get out there and vote democratic and get over yourselves; we cannot afford another four years of republican rule. for real. we cannot afford it. we are teetering on the very brink of disaster and our base is arguing with itself. my fucking god!

the "surge" is not working. violence has gone back up. shiites are fighting sunnis, sunnis are fighting shiites and both are killing americans. the government of iraq is in name only, they hide in "heavily fortified green zone" and will not come out. that is not a government, that is a farce.

i keep bringing this up. when george, the stupid, came into power gasoline was $1.46 per gal.

we still do not know who was at cheney's "energy conference" but we sure know what they talked about....just how far up the american consumer's ass could they shove their oil wells.

and you want to vote for j. mc cain? the guy who will continue the course we are on. and we are doing so well, don't cha know?

what does it take for people to come to their senses?

we have been in afghanastan since 2001, going on 7 YEARS. what have we accomplished there? nothing. the taliban is getting stronger every year. poppy crops are records every year. heroin is supporting the taliban thanks to the american market. the death toll keeps going up. stay the course. we have not found obl and you know why? WE ARE NOT LOOKING FOR HIM! if they were to find him or kill him then we would have to bring the troops home and we can't have that.

the babylonians invaded afghanastan
the persians invaded afghanastan
the greeks invaded afghanastan
the monguls invaded afghanastan
the british invaded afghanastan
the russians invaded afghanastan

THEY ALL LOST. THEY ALL LEFT WITH THEIR TAILS BETWEEN THEIR LEGS.

never in the history of the world has any power been able to subdue the afghans. not once.

babylon, persia, greece, mongolia, china, britian, france, spain, rome, carthage, portugal, russia and germany all had great empires. they all lost their empire by getting involved in foriegn wars while they neglected the needs of the people back home. they all lost and some lost horribly. they broke their treasuries, they decimated their armies, they ruined their economies and destroyed their countries. kings, emperors, generals, caesars, dictators, presidents and prime ministers all thought that they would be the one who would take over the world and their regime would last forever. they were all wrong.

and you want to vote for john mc cain who will continue the empire building of the neo-cons?

those that are unaware of history are bound to repeat it.

river blues

back when there were a couple of people writing comments critizing me for one thing or another, one said that all i do is rant about obama or brag about winning at poker. well, (as ronald reagan would say) i did do more than that and i did talk about losses as well; sorry that i win more than i lose and truth be told, it is much more fun to talk about wins than losses. however, today we will talk about some losing hands....

as you regular readers of this continuing exercise in mental masterbation know, i have always done well here in atlantic city because the players are soooo bad. the flip side of that coin is that bad players can put bad beats on you.

yesterday, very first hand i sit down into the big blind for two dollars. call, call, call, raise to 12 dollars, call and then back to me; i check my hole cards and find a pair of nines. i know that the three 2 dollar callers are going to call because that is what these people do and i do have a medium pair, i call and sure enough the three call. now there is 6 x 12 = 72 dollars in pot. flop comes 6h, Qh and Qd. i check. it goes check, check, check, raiser bets 10 dollars, fold and then back to me. i figure he has something else other than a queen or he has ace queen but he could have ak and just taking a stab at the pot so i call and one other person calls who is between us. i was not real happy with that call because it could represent a queen. but anyway. now there is 102 dollars in the pot. the next card is the magic 9 giving me a full house. i check, next guy checks and then the orginal raiser bets 25 dollars. i raise to 100 dollars and the other guy folds so we are back to the raiser who now goes all in. i can't get my money in fast enough. i now think that he has ace queen and unless a queen or an ace or a six comes i am golden, right? wrong. he had FOUR QUEENS.

my question is why in the world did he bet anything at all on the flop? granted he won a big pot but that ten dollar bet could have run out everyone when he has the UNBEATABLE hand. why do that? let people catch up. i mean, i caught up and the hand would have come down the same way anyway but it was still a stupid play on his part, let someone get the flush, let someone get another full house. hell, let some one get runner runner for a straight don't run off all your action.

so, there i am, one hand and down two hundred dollars. i get 150 of it back by the end of the day so i am only down 50 dollars. hell, i can live with that.

today, i am card dead for most of the time and have about 180 in front of me when this hand happens. i am in first position with aces so i raise to 18 dollars and the guy next to me raises to 40 dollars and everyone folds back to me. i put him all in and after thinking for quite a while he makes the call with kings. catches a king on the fucking river so now i am down 250 dollars.

i rebuy for 150. an hour goes by and i pick up a pair of queens. raise to 20 dollars and am called by one guy. the flop comes ace, ace, queen. i have flopped a dangerous full house. i bet 50 dollars and he calls. turn is a six. i check and he goes all in and i call. he has ak so i am way ahead. A FUCKING SIX COMES ON THE RIVER AND NOW WE ARE DOWN 400 DOLLARS!

at this point, i took a break and here i am in my room licking my wounds and writing this.

i called rhonda. you know what my wife said? "hell, ronnie, take a break, eat some lunch and then go back and take those bastards' eyes out for them." that's a wife!

so, that is all for now. have a good day. don't hurt anybody. get high. fuck a stranger.

sweden is nice.

man oh man, my opinion of all three of them is going way down.

hilary has been claiming that she was "a critic of nafta" from the beginning. wrong! according to just released white house papers she was a strong and willing advocate for it. she gave speeches lauding it, she twisted arms to get it passed. just this past week she claimed to have been "under sniper fire flying into bosnia." wrong! didn't happen. if she has such great plans for america how come she has to resort to lies?

obama claims that he never heard rev. wright make those kinds of statements yet at the same time telling us that he was there whenever he was in town. now, from the tone of rev. wrights sermon that is being bandied about, i have to conclude that this was not just a passing fancy but something that he was quite adament about. you cannot be that harsh and only say it one time. come on now, senator. as i said in previous post, obama's speech on race relations was great but i stand by my comment that if he heard wright make anti-white and/or anti-american statements and did not stand up and disagree then he was, by his silence, condoning them. and if he was there all of the time as he claims, he had to hear it!

mc cain says he doesn't know much about financial affairs but he is willing to continue bush's economic policies. surely all of you know that john mac has flip flopped on several major isssues including the bush tax cuts. recently, on his trip to the middle east, mc cain kept claiming that iran was supporting al qaida in iraq. he had to be told by lierbermann that iran, being shiite would never support al qaida because they are sunni. also, mc cain does not seem to know that while iraq is an arab country, iran is not. iran is persian. persians are not all that entralled with the arabs and they for sure do not trust sunni arabs. but, hey, mc cain knows more than bush but then again so does my dog.

now, the acrimony between obama and clinton supporters is looking as if the supporters of one will not support the other if nominated. fucking great! morons. morons. morons. shame on all of you who feel that way.

maybe rhonda and i will sell the house, the cars, all the valuables, pack up the dogs and move to canada. or sweden. or new zealand. it is looking as if we are truly fucked here in america. i wonder if an american cpa can get work in europe. i know i can.

just as long as we can take the dogs.

oh well, it is still cold in atlantic city. wish rhonda was here to keep me warm.

sundowner towns

i am a 65 year old white man who grew up in the south. before i was 20 i had been in florida, alabama, mississippi, texas, louisiana, arkansas, oklahoma and georgia. i saw "colored" water fountains and swimming pools. i was there when black people could not enter certain stores nor eat at restuarants where white folk ate. i rode the bus and sat in the front and the black people had to sit in the back. i saw the shacks that a huge percentage of the black population of the delta states lived in, plywood and tarpaper with no glass in the windows and no door in the frame. i saw many a town in every one of those states that had a billboard outside of town that showed the sunset in very pretty colors and the words, "this is a sundowner town." what that meant was that any black person caught on the streets after the sun went down would be hanged. i saw all that and more.

i was at little rock on the day those 9 little black girls were escorted by national guard troops into central high school. i came over from subiaco monestary with 3 other students to protest for the girls. we were threaten with death for espousing the the idea of all being equal under God. that was 1957.

the sundowner towns i saw up until the early to maybe mid 60's all through the south. the klu klux klan was still active and visible in the south into the sixties as well.

as a white person who believed then and believes now in racial equality i was pissed. i was pissed for the black person. i cannot imagine how pissed i would have been had i been black.

can you imagine seeing a friend of yours or a relative of yours or even your son be beaten and then hanged just because he was a certain color? can you imagine how you would feel if you were a black man or black woman in the south in the 20th century and you had to step off the sidewalk if a white person was coming towards you and if you didn't step off you were beaten?

ANY BLACK PERSON 55 OR OLDER WHO LIVED IN THE SOUTH HAS SEEN AND FELT ALL OF THE ABOVE.

i can understand rev. wright's anger.

however, one of the foundations of christianity is forgiveness. turning the other cheek. loving your enemies. if rev. wright is going to call himself "christian" then he must learn to forgive the white people for being such assholes. and he must teach his congregation the same. to do otherwise, to still bear ill will towards a whole race of people for the sins of some then, in my opinion, that is not christian.

to forgive, as dr. martin luther king, jr. did, to answer anger and hate and violence with love and prayer and forgiveness is christianity in not only word but in practice.

white people must understand just how fucking bad it was and is, right here in our country in the south from the end of the civil war to, let us say, the late 1960's, for any black living there. they really did mutilate and hang black people in our country in the 20th fucking century! if you can understand that, you can understand the anger that could fester and grow in the soul. if you can't, you have no empathy. you do not know how to put yourself in the other person't position. to see it from his point of view.

anger, though, will not solve anything. hatred ain't going to do any of us any good. none of us benefit from anger.

we are all in this together, we cannot hate each other. we have to learn to get along. what kind of fucking idiots are we anyway?

i don't like the way, overall, that senator obama has handled this. i will say, though, that the white press is using a double standard in this case. the republicans cuddle up to pat robinson and, before his death, jerry falwell. both of those men said the united states DESERVED 9-11 because we allowed homosexuality in our country! why haven't the same voices called out to the republicans to publically renounce pat robinson?

if he heard racist and anger and unforgiveness from rev. wright and did not speak up then senator obama, did, in a way, condone them. or was afraid to stand up for principle. i think he has some more explaining to do.

it was a good speech. i want to hear some more.


i will write more on this some other time. am in atlantic city, it is cold. it is perfect in vegas. 79

i was in the poconos this past weekend. that is about all i can say on it.

e.j. dionne and me

in case this editorail did not run in your newspaper today, let me give you some excerpts from e. j. dionne's piece.

"never do i want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant captalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

"the wall street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. they are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. the have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of thes oh-so-wise captains of the universe has any idea of what kinds of devalued securities sit in anothers's portfolio.

"so they have stopped investing. the biggest, most respected investment companies threaten to come crashing down. you can't have that. it's just fine to make it harder for the average joe to file for bankruptcy, as did that wretched bankruptcy bill passed by congress in 2005 at the request of the credit card industry. but the big guys are "too big to fail" because they could bring us all down with them.

"enter the federal government, the institution to which the wealthy are not supposed to pay capital gains or inheritance taxes. good god, you don't expect those people to trade in their bmw's for saturns, do you?

"in a deal the new york times described as "shocking", j.p. morgan chase agreed over the weekend to pay $2 a share to buy all of bear stearns, one of the brand names of finance capitalism. the federal reserve approved a 30$ billion, that's with a B, line of credit to make that deal work.


the article goes on, google it up.

one more quote from the article and it is a quote from john kenneth galbraith talking about the era leading up to the great depression. (you know, when the capitalists all went belly up and the big old bad government had to bail their and our asses out) nasty old government, why can't they just leave us alone?

"the threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great---a little understood thing."

once again, i knew about the coming bear stearns disaster over a year ago. but all these oh-so-wise people on wall street didn't. go figure.

i knew that the housing market was going to crash and wrote about over two years ago but all these oh-so-wise capitalists didn't.

i guess the rich can have the government bail their ass out but fuck the little guy huh?

and for the people who wrote me and said that if we increase taxes on the corporations they will just pass it on to the people......we gave the oil companies, under bush and the republicans, tax breaks and so did the price of gas go down? hmmm. exxon/mobile is making 73,000 per minute in PROFITS and you think we shouldn't tax that? give me a break. get a grip on reality. when clinton RAISED taxes on the rich and the oil companies, gas stayed down and we ended up with peace and prosperity and a SURPLUS. duh. never let facts get in the way of republican thinking. government bad. capitalist good. deregulate. that is the answer. right. like here in nevada where our republican governor and republican congress cut funding for medical inspectors leaving the doctors and clinics to "police" their own. great idea. tell it to the people with aids and hepatitis c.

it is not a level playing field out there. if you are born with an inheritance of say, 800 million dollars, you have such an incredible head start over me who was born with an inheritance of a baseball bat, a world war two pistol and some photos from years gone by that i start so far behind your starting line as to be in another universe. put another way, by never lifting a finger but letting your money draw interest at say, an average of 8% per year, you make 64 MILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR WITHOUT GETTING OUT OF BED! but hey, let us not tax that inheritance, why, what would the poor little rich guy do? level playing field my ass.

my first wife, rusty, (God rest her soul) had 4 children when i married her. she was 18 years older than i and so, of course, we had another child. (i was exceptionally stupid at the time but i had been in prison and the army and rusty fucked me day and night .....) we were so poor that electricity and water would periodically be cut off. we went a year without a phone. when the water was cut off, we, the kids and i, would hop a fence into a cemetary and have a bucket birgade back to the house. when the electric power went off we cooked on the bar b quer. we collected newspapers and sold them. i worked three jobs and rusty worked two. we never got a cent from the government and by our third year of marriage we had turned the corner, bought a new house, drove new cars and put our financial house back in order. how, by hard work and some luck. but i never made 64 million dollars per year. level playing field my ass. just another poor white boy trying to make it in america but i knew that bear stearns was going down. how come they didn't? i didn't go to harvard. didn't get past the 10th grade. but i knew the housing market was going to collapse. how come they didn't?

that paragraph was for those of you who think i live in a fairy tale land. yeah right. i overcame no education and a prison record to become a vice president of sales of two of the largest publishing companies in the world. i know what it means to work hard. to work long hours. to scrape by. to work my way up the ladder. i am still a liberal. and fucking proud of it.

i have been beaten, shot, stabbed, stomped into pulp and still think that people at heart are basically good.

i am a christian, though i go to no church and think that almost all preachers and priests have it all wrong. i believe that to do unto others as you would have them do unto you is the absolute best advice anyone could recieve.

i have a million flaws but not caring what happens to my country is not one of them.

i have to go now. dogs need to be fed. poker needs to be played. a camera needs to be bought.
have a good day, get high, have a good time, don't hurt anybody, see ya later.

you think i ranted before?

there are times when i think that the number of people in this country who actually give a shit about what is going on is miniscule to say the least. politicians don't seem to care and why should they? they are the ones, who, for the most part, got us into this mess and they won't be the ones who suffer when the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, they have life long pensions and life long health care. (even the ones who left in disgrace and the ones convicted of crimes...they still get their pensions and health care...is that a deal or what?) most of the american public doesn't care because they are too busy trying to stay afloat and/or keeping up with the proverbial jones family to actually know what is going on. by the time the american public becomes aware the disaster is no longer pending, it is descending on their unknowing little heads. then they cry, "why didn't someone tell us?"

the ones who do give a shit become discouraged because a. no-one else does and b. what can a private citizen do about it? we can be voices in the wilderness writing our little blogs that are only read by the few, saying our little speeches that are only heard by our own ears, writing our little letters to the politicians who then immediately discard them or turn them over to the fbi saying this person is dangerous, he cares. then the fbi comes by and quotes george saying that you are either with us or against us and if you are against us, you must be a terrorist so off to gitmo you go. how dare you question the powers that be? (alright, that may be extreme but you know what i mean, don't you?)

people come to my blog wanting comedy and i give them grief and facts and news stories. hell, if they wanted to know things they would have read the paper. what about the jokes, ron? well, the jokes are in washington and they are on us. but nobody cares.

bush told us that he would eliminate the deficit by the end of his term. yeah right. the deficit will increase next year by up to 366 BILLION dollars according to the united states senate. since they are always wrong it probably will increase by over 400 BILLION dollars and that does NOT COUNT THE COST OF THE IRAQI OCCUPATION AND THE OCCUPATION OF AFGHANASTAN. (bookkeeping brought to you by george and the neo-cons..open government my fucking ass)

but here is the real stinger for today: the national debt which now stands at 9 TRILLION DOLLARS and going up by the second and will grow, at present rate, to over 11 TRILLION dollars in the next five years and almost half of that debt is owed to CHINA, JAPAN AND THE OPEC COUNTRIES. they own us, bubba. you are working for the chinese and the arabs. you, bubba. you, bubba sue.

not only that we borrowed all that money and did we spend it here? oh, fuck no. we spent it on foriegn wars. foriegn aid. on an already bloated military (we spend more on war than the next ten nations do COMBINED) . we don't spend it on building schools in america but schools in iraq, which we blew up the first time and they are going to blow them up next. but that's alright, we borrow some more money from the saudis and the chinese and build another one plus, of course, buy the weapon to blow up the people who blew up the school that we built after we blew it up the first time. which, of course, is going to piss the relatives of that guy off so they will blow up....

but nobody cares. so why should i? why should i write about the housing crunch a year and half before it happened? why should i write about no wmd's in iraq and no connection to al qaida when fox news tells us that there were weapons of mass destruction right there in plain site, why here is a picture of a building that has weapons in it. take our word. those are weapons in there. well, no they weren't; they were tractors......

if we don't get our financial house in order, we have 5 to ten years before we face FISCAL RUIN. you know who said that? david m. walker , ex comptroller general of the united states. but, hey, what does he know? he's not even running for office.

here is what we need to do and not a politician in the country has the balls to say it much less do it.

a. immediately withdraw from iraq and afghanastan.
b. cut our military spending in half. bring our troops home from the 112 countries that we have them in. how much would that save?
c. raise taxes on corporations
d. raise taxes on the rich
e. raise taxes on the rest of us.
f. cut off most foriegn aid.
g. drop the war on drugs and legalize almost all drugs and tax them as well. use treatment and not imprisonment for drug addicts.
h. drop the sham about ethonol and stop those huge subsidies to corn farmers (which are mostly huge corporations anyway)
i. spend the money in america creating jobs by building a national electric rail system and subsidize the fares so that anyone can afford to ride it.
j. build electrical generating systems using wave power.
k. start immediately on desalination plants on the pacific and gulf coasts thereby insuring water for our cities and our farms and eliminating the possibilities of disasterous droughts such as the one now going on in the southeast of the united states and the west and the one that hit us in the 30's.
l. have job programs instead of welfare programs.
m. make education a bigger priority than warmongering. pay teachers on a scale with the private sector.
n. make tax breaks for companies that build factories in the usa. drop tax breaks for companies that have factories in third world countries.
o. secure our borders. use american troops to do that, not fight in some shithole country on the other side of the world. if we quit meddling in others affairs they have no incentive to meddle in ours.
p. once those borders are secure, offer a way for the illegals to become citizens thereby increasing our tax base. punish business that then hire illegals. we are a nation of immigrants, let us always remember that. we have room for legal millions so make our immigration policy more intelligent and give preference to those from this hemisphere. why? well, they are our neighbors and hell, half of us speak spanish anyway.
q. if we have to subsidize american manufacturers to help them compete...DO SO!
r. make a national effort, similar to the space effort of jfk, to build autos that can run on renewalable energy be it hydrogen or electric or whatfuckingever.
s. allow the oil companies to drill off shore on all coasts to sustain us until r. has been done.

desperate times call for desperate measures.




IF WE ARE GOING TO GO INTO DEBT LET US SPEND THAT MONEY ON AMERICANS IN AMERICA. WHY GO INTO DEBT TO SEND MONEY TO OTHER COUNTRIES? DOES THAT MAKE SENSE TO YOU?

oh well, none of this is going to be done. it will be business as usual. the rich will get richer and the rest of us will get fucked and the war will drag on and on and on and on and thousands more will die and our enemies will multiply and we are going to go down the fucking tubes. if you don't think this can happen to us, ask the romans. ask the british. ask the greeks. ask the persians. ask the monguls. ask the french. ask the babylonians. all those empires failed because they overextended themselves fighting foriegn wars. read a fucking history book. you better read one, your kids aren't. or can't.

today is saint patrick's day.

someone told me the difference between an irishman and an american is that when the american looks up at the mansion on the hill with the wall around it and the limos and helicopters coming and going and private security guards, he thinks, "wow, if i work hard maybe some day i can have a place like that." when the irishman looks at the same view he says, "one day we are going to get you, motherfucker." i knew i always liked the irish.

a 27 yr. old, an air-conditioning repairman, two walk-ons and a kid named wink

if you like college basketball you will probably like this story, that is unless you are a fan of one of the other teams in the mountain west.

last year unlv went to the sweet 16 and off of that team we lost 4 starters and our 6th man so, coming into this season we were in a rebuilding mode. our roster including a 6'11 kid who was a transfer, a 7'0'' kid from africa and a 6'-10 transfer from houston, which meant we were big up front, we then had two 6-8 kids at forward from last year, a great shooting guard, a 6-6 walk on kid that we didn't have a position for, a big point guard and a great little waterbug-type back up for either of those positions. even though we were young, it looked as if we were deep and big.

but then:

we lost the 7 footer before the season because there were questions about some of his schooling in africa and he is sitting the season and taking classes and will be here next year.

the 6-11 kid was kicked off the team after the very first game. he had a poor attitude and was a distraction in the locker room.

the 6-10 transfer left of his own accord but he was skating on the edge of being kicked off because of his attitude. (he left the univ. of houston because he felt like he wasn't appreciated)

the back up point/shooting guard managed to skip classes, get drunk and roll a car and get kicked off.

so:

now we are not big at all and our two 6-8 kids were getting creamed in the middle but the 6-6 walk on came to the rescue and started playing center going up against 7 footers and other big monsters every night.

we ended up only have ten guys on the roster and we did not play at all one of them, now it is 9 and two those are just not ready for big time college ball and now we were down to 7. we have no height, no presence in the middle, no bench and we only 7 deep.

yesterday, a 27 year old, a airconditioning repairman, two walk ons and a kid named "wink" won the mountain west tournament by beating 23rd ranked byu by 16 points after being down double digets in the first half!

we finished 26-7 and are going to the ncaa's. lon kruger did as good a coaching job as i have ever seen and should be national coach of the year; he was already honored as mountain west coach of the year.

they were great fun to watch, they won by playing a maniac form of defense and scoring off turn overs. everybody on the team can shoot 3-pointers and when we get hot we score in bunches while shutting bigger and stronger and deeper teams out. they won by refusing to lose on their home court and they always won the game they had to win. they could fall behind big and not lose their composure. they were the little team that could.

my season tickets were worth every penny. go rebels.

who is that stern looking bear?

here we go again, bear stearns almost went belly up yesterday and was only bailed out at the very last moment by the fed and jpmorgan chase. bs lost half its value in minutes in what can only be called a "bank run", which is when people rush to get THEIR money out of a bank because the bank doesn't have enough money to pay everyone that they owe.

what do i mean by "again"? well, i wrote about this a year and a half ago. once again the question is: if a drug addled, poker playing comic in las vegas knew about the coming disaster at bear stearns, then why didn't the fed nor wall street nor the administration know about it?

let me tell you a little story. sometime in the early 70's a friend of a friend came to me and told me to go buy travelodge stock that day and to buy as much as i could afford. i bought 7,000 dollars or so at 8 and one half. the next morning that stock opened at TWELVE AND A HALF. a 50% return on my money overnight!

so, naturally, i asked the friend of a friend just how he knew that and he told me about "tender" offers which are supposed to be secret until the day they happen but people in the know, know and they use that knowledge to profit immensely. hmmmm. says i. how did you know? says i. he says that he found out just that day but sometimes he knows a month or so in advance and that is when the really big money can be made.

and then he said something which has always stuck with me. "the stock market moves up or down based on lies, rumors and bullshit and only the people with inside information make money at the market." (them and the brokers that is. brokers make money when you buy and then they make it again when you sell. is that a deal or fucking what?)

everyone on wall street knew this was coming and you can bet your sweet ass that the major players dumped bs way before the little guy saw it coming. some of them probably bought short which is when you make money when the stock goes DOWN.

but, hey, george w. bush told us yesterday that the economy is ok. and if you can't believe george who can you believe?


senator obama's minister said some pretty strong things about america. like us supporting the racist government of south africa when all the rest of the world was condemning them. but we did that. he said we bombed not only hiroshima but nagasaki as well killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. (nagasaki was bombed after japan had offered to surrender but we went ahead and "tested" another bomb on them...some would call it mass murder but hey, we are the good guys, don't you know) he went on to say "god damn america" and said that is what the bible says. that part of his speech (sermon) is pure hatemongering bullshit. but folks, we have to realize that what he said about the twin towers being bombed is chickens coming home to roost is right. we brought 9-11 on ourselves. we kept meddling and meddling and meddling in the middle east and it sheer stupidity to think that eventually some hothead over there was not going to call for tit for tat. we overthrew the government of iran and installed the shah. we always take isreal's side against the palenstinians (sp). we invade and bomb islamic countries and expect them not to retaliate? how blind are we?

all of that being said, obama must not only disavow his remarks about "damning" america but must leave that conregation (sp?) if he wants to show his sincere desire to bring people together. there is nothing wrong with the minister pointing out our mistakes and shortcomings but to call for the damning of america is hate speech and must not be tolerated. you do not overcome hate with hate. obama must, MUST address this and he MUST do it immediately or it is going to have serious reprecussions in the election. hate speech is hate speech whether it is from a black minister or the klu klux klan.

and UNLV won it's first two games in the tournament and plays for the championship today. i will be there. go rebels.

you do the math (they can't)

reported in today's newspaper: the united states trails 23 other countries in math. 23! (the same students couldn't even name 23 other countries)

all things are related: the parents of these children bought homes on adjustable rate mortgages with the belief that home values would continue to rise 15% per year forever.

gasoline hit another all time high this week and they are now predicting $4.00 per/gal. this summer.

all things are related: we still don't know (because the administration won't tell us) who was at cheney's, the oil man, eneregy commission meeting in 2001.

all things are related: exxon/mobile have the highest profits in the history of corporations.

i would ask: do these things add up but who could answer?


more news from las vegas: an independent research paper found that corporations were given a pass on building code violations that individuals were cited for. the fact that people could die due to building code violations in an high rise casino apparently did not cross the inspector's minds.

now as the scandal about the use of tainted needles spreads to even more clinics, we have over 100 cases of infected patients. the figure of a possible 4% infection rate was bandied about today. if true that would mean 1,600 cases of hepatitis or hiv from 40,000 people who went through just one of the clinics. now, 1,600 infected and unknowing people could then infect how many thousands more? DO NO HARM. if you don't know where that is from you probably went to public schools.


on a brighter note: i love this time of year when college basketball takes center stage on the sports scene. here in lv we are having the mountain west conference tournament and rhonda and i have tickets for all sessions. last night unlv (go rebels!) beat tcu by one on a old fashioned 3 point play with 3.4 seconds to go. the game may have been the best basketball game i have ever seen in person. tcu played better than it ever has and shot 73.9% from 3 point range. we have a point guard, wink adams, who personally took over the game in the last two minutes making spectacular play after play and then made the winning basket by driving to the middle and shooting over 4 defenders while being fouled and calmly went to the line and swished the winning free throw. the crowd went wild. we play in the semifinals tonight and if we beat utah we will play probably byu for the conference championship on saturday since byu should beat san diego state tonight as well. we split our two games with byu, both teams winning by blow outs on their home courts.

i would like to express appreciation for all the fans from the different schools that have been attending the tournament. i have sat with byu fans, wyoming fans, san diego fans, air force fans and new mexico fans and they have all been great fun. we all yell and cheer and boo the other guys, yell at the refs, bemoan turnovers, rise to our feet as the ball goes through the net and then go out and stand in line for a beer and hot dog and discuss the games with jokes and groans and what-could-have-beens. a good time was had by all.

if you don't like college basketball at this time of the year, you just don't like sports and there is probably something fucking wrong with you.

a. a. dupre

"i have been alone. i have abused drugs. i have been broke and homeless. but, i survived, on my own. i am here, in ny because of my music."

ashley alexandra dupre.

so that is what you call it. your music. (box)?

and when you were homeless, you bought those tits did you?


"the past few months have been a roller coaster with so called friends, lovers and family."

a. a. dupre

don't forget johns. they get to go up and down on that roller coaster as well.



"what destroys me strengthens me."

a. a. dupre

is this girl deep or what?


"yes, she is......literally"

eliot spitzer


he won't admit he is a john and she won't admit she is a whore.

he has "personal failings" and she made it by music.

right.

remember, i remember all that you said...

so, the pentagon released a report yesterday that after years of examining iraqi papers they have concluded that there was NO CONNECTION BETWEEN IRAQ AND al QAIDA! whatsoever. of course, any one with any reading ability and with any interest in the middle east could have told you that 5 years ago when it would have done some good. i knew that. i wrote about in letters to friends and wrote about it when i started my blog in 06. under saddam, iraq was one of, if not the most, secular of all middle eastern countries and for this osama bin laden hated saddam. iraq was right behind us on obl's shit list. why, in iraq, women could vote and hold office and they did not have to wear a veil. saddam, in turn, hated osama bin laden and thought him to be an enemy of his regime. where did i get all this information? why from books, the newspapers, international tv like the bbc (not from fox news obviously since they were the main facilitator for bush's lies by repeating as gospel the admininistrations claim of "bullet proof" evidence that saddam and osama were in cahoots together) and talking to people from the middle east. all anyone had to do was want to know what was going on.

my question is: if a drug addled, poker playing comic in las vegas knew all that how come the president of the united states didn't?

now if he didn't know that, why in the world was he our president?

if he did know that, he is a lying, murdering, warmongering traitor to america for taking us to war on a country that had done nothing to us, had no connection with 9-11, had no connection with al qaida and had no weapons of mass destruction.

either way, george bush and his gang should be impeached and brought up on war crimes. of course, the democrats won't call for that since they are a bunch of lilly livered politicians who are afraid of their own shadows.

another really important question is: if i knew all that, why didn't the major newspapers and tv networks know that? if they did know that, and surely they did since i got a lot of my information from THEM, why did they go along so meekly in the rush to war? liberal press my ass. that is just another right wing lie; the press is not liberal, folks. the press is owned by large corporations (the day of the independent newspaper is long gone from the american scene, the press is no longer our watchdog it is the flunky of the powers that be) and large corporations are republican owned. (for the most part anyway) the "liberal" press and many of the "liberal" politicians, such as hillary clinton, jumped on the war bandwagon and they are just as guilty as the administration. (see the nuemburg (sp) trials for legal precendent)

george bush's approval rating among republicans is 70%. !!!!! what does that say about 70% of the republicans in america? a. they are incredibly stupid and gullible or b. they are guilty of war crimes as well. can you think of a c? i can't; not one that would hold water.

as this election draws nearer, we must not forget all the lies, all the deaths, all the drain on our treasury, all the harm done to our international reputation (remember that on 9-12-01 the whole world was on our side against al qaida), all the injuries to our troops, all the babies without fathers, all the hatred that was spewed forth by bush and rumsfeld and cheney and powell and rice. let us not forget that the united nations inspecters said there were no weapons there. let us also remember that john mc cain wants to continue that war. that john mc cain says if we leave we are saying we are defeated in the war against the word.

remember that george the decider told us that the iraqi war would be self financing, the iraqi oil would pay for it. remember that gasoline was $1.46 per gal. nationwide when he took office.

remember that we had a national surplus when george the liar took office. john mc cain wants to continue george's economic plan.

also remember, george bush and his gang were given a paper by the outgoing clinton national security team that said that BIN LADEN WANTED TO ATTACK US BY FLYING AIRPLANES INTO AMERICAN SKYSCRAPPERS.

remember that when george w. bush was told that his country was under attack, he continued reading "my pet goat". that he sat there with this bizarre look in his eyes and did nothing. the commander in chief did nothing until someone came along and told him what to do. that is the truth, jack and it is a scary, scary truth at that. decider, my ass.

remember all of the above as we head into what could turn out to be the worst recession since the great depression of the 1930's.

and then, after you have remembered all of that; vote democratic. and when the democrats get into power we must all hold their feet to the fire to change the direction of this country. if we don't, we are fucked even more, if that is possible, than we are fucked now.

my good friend and member of the MERRY BLUESTERS, scott may, is in town with his band THE IDES OF MARCH to play here and we are getting together for drinks, food, smoke, stories, lies and other good things. later this year, scotty, kenny moore and i are resurecting the merry bluesters and going to do one more show with them backing me. if you never saw us, the guys have written some great songs that go along with my stories and we did a stage show in los angeles called THE STORYTELLER which was critically acclaimed but sparsely attended. we had also done parts of that show in vegas, lexington and houston and a couple of other cities i think but am not sure now. (ah, the ravages of age) point being the show is, in my opinion, really different and not only fun to do but is fun to watch. we rock! no shit. we rock! the show is going to play in louisville at the comedy caravan for sure and we may add another date to it. if you can, come out and see this one.

vegas dis and dat

now, it seems, other testing facilities here in vegas were also shortcutting to "save money" and, by doing so, putting even more people at risk of hiv or hepatitis. tar and feather those mother fuckers as well!

if you are coming to vegas and plan on going to one of the "hip" nightclubs in the casinos be sure and bring plenty of 100 dollar bills to "tip" almost every fucking person you meet, from the guy holding the rope (forget about 'reservations', you will still have to tip to get past the rope) to the girl who then takes you to the matre 'd, then him, then the one who takes you to your table, then your waitress, your wine stewart, etc. another one of their little scams is that any of your party get up to dance, the bus boy then comes and takes their drinks so you have to buy new ones.

in their ads and billboards, these clubs promote good dirty fun, insinuating that at every turn there will be beautiful women just dying to let you in their pants. but here is the scoop, you won't get laid there but you will get fucked. (it would be much cheaper to stay in your hotel room, call one of the many escort services here, have them send a beautiful woman to your room and, for the right amount of money, she will fuck you...save yourself all those 'tips')

saw in USA TODAY last week where a kid shot himself in front of 150 witnesses and his death is "under investigation." write your own punchlines.

had a very fun week at the trop where i worked with two real pros, glen jensen and joe starr, both funny and both good guys. one of the great perks of being a comic is hanging out with comics. most of them are not only funny they are good people. (something i could not say when i was in the corporate world which is full of amoral bastards)

march madness is almost upon us! love it, love it, love it. our little team here, unlv, went to the sweet 16 last year and we lost 4 of our 5 starters and we have exactly the same record this year going into our conference tournament; that is great coaching. our tallest starter is 6-6 and we are still 23-7 for the year. if we win two games in the tournament here (i have tickets for all the games) we should get a NCAA bid. if we win the tournament we get an automatic bid but i don't think we can beat byu again even here on our home court but we did beat them earlier in the year and beat them bad while we were at it, however, when we went up to provo to play they returned the favor. it should come down to them and us for the championship. love it! go rebels!

in my opinion, only world cup soccer or the summer olympics can compete with the ncaa's for sheer excitement and drama. every year some HUGE UNIVERSITY gets beat by SMALL UNKNOWN U. and the crowd goes wild.

hey, mike k., give me a call. let's arrange for you to come out to vegas for a week.

scotty, will see you tomorrow. looking forward to it.

TAR AND FEATHER THESE MOTHERFUCKERS!

i am sure this made national press but we have had a very serious health problem come up here in nevada when it was found out that a medical facility, the endoscopy center of southern nevada, was found to be REUSING NEEDLES AND VIALS thus placing over 40,000 people at risk of contracting hepatitis C and HIV. they did this as A MATTER OF PROCEDURE and many "health professionals" were involved; doctors and nurses and administrators. now i don't know just how much a syringe costs when bought in large lots but it has to be under 50 cents. a vial of blood or medicine..what? a dollar or two? and it is not as though they were't charging us for those syringes and vials anyway. as a matter of fact, the endoscopy center made you pay up front either the full cost or your co-pay for insurance. so far, 6 confirmed cases of hepatitis C have been found and some attornies are saying that they have several dozen more. (the litagation attornies are out in mass on this deal, as you can well imagine)

the owner of the firm, DR. DIPAK DESAI, said, in a full page ad in the paper, "in cooperation with the southern nevada health district and other health agencies and officials, we have carefully reviewed our procedures and implemented the changes they recommend."

is that creepy or what? he makes it sound as though this was just a "procedure" that needs to be "changed." no big deal, just change the procedure. no, motherfucker, it was criminal negligance at the best and manslaughter at the worst if any of these people die. (and some are going to, maybe dozens or hundreds and that could put it in the catagory of mass murder)

my question is: how did so many nurses and doctors take part in this without blowing the whistle? they all are guilty. they knew. hell, a first year med student or anyone with any sense at all would know that you don't use a needle from one SICK person to another person. you don't use a needle from one WELL person to another person. what? they were afraid for their jobs? they were willing to possibly infect people with deadly diseases so they could keep their job? the head of the place, the aforementioned, dr. desai, did it so he could pad his bottom line. TAR AND FEATHER THESE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!

this is what happens (and it has happened before, coincidently with another pakistani doctor up in nebraska, who fled the country and is back in pakistan working as, are you ready? a health minister!) when money and profit becomes the motivating factor in health care. cutting corners to save cost and thereby risking people's lives. all in the name of the almighty dollar.

no, we don't need a national health care. yeah, right. we, the american people, are already paying MORE FOR HEALTH CARE THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY. national health care would be less expensive than what we have now. a single payer plan, which NO CANDIDATE endores, would, not only insure all of us, it would cost us and the government less than we are paying now. but, ah here is the rub, the all powerful insurance companies would be cut out and gosh, we couldn't have that, could we? we all know just how kind and helpful the insurance companies are now don't we? you wouldn't have to look far to find horror story after horror story about the greed and sleeziness of an insurance company and you know that. it is not the doctors and nurses doing the actual work of health care who are the problems, they are not the ones getting the money, it is the administrators, the suppliers and the insurance companies and hmo's that are sucking billions upon billions of dollars out of the american peoples pockets and the govenments pockets as well. and when some couragous politician tries to get us national health care it will be the insurance companies who will spend millions in ads to stop them. the ads will be full of lies and half-truths but the american people won't see them as that, the american people have been, for years, told just how evil national health care would be, how expensive, how we would no longer get to choose, we would get worse care, etc etc etc etc and the american people have bought that big lie hook, line and sinker. otherwise really intelligent people, will tell you how national health care wouldn't work. and then they just parrot the insurance companies lies. oh well, i have the va and medicare. BOTH OF THEM ARE NATIONAL HEALTH CARE! and they work. i get excellent care. couldn't ask for better. but, don't take my word, take the insurance companies word. they don't have a motive to lie now do they? lol.

readjusting opinion, hillary makes comeback, a poem for my critics

great fun at the show(s) last night; a dealer (poker, that is) whom i have known for 8 years now but he has never been to one of my shows, came last night with his lady friend. for years now i have sat at his tables but he had absolutely no idea of just what i am like on the stage. suffice to say, he was just blown away. i love doing that, taking someone who has gathered a certain opinion of me and completely readjusting it. my persona off the stage is so different than what i project on the stage it is as though i am a different person. not really, i have always thought of my stage presence as 'me magnified' but you get the point.

senator clinton does not quit now does she? the victories in ohio and texas will keep her in the race all the way through to the convention but she has no chance of catching senator obama in the delagate count however, he cannot win enough though to put him over the top so they will go to the convention with the so-called super delagates doing the actual choosing of the nominee. both will have compelling reasons for the s.d.'s to vote for them. (if michigan and florida had not gotten on the bad side of the democratic national committee then hillary would be in the lead) her contention will be that she has proven she can win in the huge states and his will be that he is more electable across the board against mc cain. both will be right.

as a democrat and as one who thinks that we have to win this election not only at the top of the ticket but across the board, my only fear is that the supporters of the loser will not then happily support the winner. we don't need any "bad losers" after the convention. here, once again, i think that obama would be better for the party in general than clinton because he does not have a whole cadre of people out there who already dislike him. (other than the two who constantly write me with attacks on him but those are really attacks on me). with obama at the top of the ticket i think we can shift the balance of power in washington to the left and out of the hands of the neo-cons who have so fucked up the past 7 years.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT: if any of you out there know of the whereabouts of sharon kite, previously of sarasota, tell her to write or call me because i have her book. (she will know what book)

and, incidently, we have dirty hands in south america especially in columbia where we have military "contractors" working with the right wing death squads. all under the cover of "fighting the war on drugs/fighting the war on terrorism." while i don't think armed conflict is going to break out, it is a possibility. columbia is just another one of our dirty little secrets that the government goes to great lengths to disguise. more on that in another post.


A POEM FOR MY TWO FAVORITE CRITICS

one is suicidal
the other is a drunk
my support of obama
has them in a funk

one wants to be a jokerster
the other to be a sage
but what they put forth
is only seething, boiling rage.

not that they can't be funny
not that they can't be wise
but it would help if they were right
it would help by opening their eyes.

the suicidal sage is so brilliant
but can't figure out how to make a living.
lots of excuses of why it can't be done
but it is only bullshit they are giving.

why are they so intent on attacking me?
the answer is really quite ironic
both of them in their personal haze
way down inside, want to be a comic.

here is the difference:
though i would like to be a poet.
deep inside of me
is no poetic talent...AND I KNOW IT!

one is suicidal
other is a drunk
me making people laugh
has them in a funk.



(i should get a great poem in return...stay tuned.)

oh, and one other thing about these two; both of them used to play texas hold-em here but they busted out. i still play texas hold-em and have not busted out. now, the suicidal one will tell me that if rhonda didn't work i couldn't afford to play but truth of the matter is, i was playing texas hold-em in the early 90's and have been making money off it ever since. for a while, i supported me and john and 7 fucking dogs just off my poker winnings because that was all i had for a while. interesting isn't it? i do two things they would like to do but can't and now i am the bad guy with no sense and is wrong about almost everything.

i do not mind open discourse and have over the years changed some of my opinions based on things my readers told me. (that has happened just recently as well) attacks without reasoning does not fit in the catagory of "open discourse." there are several readers who disagree with a lot of my opinions and we have, over time, agreed to disagree but all our commentary back and forth was courteous and civil. (well, one of them called me an ignorant slut but it was in jest)

you can count on me getting response to the comments about poker because both of these people are just dead certain they are not just good but great poker players. (refer here to old homily about proof being in the pudding) maybe they are, maybe they were just unlucky. but maybe not.

one final comment on these two (and you can tell they have gotten under my skin and here is why) when they needed help they came to me and i helped them. i got no thanks nor was i repaid in full. and now they attack me under false names. my oh my.

from here on out, i will ignore them. they can post as much as they want under any name they want. i will not reply.

sorry to drag all of you into this, i will lighten up from here on out. obama is going to win the nomination with me or without me. i probably have converted some over to him but maybe not. the thing about me is that i sometimes wear my feelings on my sleeve. i feel deeply about some things and i am glad i do. feeling deeply about anything can be very good for you, it keeps the blood flowing so to speak. i hope i never lose my capacity to feel deeply, to care, to give a shit, to have my blood run hot. i hope i never end up as a bitter cynic, distrusting everyone, believing no one, loving no one nor no thing, what a horrible way to live that would be.

"the poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or 'with the flower of the mind'; not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestisal life.

"this is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandalwood and tobacco, or whatever other procurers of animal exhilaration."

ralph waldo emerson

have a good day. have some fun. get high. give a shit.

done, done, DONE

well, the radio career came to a screeching halt this afternoon. hehehe. seems that the "boss" came to the realization that it was neigh unto impossible for him to make any money at all on the radio and so, in a moment of clarity, pulled the plug on the radio side of vavoom media.

so, now i have a thirty minute demo and an hour long demo that are both real good to shop around is the way i look at it. dunbar and i did some really fine radio and the topic is going to be appealing to somebody i would believe. we shall see. kathleen was very disappointed and i am sure rhonda is going to be as well since she really likes having me here at home but, hey, it was a gift in the first place and a LONG SHOT at the very best. i am going to research the satellite radio market and see which channels, presently on the air, could use either and hour or half hour long, funny, adult language and sometimes topics, program on sex and politics in america. maybe there is a market and maybe there isn't. we shall see. if any of you out there have any ideas on something i could do please write and tell me.

the united states government was pleased to announce that the afghanastan poppy crop set another new record this year. air america flies again. (see poem "poppies" from oct. 5th 2006 and you might take a gander at the one for the 6th which was "the war party."