why i am voting for senator obama

while i have never achieved "stardom" as a comic, i do have a dedicated and loyal fan base, helped in many ways by sirius and xm radio, both of which play my comedy a lot. when i am out here on the road i end up talking to dozens, if not hundreds, of people each week from the staff of the clubs to the patrons...and i am amazed at the number of them who tell me that they read this blog regularly.

some have told me that my writings on the presidential race have changed their minds and they now are voting for obama. in the hope that i can change a few more, let me list my reasons for why i am voting for senator obama. obviously most of these i have already covered but repitition does not hurt.



THESE ARE IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER OF IMPORTANCE:



1. WALKS THE WALK. all of his life obama has worked helping people. he started as a community organizer and then when he realized he could do more with a law degree he went to harvard and got a degree. while there he became the first african american to edit the prestigious HARVARD LAW REVIEW. that alone would have qualified him for a position with a large new york wall street law firm with a starting salary in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year with perks the likes of which you and i cannot fathom. instead of cashing in on this, he went back to chicago and worked in some of the worst slums in america trying to help people pull themselves out of poverty. that speaks volumes to me. it shows me where his heart is, and that he likely cannot be bought.



2. INTELLIGENCE. not only did obama finish in the top 1% of his class at harvard (think how hard that must be...there are some really sharp people at harvard) when he got back to chicago and was working as a community organizer to supplement his income (community organizers do not make very much money), he taught CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO which is, in itself, an institution that is toward the top of all lists of prestigious universities. we live in a very complex world in very complex times and we need someone who is bright enough to see the complexity and respond intelligently to it. (john mc cain finished in the bottom 1% of his class and we have seen what george w. bush with his C average did) in addition, we need someone who knows the constitution, as it is obvious that gwb either did not know it or chose to just ignore it when it came to his own personal agenda.



3. HE IS COOL UNDER FIRE. we all watched the debates and we watched how each candidate responded. mc cain grimaced and rolled his eyes and looked angry. obama never wavered, never got off message and never showed disrespect as mc cain did when he either would not look at obama or referred to him as "that one." obama has never engaged in vicious attacks against his opponents and has brought much dignity to the process. he has always wanted this election to be about ISSUES that face the american people.



4. HIS ORATORY SKILLS. we are in tough times folks, and they are going to get tougher. we need someone who can speak to the american people in times of crisis and motivate and encourage them and the ability to speak well really comes in handy. we need someone who can reach across party lines to get people to put aside personal and party dogmas and work together for the common good and, once again, the ability to use the language to get important points across is paramount.



5. HIS POSITION ON ROE V. WADE. the republican party wants to repeal roe v. wade. as a feminist, i believe that it is a woman's right to chose what she does with her own body. the democratic party position is that roe v. wade should not be repealed. while i know this is a very devisive issue i must come down on the side of women making the choice. (incidentally, i really do have credentials as a feminist. when i was in business i had the very first office in the nation for mc millan publishing that had all female managers. i always promoted on ability and results and never on sex, or color. i have three daughters and have been married (or living together as man and wife) 6 times. my ex-wives and my daughters all like me and my wives will tell you that though i can be an asshole (hey, who can't?) they have no doubt that not only do i like women i respect them and treat them as equals.



5A. HIS POSITION ON EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. why is it that a women makes less than a man for the same work? that is sexism at it's worst and must be stopped before we can really become a nation of equals.



6. HIS OPPOSITION TO THE WAR IN IRAQ. it was an illegal and immoral war against a country that had done nothing to us. iraq was not part of 9-11. there were no iraqis on those planes. there were no weapons of mass destruction. there was no connection between iraq and al qaeda and as a matter of RECORD, osama bin laden hated saddam hussain and the feeling was mutual. HE ALONE OF ALL THE CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF DENNIS K., WAS AGAINST THE WAR FROM GET GO. compare that with john mc cain's enthusiastic support for the war even though john mc cain DID NOT READ THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS THAT HAD ALL THE CAVEATS IN THEM ABOUT HOW THE INTELLIGENCE COULD BE WRONG. whose judgement was correct here? one rushed to war, while the other cautioned against it until all the facts were in. because of this, i am afraid that john mc cain would rush us into another war in the middle east, guaranteeing more hatred for america, more risk to american lives, more risk to american interests and even more drain on our treasury. we are spending TEN BILLION PER MONTH IN IRAQ, we need to get out of there as soon as possible and obama will hopefully do this and i am afraid that mc cain would not.



7. TAXES. obama will give a tax cut to everyone making less than $250,000 per year. obama will repeal the bush tax cuts for the rich. mc cain will give no tax cuts to the middle class and will continue the failed policy of bush of giving huge tax breaks to the rich and to corporations. I CANNOT EMPHAZISE THIS ENOUGH: TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS DOES NOT WORK! IT HAS NEVER WORKED! IT WILL NEVER WORK! HISTORY HAS PROVEN THIS OVER AND OVER. IT DOESN'T WORK FOLKS! DON'T BE FOOLED AGAIN! if anyone needs a break from taxes it is the middle class, not the rich. our wages have stagnated during the bush years....do you want more of the same? the middle class is the backbone of not only our country, but our financial success or failure. the gap between the rich and the rest of us is widening and if we are not careful we will end up as so many third world countries are, with a small percentage of the population rich and the rest of us in varying degrees of poor. anyone who does not think this could happen to us is not aware of history. we would not be the first great empire that crumbled over debts caused by foriegn wars and raiding of the treasury at home. (see rome, greece, persia, babylon, england, spain, france, etc.) some sank into oblivion and some came back from the edge but none regained their influence and world wide power. england is still hanging on, as is france, but we are supporting them.



8. HEALTH CARE. one of the biggest threats to our economy is the ever growing cost of health care. obama's plan, while not perfect, is so much better than mc cains as to be laughable. it is not "socialism" to bring health care to ALL OF OUR PEOPLE it is just common fucking sense. the cost of health care keeps rising, but if you look at where the money is going, it is not to the doctors and nurses but to the insurance companies and the large corporations that now own our hospitals. we must stop this upward spiral or it will cripple us in more ways than one. by allowing people to buy into a federal insurance plan THAT IS ALREADY THERE and making that plan cover pre-existing conditions, which WOULD NOT HAPPEN UNDER THE REPUBLICAN PLAN, we protect ourselves from financial disaster.



9. GREEN ENERGY. obama's plan is to invest billions into making america free from our dependence on oil. we have 3% of the world's oil reserves and we consume 25% of the oil. we are supporting regimes around the world instead of bringing that money back home. we cannot drill our way out of this folks. we don't have enough oil to do that. we need wind power, solar power, electrical power, wave power, thermal power and the myriad of other possible cures that could be out there. we won't find them unless we make a concentrated effort to do so. john mc cain is too tied to the oil companies and has been against every clean energy idea ever floated in front of him. we live in the 21st century and we must get 21st century ideas to confront 21st century problems. TO ME, SENATOR OBAMA REPRESENTS THE FUTURE, WHILE JOHN MC CAIN REPRESENTS THE PAST AND NO SINGLE ISSUE MORE ILLUSTRATES THIS THAN THE ENERGY POLICIES OF THE TWO. oh, john mc cain is giving lip service to green energy, but look at his past votes on the issues. he is in the pocket of the oil companies and obama is not.



10. JOB CREATION. what we need to do, in my opinion, is to use federal monies to create jobs and millions of jobs could be created with the GREEN ENERGY push that was described above. beyond that, senator obama has stated that we will use the vast power of the treasury to create jobs, not only in energy but in rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our schools and other infrastructure components. think of what ten billion per month would do if it were spent here creating jobs for americans instead of being spent in iraq.



11. OUR INTERNATIONAL REPUTATION. when we attacked iraq without provocation we made enemies of millions of muslims and lost the respect of most of the western world. we have been bullies on the international scene for all of the bush years and we are hated for it. the election of senator obama would do wonders for our reputation by showing that we are moving beyond the bellicose unilateralism of bush, cheney and mc cain. WE NEED TO TALK TO OUR SO-CALLED ENEMIES BEFORE WE START BOMBING. that is a major difference between john mc cain, who seems to like war over peace, and senator obama. when george bush called iraq, iran and north korea the AXIS OF EVIL, it ensured that the populace of those countries feared and hated us. INCIDENTLY, ONCE AGAIN, THOSE THREE COUNTRIES HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH 9-11. that kind of belligerent war-mongering and name-calling does nothing for our international reputation except to pull it down. while americans may not know history, the rest of the world does. we may like to think that we can go it alone but the truth of the matter is that we live in an integrated world and we must make allies and friends much more so than we need to make more enemies. john mc cain likes to make a big deal out of obama saying he would meet with the heads of countries that don't like us but to me, the willingness to talk before fighting is the mark of great men not little men.



12. THE SUPREME COURT. if elected, obama will have a chance to put someone on the supreme court who will look at the constitution as something that guards the rights of citizens over the rights of government and corporations. the present court with its conservative majority has consistently favored corporations over citizens and, i believe, that must change. also the supreme court could overturn roe v. wade if mc cain comes into power. that alone would make me want to vote for obama. the republican party is the party of the rich and the corporations and their supreme court nominees have toed the party line and we need to put a stop to that.



13. THE RACIAL ASPECT. an election of a person of color would show not only the world, but ourselves, that we have moved past our racial divide. the saying of parents all across this country that "anyone can become president" would ring so loudly and so clearly, that i believe it will do wonders for our country. it would remove an excuse that some of color use that this is strictly a white person's country and make them re-evulate their beliefs. the election of senator obama will ring the bell of freedom for all our people, white, black, brown, asian, native american and all the others who have come to these shores seeking freedom and equality. we would show the world that we practice what we preach.





i know there are men and women of good conscience who do not agree with me. i know that there are millions who do love this country as much as i do who will disagree with my take on these matters. that does not make them bad people, nor bad citizens, and because i know my own stupidity more than anyone does, i know i could be wrong...but in my heart of hearts and my soul of souls i don't believe i am. i really think that senator obama is our absolute best choice for president in this year of our lord, 2008.

more baseball

the owner of the club here in chattanooga, michael alfono, and i were talking baseball last night and he brought up a good point: that baseball is shooting itself in the foot and is going to cost itself it's fan base over the years by putting all the world series games on at night. everything is done for tv and the real fans, those who buy the tickets and go to the parks, be damned. i remember when teachers would bring radios or small tv's to school and would give all of us updates on the scores and sometimes would let us watch or listen instead of doing "school" work. this was in amarillo, not a major league town.

when i was in l.a. for the playoff game i spoke to several young men in their 20's and 30's about how lucky they were to grow up in a major league city and to be able to go to the games. they all said that it was harder to bring their kids to the park because there are hardly any day games anymore. rigley field in chicago had only day games for what? a century or so and everyone loved it and the place was full. a baseball game takes over 3 hours to play and what with getting back to your car, fighting the traffic out and then driving home you and your kids get in bed after midnight. as a result of this fewer and fewer kids are growing up as bb fans.

that, and the lack of playing fields in the cities. in vegas we have several really nice soccer fields but i have seen only one really nice little league bb field. the kids in innercities don't play baseball any more because of lack of facilities and because basketball and to some degree football are more "glamorous".

if you don't know the game, baseball looks dull on tv when, in reality, most baseball games are very intense and have well over 200 different plays each game. every pitch is a play, every shift of the defense, every throw to first to hold the runner, every signal from catcher, every signal to a base runner all of those and dozens more are part of the game. i grew up with baseball so i see all those things but if you didn't.....

another well pitched game last night and the issue was in doubt until the very last batter. this kid, price, for the rays, had ice water in his veins. i think he is 23 and started the season in the minors and here he is pitching in the 9th in the world series. how cool is that?

i have made rhonda into not only a baseball fan but a college basketball fan as well. while she had some rudimentary knowledge of both games she now is a FAN and sees the game properly. of course, she had no choice. lol.

rock and roll and peace to us all

politics and pitching

rhonda and i are on opposite sides on the palin clothing spending spree, she believes that palin needed the clothes on the stump while i think the symbolism alone is such that reflects badly on the republican message of "joe the plumber", ie the everyday working man is being helped by the republican policies. 150k for clothing (that is the figure quoted today) in a month is not something that relates to joe the plumber and joesphine his wife. on that subject, the republican party has, over the years, convinced working people to vote against their own self-interest. they are quite good at it. they preach the things that really do not matter but resonate with blue collar people, guns (the demos are going to take away your guns), religion (the demos are going to outlaw christianity or the demos are not REAL christians or, in our present case, obama is a muslim), family values (the demos are going to allow queers to marry), patriotism (the demos are not real patriots and are, god forbid, against going to war against anybody we want) and if all that fails calling the democrats socialists, communists and any other ists they can think of. what they do not talk about is economic policies other than always accusing the democrats of " raising your taxes." you know, "tax and spend" democrats.

our economy is on the brink of disaster and so let's talk about william ayers.

jobs are being lost by the tens of thousands per month so let's question obama about his patriotism.

millions are losing their homes so let's accuse obama of being a socialist. (not mentioning that we just GAVE 700 BILLION dollar to banks which, of course, is socialism for the rich).

we spend more on health care than any country on the face of the earth and john mc cain wants us to turn it all over to the insurance companies. (let me tell you something from personal experience: INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF PAYING CLAIMS, THEY ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF COLLECTING PREMIUMS.)

so, john mc cain, who can't remember how many homes he owns and sarah palin whose husband belongs to a group (or belonged to) that advocates alaska succeeding from the union (which is, incidently, high treason) go on painting obama as an elitist socialist but do not come up with viable ideas to get us out of this mess whereas senator obama does have plans and has spelled them out in great detail. read the two parties web pages and see which one applies to you.

great game last night if you like pitching. on both sides, the pitching was just great. when i played baseball (a jillion years ago) i pitched and played short stop and some third base. i pitched several no hitters in junior high but was a horrible batter and so, once in high school, i concentrated on boxing. several kids that i played bb with went on to pro sports, the most notable of which was lance rentzel (sp?) who played pro football. others went on to play bb but got no higher than triple A. our jr. high team went to the state finals twice and lost both times, once, as i spoke of in long ago post, on my error in the last inning. (we had however blown a 6 run lead so my error was only the last fuckup of the day). anyway, point being, i really like pitching.

two related stories

chattanooga in time for first game of the series; an easy two day drive from houston. i started rather poorly though; rented a sebring convertable and top wouldn't come down so a guy that worked there at DOLLAR jiggled something in trunk and lo and behold the top went down. however when i got to brookie's house i wanted to put it back up so i could put stuff in trunk and the top refused to budge so i take the car back down to hobby airport to exchange it. they said that i would have to pay $6.99 per gal. to fill the tank back up! after a small but effective temper tantrum they relented and got me a chysler 300 for the same price. gads.

two related stories:

the gap between rich and poor has grown tremendously since 2000 here in the united states and now trails only turkey and some other small country whose name escapes me.

sarah palin spent 125,000 dollars of republican campaign money for new clothes. (the exact figure is rather obscure...but over 100k)

i guess she was spreading the wealth.

since the republicans used to refer to obama as "elite", let me ask you every day people...do you spend 100k on clothes in a month? would that be "elitist"?


i think the republicans will say almost anything in the hope that the public won't take the time and effort to check out the facts. the republicans have been spouting the "joe the plumber" story and now have added another twist...that somehow the encounter between senator obama and j.t.p was "confrontational." well, go to utube and watch the whole thing. case closed. obama's answer and explanation was more detailed than ANYTHING mc cain has said about his own economic "plan."

the republicans keep repeating (ala j. goebbels) that obama will "raise your taxes." obama will lower the taxes on everyone making 250k per year and the only tax increase will be his repealing the bush tax cuts for the rich. tax cuts that JOHN MC CAIN HIMSELF WAS AGAINST WHEN BUSH SIGNED THEM INTO LAW, SAYING THAT THEY ONLY HELP THE FEW WHO DON'T REALLY NEED THE HELP. go check it out if you have any doubt. can you say "hypocrite"?

rep. michel bachman of minn. said on msnbc that obama was an "anti-american muslim." she is the incumbent republican. joe mc carthy was from minn. i do believe.

be sure and read colin powell's complete statement on why he is backing senator obama.

(for my friends in philly, i know that all of you aren't bad fans but some are just awful: loud, rude, crude, beer-throwing, fight-picking awful.)

10,000 to one. what a bet!

got up too late to head to new orleans, oh well.

i was talking to the owner of the club here and he said that he was in vegas and talking to a bookmaker and the b.m. told him that he would have gladly put the rays at 10,000 to one to win the world series and would have slept well. man. what a bet that would have been. i think the official line was 200-1 but surely they were a longer shot than that. i will be pulling for them all the way even though i am a national league fan. besides the phillies has some really obnoxious fans...booed santa claus and all. (not as obnoxious as the red sox fans have turned out to be....i liked them more when they were loveable losers)

sevesteen, i am taking your advice. you are absolutely right.

i have already heard someone say that colin powell endorsed senator obama because he is black. man oh man.

i have another new club for next year...mrytle beach for easter week. for my fans in sarasota, i will be there in feb. so check my schedule or mc curdy's comedy theater web site.

last day in houston so brookie and i will spend it eating at different places...our usual routine.

maybe off to new orleans

let me pass on a culinary tip...mai's on milam in houston. scotty mentioned it in a comment and then i remembered it as the vietnamnese place that the comics used to go. great food.

now let me pass on a tip to joe and liz. keep your comments to the blog i posted. save your little attacks on me...i will delete them. if you have a comment on a given post (except this one) go right ahead and fire with your thoughts but no longer will i let stand unrelated comments which are just your way of blogging on my blog. actually both of you could stand to get a life; if you dislike me soooo much why in the world do you read me? (don't answer....it will be deleted...this particular post is not up for discussion for you two...regardless of what name you use)

rays and phillies for world series...go rays. they are the best story in baseball and for them to go ahead and win the world series will make them a legend and a motivating story for coaches for all time.

hopefully, the leaves will be in their colorful mode on this drive up to chattanooga. may leave early and go to new orleans for a day and eat at irene's in the quarter. walk along the river and then get some of that wonderfully strong coffee at cafe du monde as the fog rolls in. watch the whores, the tourists, the street vendors, the street performers, the hustlers and the hustled go about their nightly dance.

ah well, late at night here...peace to us all.

friends of mine...ringo included.

what a great week i just had here in houston. this club is primo and it is a real pleasure to play. we had quite a few "shock fans" in the crowds and i was able to do several requests for them. (tiptone, did you make one of the shows?) the owner is having me back twice a year and i will be the new year's eve act in 09 which will be the first new year's eve i have worked in 20 years since i feel that they are amature night but don, the owner, assured me that he charges so much money that the crowds are just great. i will be working in a tux. cool.

this coming year i will be doing 11 weeks in texas and i couldn't be happier over that. i have a tremendous amount of "texas" material that kills here.

today is my 66th birthday and brookie and ed are taking me out for seafood this evening.

boy, there are a couple of guys who write me on this blog that seem to just hate me. now, i am be chastized over ringo starr one saying i have terrible choices for friends because i am a friend of ringo. gads. i will put my group of friends up against anyone's, from college profs to lawyers, to artists, to movie stars, to comics, to club owners, to poker players, to writers, to philosphers, to rock stars, to a couple of old gangsters, to undercover cops, to a major general in the united states army, to songwriters, and to doctors my friends are straight, gay, white, black, brown, asian, young and old. they are liberal and conservative. when times were tough they banded together and helped me without being asked. so, if you think i have bad choice in friends then you don't know my friends. as far as ringo starr goes, i don't know what prompted him to cut off fan mail (and neither do you) and i don't care...that is his business. he has been very nice and gracious to me. a gentleman at all times.

oh well, happy birthday to me and peace to us all.

friday night late show

wouldn't you know it, i mention that the late show friday is always the show to avoid and then last night, late show was fantastic. big enthusiastic crowd that was there for anything i wanted to do. what a show!

tonight we do three shows...7-9-11...we shall see.

this club gets a nice mixture of people, since this is in the montrose, which is, in my opinion, the coolest part of houston, we get the coolest crowds. they get the jokes. they get the references. they get my vote.

colin powell is on meat the press tomorrow and s. palin is on saturday night live tonight. fitting.

(one is a joke)

nap time. for all of you who came out to see me...thank you.

peace to us all.

late night mexican food

this new LAFF STOP in houston is a beautiful club and we had a very good audience last night; as my friend, brookie, said "we got biker's titty bar and the world's greatest dope story" both in the same set. the bikers' story is a texas story and i had that as sort of a theme last night complete with, yes liz, VAN SEATS which, truth be known, is a texas story and the original guy was north of houston on I-45. in my road shows, i sometimes move him to various states to fit in with whatever i am doing at the time. artistic leeway.

i rent car here next week and drive up to chattanooga and the drive should be pretty because some of the leaves will be turning ... i think.

well, joe the plumber turned out to be: a. not a plumber, b. not making anywhere close to 250,000 per year which is what it would take for obama's so-called tax increase to come into effect...i say "so called" because what will really happen is that the bush tax cuts for those making over 250K will be allowed to expire., and last, but not least, c. joe, the wannabe plumber, owes back taxes.

hell, for all i know, the republicans may be "throwing" this election because whoever goes into office is facing some really serious problems. the hole we are in is going to take some digging to get out of and, if mc cain were president, he would be faced with a democratic controlled congress and would have problems getting anything passed whereas obama will be able to get his programs through (for better or worse). (gee, that was a convoluted sentence).

what i keep telling my rather crestfallen republican friends, and yes, i do have republican friends...matter of fact, i am staying with one while here in houston, is that obama will make a great president for all of us. you just wait and see, this guy is for real and is the person we need in the white house in these trying times. for those of you who do not believe this, keep this post, and let us see together whether i am right.

a sidebar: on wed. night, after the debate, rhonda and i were talking on the phone and she asked if ed, my republican friend, held my political views against me. i told her, i have known ed for decades and we have never agreed on anything political but we do agree that we like each other and both of us love brookie. (brookie is the other half of that wonderful relationship) ed has a mc cain/palin bumber sticker on his truck and i told him i want to ride around in it with my obama shirt on....lol. that would spin some heads around...

i have written about some of the many things i like about houston but i think i forget to mention the abundance of good late night mexican food. from my early days here i have always had a craving for migas late at night. if you live here or are coming here for whatever reason, let me suggest la tapatia on richmond in the montrose. it is fucking great! and cheap. 4.80 for a breakfast that will knock your socks off.

oh well, gotta go and see some more old friends before it is nap time. two shows tonight and 3 tomorrow.

rock and roll and peace to us all.

poor little dodger dog

poor little dodger dog did not make it. after the vet had given us a clean bill of health and we did not let him around the other dogs until we had that, turns out he had parvo and by yesterday when i left on road he got so sick he could barely move and rhonda took him back in and they said that it was highly unlikely he would survive so we put him down. poor little thing. i am seriously pissed at vet for the "clean bill of health" which has now put my other two dogs at risk. i get so attached to dogs in such a short amount of time. i find all this out when i get off plane here in houston. so there i am yesterday, crying in hobby airport. fuck.

all the polls that i have seen show that obama won last night's debate and probably the deciding factor was the endless attacks on senator obama by senator mc cain. one poll on cnn showed that 85% of democrats thought obama won while only 62% of republicans thought mc cain was the winner. that bodes much ill towards the mc cain camp.

the "joe the plumber" was a nice touch though by mc cain but it was undermined by the fact that "joe" (joes show up a lot in this blog don't they?) refused to endorse any candidate. i am sure that we will see many commercials about him.

mc cain does not seem to get that his attack ads are not really helping him beyond stirring up his base and are, in fact, turning many swing and independent voters against him. he does not seem to grasp that the american public wants to hear about the economy and not william ayers.

if you want to see how really vicious political campaigns can be look up the election year of 1800 where john adams and thomas jefferson were the two candidates. horrible things were said about both. it was really something.

oh well, gotta go. peace to us all.

(thanks for the updates on ringo...i had no idea of what people were talking about...apparently missed the whole story but i wasn't sending fan mail to ringo anyway)

a little stock market story

once upon a time, a long time ago when i was living another life in houston a friend of friend called me and asked how much cash i had on hand. i told him that i could lay my hands on maybe 10 thousand today. he then told me to go buy as many shares of stock of travelodge motels. because i knew him to be astute and my close friend vouched unequivocally for him, i did what he said and ended up buying a little over a thousand shares at 8 1/4. the next morning travelodge opened at 12 1/2! i sold and made over 4,000 dollars literally overnight. when "joe" came by later to gloat with me, i asked him how he knew this was going to happen. he told me about "tender offers" where company A makes a way over market price for stock in company B in order to get a controlling interest of B and that sometimes he, joe, would know of these before they happened. (he never told me just how he knew)

we did this on 3 other stocks and one of which was a possible multi-million dollar deal for me but the sec shut trading down on it when so much action was generated and i had to bail with a small loss.

the point of this story is something else joe told me and i quote because i remember it after all these years.

"the stock market moves on lies, rumors and bullshit and the only ones who make money in the long run are those with insider trader information."

for what it is worth.



the other day i said that the idea of us (you and i) giving money to banks so that they could lend that money to other banks so that they could lend it to us (you and i) was rather bizarre. another tag would be that we give it to banks to loan to banks to loan to us but then that bank turns down our loan! we can't even borrow our own fucking money from the banks.

what this is beginning to sound like to me is socialism for the rich. odd how bankers, republicans all, would just shit in their caviar if someone proposed socialism for the people but when it their silk covered asses that are on the line they go to the government looking for help.


is john mc cain getting desperate or what? it must really piss him off that every day he sinks deeper in the hole of public opinion and "that one" keeps going up. now the republicans are going to try to say that the democrats "stole" the election thanks to acorn. yeah, it is all those false registered voters who are giving obama a double digit lead nationwide. lol.

oh well, off to houston tomorrow. come on out and i will rock the room.


peace to us all.

dodgers, acorn and hicks

i should have stayed for today's game, i bring luck to the dodgers when i am there, they have won every time i went this year but our bull pen imploded tonight and now they have to win 3 straight from a very good team. can be done but is unlikely. go dodgers.

here in nevada ACORN's offices were raided and much ado was made about false voter registrations but when the smoke had cleared the so called fraud was just bullshit. here is what happened: people are hired as voter registers and are paid 8.10 per hour with no quota's but the unofficial quota was 20 regs per day. now some of these pollsters or whatever you wish to call them were felons out on work release and some were college students and some were elderly but the common denominator was they all needed the money so what some of them did was make up names and addresses and ss numbers and turned them in as real deals. now, this hurts nobody. no one can vote with these false registrations because these people don't exist, no one has id for these names, no one of that name lives at that address. they were done just so the person doing the registering could keep their 8.10 per hour job. big fucking deal. but oh, the uproar. oh, the hand wringing. oh, the accusations. oh, the bullshit.

i am going to make some short videos and post them on utube with stories about bill hicks that i know and are not part of the public record. two of them have been published here on this blog; the chicken story out of mississippi and the ferret story in louisiana. rhonda and i came up with 6 really good stories about bill that i am sure his fans will really enjoy. i was not bill's "best" friend (over the last decade and a half i have run across dozens of people who claimed to be one of bill's best friends whose name i never heard bill mention.) but i was a real good friend of his and he was the man i loved and admired more than any other person i have ever known. i want to add to his legacy and show some sides of bill that i feel have been missed in the 3 or 4 books that have been written about him and the comedy scene in houston in the 80's. stay tuned.

oh well, back at home from l.a. and getting ready to go back out on the road day after tomorrow...so see some of you in houston and some of you in chattanooga.

rock and roll and peace to us all.

dodger dog

kudos to senator mc cain for saying nice words about senator obama and also chiding his audiences for their anger. he said that senator obama was a "decent man" and that people did not have fear an obama presidency. (he was booed by his crowd however).

the shock family has added another dog; while working in the yard yesterday (a rare occurrence in and of itself...as any of my friends can testify.) this little shepard looking puppy comes running by and when he sees me comes leaping into my chest. he was underfed and obviously lost so we took him in. we then took him to the vet where we had him checked over and given shots and then back to the homestead. as most of you know who have been following this blog over the years, i already have two dogs, a great dane, maverick and a pit bull/shepard mix, annie d. dog. they were quite excited about the new one but the new one was not quite as excited about being faced with a 160 lb dane and a 65 lb yellow mutt; matter of fact you could say he was scared. the old dogs, however, were very friendly and though the puppy growled and snarled at them all they wanted to do was play. since i was wearing my dodger hat when the puppy came into my life we have named him DODGER DOG. he looks to be part australian shepard and something else with a narrow nose...maybe a dobbie but he is, in my mind, too little for that. black, white and tan he weighs maybe 20 pounds at this time and looks to be about 8 months old. this morning i got to see annie walk under maverick while dodger walked under her. funny. i will try to get picture of all this and post it.

when i lived on a farm in california i had 9 dogs, 8 of which were rescued so i am used to a pack. dogs have always been part of my life and i could not imagine living without them. they provide protection (NO ONE fucks with a great dane) and companionship and, of course, unconditional love. i also think dogs are very funny and i know great danes have a sense of humor because i have seen it in all four of the ones i have had in my homes.

i have secured ticket for sunday's game for the dodger/philly game. it is a "must win" for the boys in blue. go dodgers.

oh well, dat's all folks.

peace to us all.

and the winner is......

the stock market is crashing, jobs are being shed by the thousands, millions are out of work, millions more are about to lose their homes and john mc cain wants to talk about william ayers. of course he does because he has no ideas, no plans, no policies other than extend tax breaks to millionaires and going to war against iran.

did it ever accord to anyone that the real winner in all of this is osama bin laden? when he attacked us back in 2001 his plan was that we would over react and attack muslim countries. bush played right into his hands and committed, not only our military, but our treasury to his ego driven iraqi war. he even kept the costs of the war "off the books" so the financial drain was hidden from view. think about what our country would look like if we had not spent all that money on iraq and instead had used it to do necessary work here in the good old u. s. of a. our roads are horrible, our bridges need vital repairs (remember Minneapolis), schools need to be built, etc etc etc. with those billions spent here in america would we be in the crisis that is crippling our country? (i guess bush was right: iraq is part of our national security...it has made it much worse.)

one of my fans wrote on the hrshock address and asked why we are not legalizing marijuana since that alone would raise billions in tax dollars. good question. the answer, of course, is that the alcohol industry spends millions of dollars to be sure that marijuana never is considered for legalization because it would cut their profits immensely. marijuana is so much a better drug than alcohol and every thinking person, whether they smoke it or not, knows that to be true. it is non addictive, never has killed anyone, does not lead users to "harder" drugs, does not cause anti-social behavior in it's users and could be grown by average citizens. we could issue a "growers tax stamp" for growers and then they could go into business and report their income on section C of their tax returns.

ah hell, we don't need the money. have a drink. get sloshed. wreck your car. kill someone. start a fight. abuse your wife and kids. good ol' alcohol.

on the economy: write your representatives in congress and tell them we need job creation. if, we the people, pull our collective heads out of our collective asses and start pressuring congress to do something concrete for the american worker, they, being the whores that they are, will finally respond.

i will go into the false accusations against ACORN tomorrow. i know joe will be pleased.

go dodgers.

peace to us all.

of mice and money.

hate to have the tying run score because of an error but that is what happened to the dodgers tonight. bah humbug. we will get them tomorrow.

"all the perplexities, confusion and distress in america arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."

john adams

the more things change, the more they stay the same.

i heard an "economist" on cnn (i believe, i watch them all) say that "no-one could have foreseen this sub prime crisis." i could and did and wrote about it. how dare they say no-one could have foreseen this crisis? anyone with even a vague understanding of math and real estate could have told you that a. houses can't go up 20% per year every year because eventually no one could afford a home and b. people with bad credit have bad credit because they don't pay bills. duh. so they loan money to people with bad credit in order for them to buy a home that is already overpriced on the basis that the home will go up another 20% that particular year and the people with bad credit will be able to sell the home before the bills come due. (so to speak) sure, that will work! now, let us take all those shaky mortgages and bundle them together and use them for collateral. great idea. bundle those little boogers up.

also, the idea of us (you and me) giving money to banks so that they can loan money to another bank so that they could have money to loan to us (you and me) is beginning to sound rather bizarre to me. it seems to me that loosening credit for banks to banks will do no good unless there is a corresponding effort to put millions of people to work especially in the construction business and that work must include all the trades; carpenters, roofers, steel workers, concrete workers, etc, etc and then we will be using all kinds of materials and not just concrete and steel which is what we would have with just road and bridge construction. so we have to build some "buildings" as well. these kind of jobs are the kind that have been lost due to the housing and construction downturn. with these people back at work, the other problems of the economy become much more manageable. with these millions of people left unemployed, the other problems become much, much harder to manage. this idea of putting people to work would fall under the heading of circulation.

small and large businesses must have customers in order to survive. the better mousetrap will only sell to those with mice and money. (so to speak) circulate some money among the people and then they will buy those mousetraps. and cars. and homes. and .......

anyway. go dodgers. peace to us all.

listen to the lion

interesting article by john dunbar of the associated press in las vegas paper today about credit swaps being more and more blamed for the collapse of aig, the bankruptcy of investment bank, lehman brothers and the downfall of other investment houses and financial institutions.

these are the ones that phil graham (you know, john mc cain's financial advisor...the one that said this recession was a "mental recession." also said, that we are a nation of "whiners") managed to pass a bill under the name of, are you ready?, REFORM (you know, one of john mc cain's reforms that he is so proud of, that he can just shit) so that the sec and the commodity futures trading commission have NO OVERSIGHT on these unfunded quaisi insurance deals. oh well, phil is a democrat. no wait! he's a republican. see, we all know that this whole mess is the democrats fault and they managed to do it all in the time from january of 07 till now...oh, dose sneaky democrats.

but anyway. hitting republicans now is like kicking a guy when he is down. they were more fun when they had both houses of congress and bush and cheney were out there saying things such as, "if you are not for us then you are against us." and who could forget the great speech gwb gave right after 9-11 when he told us to "go shopping." ah, those were the days.

pet goats of the world, arise! (and get george out of his stupor)

but now, ah gee. no fun. mc cain and palin are the joke unto themselves. dinosaurs and troopergate, bomb-bomb-bomb and just where is that old ahgani/iraqi border anyway?

the rest of the world watches these two and just laughs and laughs.

i am so ready to go back to work and get away from politics for a while...short of a terrorist attack, an assassination of obama or massive voter fraud this race is over. the people have looked at both and have made up their minds.

at a palin rally somebody in the audiece shouted out "kill him" as she talked about obama. did she rebuke him? did she show any outrage? (see second possibility above)

(it could have been at a mc cain rally....which would be even worse.) is this what the republicans have sunk to? this low? this sleezy? this UNAMERICAN??????????)

i need to go back to work and will starting next week in houston and then off to chattanooga and then off to reno and then off to san antonio. oh man, i am so looking forward to this run. for real. i am going to have a great time.

two of my friends, john and mike who own the club in hilton head will be partying friday night with edgar and johnny winter after the winter show and after theirs. too cool.

i am ready to listen to the lion inside of me. (that's a van morrison reference)

peace to us all.

THE DEBATE

if you watched fox news after the debate you would have been told that mc cain won. if you watched msnbc then you were told that obama won. if you watched cnn, then you would have been shown polls taken of people who did indeed watch the debate and were not only repubs and dems, they were independents and in those polls it was obama in a landslide. if mc cain was hoping for a "game changer" then it was not forthcoming and he will fall farther behind. also, by overwhelming numbers the people said that obama was much more qualified than mc cain when it came to the economy. (which is what it is, stupid, it's the economy)

now, the question is why they thought that when neither candidate was specific enough in his answers as to what they would do to help average americans who are either unemployed or could be unemployed in the very near future? the answer to that question comes in a quote from mark twain: "even a dog knows the difference between being tripped over and being kicked!" try as he may to distance himself from the present administration, fact of the matter is that john mc cain is no "maverick" he is a lockstep republican and try as he may to deflect the blame to the democrats, the fact of the matter is that the republicans have been in the white house for 8 years and in control of the congress for 7 and the american people are smart enough to know that. as someone else once said, "you can run but you can't hide."

eventually it becomes clear that "trickle down economics" doesn't work now, didn't work in the past and ain't going to work in the future. every time some deficit spending republican gets into office he gives tax cuts to the very wealthy and tells us that the benefits will "trickle down" to you and me, but in reality what happens is that what we is get is not trickled down to, but pissed upon, and the fat cats get fatter and the deficit grows bigger and the republicans still give us jingoistic bromides about how great we are.

my hope is that the neo con wing of the republican party has taken its last breath and the roves and bushs and mc cains and rumsfelds of our political world will finally go into the trash heap of history and maybe then the republican party can regain its moral footing and serve as a true balance to the democrats, who will, if left unchecked themselves, do their own brand of fucking up.

the more i watch our political system at work the more i realize just how right john adams was when he bemoaned the power of the political parties and his fear that the parties themselves will be, if not the death, at least the dearth, of our "great experiment." maybe we should look at letting the other political parties join in as they do in the parlimentary system. that way, seats in congress would be awarded according to percentage of the popular vote. the greens get so many seats, the libertarians get so many, the socialists get so many and so on and so forth. that way the two major parties HAVE to compromise and HAVE to get consencus before enacting which ever of their foolishnesses they are proposing on that day.

now back to the debate: i agree with the cnn group of commentators that said this format sucked and the artificial time limits effectively limited the answers to "stump speach" format. you cannot give detailed, in depth answers to complex questions in two minutes. (hell, most of my "jokes" are over two minutes in length.) then with just a minute to rebut both candidates are ever more restricted. let's have a real debate...what do ya say?

mc cain did himself no favor when he brought up "hair transplants" because it just accentuated his age. people are looking for new answers and thus obama's age works in his favor and mc cain's age works against him. senator mc cain represents the old and failed policies of bush and company and obama represents a new age with new ideas. john mc cain not only still lives in the 20th century, he lives in almost the mid twentieth century whereas obama is the face of the 21st century.

obama's answer to pakistan and osama bin laden was very powerful. "if we know where osama bin laden is and the pakistan government is unable or UNWILLING to go take him out...we will. we will go in to where ever he is and we will kill osama bin laden and destroy al qaida." while americans are not in agreement on iraq and americans may not all be happy with how things are going in afghanistan, we are ALL in agreement on one thing...GO GET THAT MOTHERFUCKER, BIN LADEN, AND EITHER BRING HIM HERE TO AMERICA TO STAND TRIAL FOR MASS MURDER OR KILL HIM. we really don't give a fuck about what pakistan thinks or says. they won't get him....we will. time to quit pussyfooting around. mc cain, on the other hand, was very wishy washy on this question.

while palin is going around the country spouting lies and slander about obama, senator mc cain did not stoop to that in the debate and, for which, i salute him. it could be that mc cain's inner sense of decency held him back and it could be that he just couldn't bring himself to utter the kind of crap that sarah cuty pie is spewing forth. (maybe he remembers the bush campaign in south carolina).

incidently, my thanks to my attorney for the mark twain quote...he used it in another context but it fit this one as well.

well, that's all for tonight. peace be to us all.

who knows what?

BANKING ESTABLISHMENTS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN STANDING ARMIES.

CONQUEST IS NOT IN OUR PRINCIPLES. IT IS INCONSISTANT WITH OUR GOVERNMENT.

I DO NOT FIND IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY ONE REDEEMING FEATURE.

thomas jefferson said the above.

ah, but what did he know?

john mc cain and sarah palin are for deregulation of banks and financial institutions.
john mc cain and sarah palin are for military solutions to diplomatic problems.
john mc cain and sarah palin court, in all ways possible, the backing of orthodox christians.

but they obviously know more than thomas jefferson.

o.j., dodgers, marx, mc cain and ike.

when asked how long the jury had deliberated before convicting o.j. one said, "13 years."

to the day of his acquittal 13 years ago, o.j. goes down. maybe now he can concentrate on finding the "real killers" in the nevada pen since he couldn't find them on the florida golf courses.

dodgers looked really good and (sorry scotty) the cubs looked demoralized. the curse goes on.

marx said that capitalism would fail due to its own greed and decadence. he also said that they would hang the last capitalist with the rope they bought from the next to last capitalist. but, hey not to worry, john mc cain told us two weeks ago that the "fundamentals of the economy were strong." besides no one knows how to tie a hangman's noose any more.

before all of you start screaming out there let me point out that NONE of you are capitalists. a capitalist is someone who lives off his or her money (capital) while the rest of us work for a living. in one of the great scams of language, capitalists have convinced workers that they, the workers, are capitalists when in reality most of us would be what would be accurately called, "free enterprisers" incidentally, the COMMUNIST government of china allows free enterprise to a degree but do not allow (to my knowledge) capitalists. but we all know, because our politicians have told us, that communism does not and cannot work. but our same politicians go to china, hat in hand, and borrow money from them to pay for our wars, our deficit spending, our fiscal irresponsibility and now, our bail out of the capitalist system of wall street. irony escapes most Americans.

while the economy sinks into the good old red, white and blue sunset, john, i am on top of it, mc cain will, from here on out, viciously attack obama on anything and everything. he will be portrayed as a terrorist, a muslim, a crook, etc etc etc but john mc cain will not want to talk about the economy. he will not want to talk about his own support of george w. bush's economic policies. matter of fact, if you listen to mc cain you would think that bush has been dead for quite a while since his name is never mentioned in republican circles anymore. (in one of the states, don't remember which one, republicans have requested that the R in front of their names be replaced with GOP on the ballots; hoping, of course, that americans will be stupid enough not to realize that they are one and the same. "oh no, we are not republicans...we are gopers. LOL)

going back to that statement, "the fundalmentals of the economy are strong" does anyone really believe that he meant the american workers. that fundalmentals and workers are one and the same? ??? joe? jt? come on now, the man is an economic idiot and it is time for all to admit it. we can't afford him nor palin anywhere close to the white house. now is not the time to be fucking around. times are tough and they are going to get much worse. mc cain's love of war and of deregulation disqualifies him from the post of president. palin is....well, you know and i know and the world knows what sarah is.... come on now, she doesn't believe in evolution. how much proof do you need?

the army today announced that from here on out they would concentrate their efforts on "nation building" instead of fighting conventional wars. which means they plan on invading other countries. fucking great. ADAMS HATED THE IDEA OF A STANDING ARMY because he felt that it became a politicial enity unto itself and, as such, would have too large of a say in national direction and policy. (but what did he know) ike warned of the growing influence of the military-industrial complex but what did he know? 1984 anyone? the department of peace. lol.

when they write the history of the united states in, say, 500 years from now they will write this chapter as a very dark comedy. of how we, as a nation, fiddled around while our rome burned.

palin on script, manny r. and rhonda's back.

sarah palin reminds me of some tv stars that i know....dumb as dirt but give them a script and they do quite well. she cannot talk off the cuff and when asked a question that she did not have notes on she adroitly changed the subject and talked about alaska energy or, if all else fails, brought up hockey moms.

she used the goebbels/bush/mc cain tactic of telling lies, even ones that are patently untrue, believing, as j.b said, that if you tell a lie, regardless of how obvious it may be, over and over again then the "people" will begin to believe it to be true and act accordingly. example: the lie that obama will raise taxes on anyone making 42,000 dollars per year. the observent among us noticed that when she was called on this obvious lie, she totally dropped it and went on to the next one. when biden pointed out that only those making a quarter of a million per year would see a tax increase and 95% of us would see a tax break, she then said that small business owners would suffer. biden then pointed out, once again the obvious, that small business owners do not make a quarter of a million dollars per year. you know and i know this is true. surely some of you out there reading this are small business owners.....do you make 250k per year? do you know any small business owners? are they making that? of course not.

having said all that, sarah palin did not hurt the republican cause last night and as far as "debates" go, she did well. i thought biden came across as much more "presidental" and did not once wink at the camera. sarah, when on script, sounds quite confident and is bubbly cute but then again, do you want bubbly cute or thoughtful and knowledgeable?

on to other matters: rhonda had a mri on her back and now we know why the healing process has taken so long: she tore a couple of discs in her back and now has to be treated for that so the healing process is going to take much longer than we thought and there is the slim possiblity that it could get worse.

i have never seen a player come into a team and so completely change that team both on and off the field as manny has done for the dodgers. he has been nothing short of amazing. the dodgers have now won more play off games this year than in the last 20 years combined. with him in the line up the whole attitude of the team has changed and everyone is a more confident and dangerous hitter than they were before his arrival. with fucal back and producing, (how about that bunt for the first rbi?) and torre's steady hand at the helm (the hit and run in the second got the ball rolling) the dodgers now look able to go all the way to the world series. derrick lowe is one of the best money pitchers in the game and billinglsy is the real deal rising star. throw in kershaw from the left side and kurado (sp) and we have a good rotation and the bull pen is solid. go dodgers.

oh, and to my request for those who critize but not using their real names...one did send me his real name and he is someone who always disagrees with me...lol. courage of conviction he does not lack.

on that note, i am only talking about people who post long comments and disagree with my positions and, in some of the cases, attack me personally. if you are only a now and then poster then i don't care but if you are on there all of the time...show some courage. rudy/peter doesn't need to tell me their name...i know it.

the only thing i "know" i am right on is the war in iraq. everything else, shit, i could be totally off the mark. my opinions are just that...an opinion. we all know the old adage about opinions...they are like assholes, we all have one and no one's opinion is fucking gospel.

now the rescue package has been passed by both houses let us all hope that it helps turn this around. we are in bad times and they could get much worse. japan went through this and they did not bail out their banks and their market today is still only 1/3rd of it's value of 19 years ago. it staggered the japanese economy and they still haven't recovered. man oh man.

that is all for today, go dodgers, peace to us all.

mob museums and war criminals

las vegas is building a museum formally called the las vegas museum of organized crime and law enforcement but will be known by one and all as the "mob museum". yesterday, our mayor, oscar goodman who was a lawyer specializing in defending mob guys, modeled the new t-shirts:
it is white with black lettering:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MOB MUSEUM NOR HAVE I EVER BEEN THERE.

i love this town.

re: previous post. one of the writers sent me a bunch of quotes from various politicians from both parties that said saddaam had weapons of mass destruction. they were all wrong. they were politicians playing to their audiences and, as such, they were and are just as guilty (or close to "as guilty") as gwb. clinton bombed iraq for his entire 8 years in offices and his cowardly punk-assedparty hacks had to tow the party line...they didn't want to call their beloved president a murderer but he was one. the united nations inspectors, however, called for more time because they could find no evidence of wmd's but bushie jr. had to have his little war. if the united states were to fall and war crime tribunals were to be set up then many on both sides of the aisle would be in the dock.

after the first gulf war (which, incidentally was a set up by bushie I...check out the days before s.h. invaded kuwait he came to our ambassador (don't remember her name but this is also public record) and told her that he was thinking of invading kuwait because, in the iraqi mind, kuwait and it's oil and port were actually part of iraq. over the years, iraq had gone to the u.n. to voice their point and the good ol' us of a used the veto power to block iraq's claims. our ambassador then told him that we would look at this as an "internal matter" and would not intervene. iraq invades. and then so do we. (incidentally since i have MANY iranian ((persian, as they prefer)) friends and several of them travel back and forth to the middle east and they tell me and rhonda that the kuwait people think of us, the usa, as their servants.) and, by the way, how many kuwaiti troops are in Afghanistan or iraq helping our troops? but anyway, after that war which was right after the iraq/iran war saadaam's war making powers were depleted to almost nothing. he could not, however, let this be known. why? well obviously it would make his enemies feel that they could engage him in another war and by winning, divvy up his vast oil reserves. as a result of this, s.h. had to keep up a front of being armed and dangerous but the fact of the matter is he was militarily impotent. hell, how many dog fights were there over baghdad when we invaded THIS time? none. why? he didn't even have any planes much less icbm's. AND WE KNEW THIS AND SO DID THE U.N.

over these past two years of blogging i have made it clear that i blame every single one who voted for the iraqi war responsible for the murders of thousands. we have one party, the war party and i have said that before. so, for you critics out there who post anonymously, read all of the posts before you make your claims about my partisanship.

all of this leads to why i support senator barack obama: he was against this war. i believe that he is our best hope to end the stranglehold that our military industrial complex has over our government. f.d.r. once told a group of activists, "i agree with everything you say; now go out and make me do it!" obama is new. he is not beholden to the m.i.c. and i believe he is operating out of a firm desire to make america better, to lead us back to what our founders had in mind, a country that was willing to trade with all but never to involved in foreign affairs by not allying ourselves with any other countries other than our immediate neighbors. i plan on holding his feet to the fire as much as i can. i do not agree with all his positions nor ideas but he does not seem to be in the warmongering mode of john mc cain. i realize that i could be wrong and if i am, then god help us because eventually the world will unite against us.

as far as Afghanistan goes, we should never have called this a "war" but instead called it a "manhunt" for a criminal gang. we, obviously, cannot let a criminal such as osama bin laden to attack us and then do nothing about it but attacking countries is not the way to bring him to justice and is not the way to bring peace to any region. it is patently ridiculous to say we are bring peace and democracy at the barrel of a gun.

what did Afghanistan do to us? their only sin was to say that they would not turn over osama bin laden based on just our president's say-so that he was involved. would we do it the same way if the situation was reversed? say someone was here legally and a foreign country, say russia, said that someone had done something horrible to russians but they offered up no proof other than putin's word...would we turn over that person? i don't think so. Afghanistan is not really a "nation" as much as it is a group of warlords each controlling a given part of the "country". in my opinion, now that we have invaded, what we should do is concentrate all of our energies on capturing o.b.l and once that is accomplished get out of dodge. let that hellhole of a place sort their own problems out. it is not our concern.

none of those places in the middle east would be our concern if we were energy independent. you talk about national security then come up with something other than middle east oil to fuel our country. we can do it if we put our time and energy and money into making it happen.

each party has it's own group (for lack of a better word) that it caters to; the republicans are the party of corporations and the democrats are the party of minorities. neither is really the party of the middle class. obama can change that, john mc cain cannot. will obama do it? i hope so but don't know so. what we need is a government of all of us. we need to unite. we need to get the hacks out of washington but our present system is money driven and when money is involved favors are expected. obama has raised tens of millions from ordinary people, he has many more individual contributors than mc cain does. he therefore is more beholden to large groups of just plain ol' people and i hope and pray that he remembers that when he gets into office.

while i am in this frame of mind let me also say that, once again, in my opinion, the republicans are much more culpable in this financial mess than the democrats are but neither party is blameless. the republican's mantra of less regulation and no government interference in the market led to this free for all but many democrats went along. that is what hacks do, they go along instead of being a person of conscience and following their own heart and mind.

almost every politician who runs under the banner of the two parties has compromised themselves in various and sundry ways. if you want to see how this works in the extreme then watch louisiana politics...lol. they are so corrupt they are laughable. once i heard a radio commercial for one of them that basically said "i am a better crook than my opponent!" gads!

but on murder, there is no forgiveness, there is no excuse, there is no legitimate reason. iraq had never done anything to us. they were not a threat. they could not hurt us if they tried. there were no weapons of mass destruction. we did not take every avenue to let the u.n. finish it's work. we rushed to war. our representatives did not even read the intelligence report that the war was based on. (well, 9 did but hillary and johnny mac were not among them and the 9 that did read it, 8 voted against the war). the Nuremberg trials faced this issue and some, but not all, of the so-called politicians of germany, were held accountable. some were excused because they were fairly low level and did not really have any power to stop hitler. very few german politicians of that day had the moral courage to stand up for what is right and because of their silence, germany paid a horrible but fully deserved price. you think it can't happen here? that is what they thought. (i once sent out a letter with the german translation of "it can't happen here" but i can't find my copy...)

now here is the thing about america; if you don't like my views...don't read them. but, on the other hand, if you do disagree and want to comment, keep it to the post involved and i would have a lot more respect for you if you included your real name and your email address; if you don't want others to know it you can send it to my hrshock@cox.net address and i won't post it on my blog. see, when i put these things out there, you have my real name, my real address and you can find my real telephone number if you tried. i do not hide behind false names, i am not afraid of my fellow man. i stand on a stage with just me and a microphone and make people laugh for a living both conservatives and liberals. i call all men my brother and all women my sister. be they black or white or brown or yellow or iraqi or russian or american or mexican or ..
and if i make you angry, then so be it; consider it a "family" fight.

sorry scotty, but go dodgers. if they, by some miracle, make the world series i will cancel gigs and, someway or another, come up with tickets and go to my first world series game. i have been to bowl games and a super bowl and mlb divisional playoffs but never to a world series or a ncaa regional (much more fun than final four) and before i die, by god, the dodgers are going to get to one and i will be there! (if the cubbies come back and beat the dodgers, i will be pulling for them to go all the way)

rock and roll and peace to us all.

into the chicago night

in houston, one of the radio announcers used to say, whenever a houston pitcher walked a lead off man, "oh, dem bases on balls." well, the cubs should learn that expression, ryan dempster, who normally is a good control pitcher, walked the bases loaded with two outs and then gave up a grand slam...oh dem bases on balls. dodgers win! now the cubbies have to win 3 out of the next 4 and that won't be easy. can the dodgers lose? absolutely. will they? probably not. go dodgers.


tomorrow night, that shining light of republican thought, sarah palin, will debate joe biden. gun toting, moose killing, serially pregnant, tax raising, pork (the financial kind) eating, book banning, bridge to nowhere promoting, nonbeliever in evolution, pitbull with lipstick, joe six pack pandering, bright eyed, bushy tailed sarah, who has trouble answering even the simplest of questions, is going to be in a debate with a united states senator. for real! rome burns and sarah could be vice president. lordy lordy.

market goes down
market goes up
market holds steady
(still down but holding)
what gives?

now the senate has added some more billions to the bill they have passed another version and now we all wait for the representatives to come back from jewish holiday and give us their verdict.

for those of you who don't read the comments, one of them told me that this is all the democrat's fault.

you gotta love republicans; they are always good for a laugh. and a deficit. and an illegal war or two. and always an excuse, a blame, a name to call.

we have secret prisons. it is the democrats who run them, you know.
we torture people. damn those democrats.
there were no wmd's in iraq....the democrats must have hidden them.
and brownie did a great job...it was the liberal press that did him under
we haven't caught the one person who was responsible for 9-11, osama bin laden...the democrats are hiding him out.
the markets crashed, wall street in shambles and it is all the democrat's fault.
and george is just unlucky
and sarah palin is a genius who keeps getting asked "gotcha questions" such as "what newspapers do you read?" damn that liberal press. trying to make her look bad.

do you know if you make a 5 dollar contribution to planned parenthood in sarah palin's name they will send her a thank you note. (here is her address) sarah palin c/o, mc cain for president/sarah palin , 1235 s. clark street, 1st floor, arlington, va. 22202

website for planned parenthood donations is https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

send this to your women friends so they can make a contribution to pp and get a good laugh out of it as well.

p.s. sarah believes that humans and dinosars walked the earth at the same time. she could be the vice president of the united states. and there are millions of people who are going to vote for mc cain/palin in november.

"you can fool some of the people all of the time." yep.

and one other thing while i am rambling here....those people who post comments hardly ever stick to the subject of my blog, they just go off on some tangent. they don't make arguments against or for my points, just some twisting of facts and evasions of the obvious. always against democrats or obama or me but NEVER for mc cain or his policies. Never FOR palin, just against the ones who are aghast at her. but remember, they are not racists. they just can't think of why they are for mc cain, but they have lots of reasons, most of which don't make any sense, of why they are against senator obama. but they aren't racists. one of them said that a big part of the housing problems is that we let minorities buy houses. but he is not a racist. "obama is an empty suit". is that brilliant reasoning or what? the editor of the harvard law review, the professor of constitutional law, the united states senator is an empty suit. and a nigger, of course.

none of them have ever addressed my point about bush starting an illegal and immoral war in iraq, a country that had no weapons of mass destruction, that did not have ties to al qaida, that had never done anything to us. they do not address the deaths of over 4,000 american boys and girls and the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of iraqis. no, they don't want to talk about that. fascist motherfuckers. opps did i say that? they don't want to talk about torture and secret prisons. fascist motherfuckers. opps, there i go again. they don't want to talk about bush, you know the one they voted for and would vote for again if they could, who signed habeous corpus away, who said that the constitution and the geneva conventions did not apply whenever national security was involved. fascist motherfuckers. they want to talk about how the democrats ruined the economy. if they weren't so dangerous to life and liberty they would be comical.

no, of course you're not racists.
no, of course you're not facists.
you're just republicans.

LOL