I knew Barney Frank back in 1984. My organization worked with him

to get a Russian Jewish dentist out and into Israel. Those were tricky times...he helped in many ways as a young Congressman. He spent many hours with us on this project. It was the first time that a Soviet dentist was legally allowed to emigrate. Trust me, it was a very big deal...at that time!

So as some of you might recall,

I'm a big Jean Shepherd fan, have over 1100 of his radio shows and listen to them in earbuds all night when I awaken due to bathroom needs or general anxiety/insomnia.

So of course I watched A Christmas Story for about the 300th time today and noticed something pretty interesting in light of recent events. At the very end, when Ralphie goes to sleep, cradling his Red Ryder BB gun, the barrel is nowhere to be seen, although the stock protrudes from the left and would be pointed at his brother sleeping in th next bed. My guess is that they cut off the stock and placed it well from a cinematic POV, but non-threatening,since the whole point of the film was that he came close to shooting his eye out. I could be wrong about this, but my family noticed it as well when I brought it to their attention.

Guns,man...always dangerous.

"Phony-tough and crazy-brave"

First written many years ago by Stewart Alsop in describing the Watergate burglars, this phrase of course is best-known for its use in the Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket. Alsop of course was describing all the President's Men's swagger and their (at the time) unbelievable 'loyalty' to the re-election of the President - Nixon of course.

We now have an entire nation of tough guys and swaggering assholes, who make pronouncements from behind their munitions, reverentially stored in hopefully-locked cabinets in their homes. Clinging to their guns, as a great man once said, they are obsessional hobbyists who, instead of building little ships in bottles or collecting stamps from countries with funny-sounding names, vacation at camps where they have the opportunity to discharge thousands of rounds of .50 caliber ammunition at junked autos, and the like. And good for them to have fun - as an American it is a Constitutional right to have fun and we know this because there are the words "pursuit of happiness" and there's nothing that makes these folk happier than a warm gun, to paraphrase another great man. Who was shot dead by a handgun...but that's not important today. And yes, of course, Mr. Lennon was not referring to a 'gun' literally, he may have been referring to a syringe and needle...or maybe not.

Speaking of Mr. Lennon, Mr Marx comes to mind: not Karl, but Groucho, who could not have possibly had the creativity to write the inane and dangerous speech of that tinhorn Albert Speer, the Nazi armaments minister. (Don't much like Nazi comparisons? Sorry about that...(not really)). In all the years in which I have watched this RW machine excuse its atrocities of public policy, its unnecessary wars, its general insanity, I have never seen anything as blatant as this and only Pat Buchanan's' 1992 Convention speech comes close in its obvious fascist intent. Of course the irony is that just a few weeks ago we were hearing about the virtually criminal manner in which the teachers and their unions were destroying the fabric of America, and now this lowlife and his minions wish to arm them to the teeth. The depth of their hatred and contempt is something about which we should all be afraid.

So rather than cower, I say that we should take up the charge to de-fang and reduce this movement to the thinness which it deserves. I call for unconditional surrender of those who would allow assault weapons to be held by private individuals in this country by making their possession illegal in all states and territories. Cold, dead hands, indeed.

Wayne LaPierre has Hitler Hair...

Whilst watching this fool, I was reminded of that photo of that courtroom full of Nazis at Nuremberg. He has that same
Visage: ferret-like, angry, coldly explaining his solution to problems which involves extreme violence for the good of the country. This man and his minions are the Illinois Nazis immortalized in the Blues Brothers film, except that this isn't a joke or fiction. These people are real, and he is the face of evil and death. It is pure sociopathy which lives behind those dead eyes, but fear not...

We are coming to take our country back from these radicals.

Meanwhile, it's 12/21/12, and 54 degrees and teeming, pouring rain in Philly,

It feels like the middle of Spring out there, and stuff is trying to bloom...maybe it IS the end of the world...as we knew it.

We NEVER had weather like this here so close to Christmas. Not for weeks at a time...maybe one or two days, but that was usually in earlier December.

WTF?

Hey!! Lurking Conservatives...Yeah, YOU!

You mindless numbskulls with your paranoid agendas, trying to prove this or that about the shooting at Newtown...listen up:

The reasons, THE REASONS, that this occurred are multiple and variegated, but two of them have to do with you directly:

1. Number one reason is that you have promulgated violence and hatred as a signature issue. Your hatred of the President, now re-elected, has been associated with calls to violence, such as your heroine and heroin, Sarah Palin's call to "Reload" and that little stunt of hers with the cross-hairs a few years ago, just to name two of many. Your dog-whistles to the Klansmen, to the Birchers, to the Skinheads, and in fact, to all of the militant in the country has begun to bear fruit. We are going to see more of your effective presentations and we are going to see them occur more rapidly. Your race-baiting hatred of the President, your calls for Secession, (how patriotic and Constitutional of you!), your calling out of the Jews and thus your anti-intellectualism exemplified by your hatred of teachers and educational administrators and educators in general, your vilification of anything thoughtful, decent, kind, or altruistic, your willingness to state that the killing of an individual who exists and works within the law of the land is Christian and justified, and Right depending upon the perceived sin or self-described atrocity which they have committed, such as the assassination of physicians who perform abortions legally. You have wreaked death and destruction upon many innocents all in a so-called War which you have declared upon the American People and the Constitution of the United States. But most of you do not know about war: you have never served in the armed forces of this or any other country, you have never seen the effects of, say between three and eleven rounds from a weapon entering and, worse, exiting a small child, you have not one ounce of sense or sensibility in this or quite frankly, any other regard. You have no concept of battlefield injuries and death, you lionize individuals like John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis who literally played heroes on stage and screen, but never saw combat or served their country. You never mention such thoughtful individuals such as Jimmy Stewart, who flew lead bomber in many missions during the Second World War, because he never spent all of his time in braggadocio. You are chicken-hawks, willing to have other people die for your beliefs, but in general you have never considered leaving the comforts of our civilization here.

2. Number two reason is that you deny the need for mental health treatment and funding. You have no intellectual concept of the notion of how disease works, you don't even understand the complexities of the major organ systems, and the vast majority would not even know why an antibiotic does not work against a cold or influenza virus, but you certainly are experts on the nuances of mental disorders including the unbelievably complex biochemistry of the brain. You are not trained and you quite frankly do not wish to know. You delight in your ignorance and once again, your anti-intellectualism.


Well, the joke is on you. Like your attempt to disenfranchise the poor and minorities of many states, your plan has horribly backfired. Just think: the Prince of Men, Romney might be President-elect today if you hadn't done all this, but you awakened a sleeping giant and they were resolved to prove you inadequate to your task. And they won and you lost. Here again, your insistence of the legality of horrendous weaponry, designed only to kill human beings, has bitten you badly. If somehow we can prevail and rescind people's right to bear weapons of ridiculously high danger to the populus, then the real heroes of the battle will be those shot to death in this most-horrifying incident in Newtown, Connecticut. The fact that you support a philosophy which includes the private ownership and use of Teflon-coated ammunition, designed to penetrate the otherwise bullet-proof vests of law enforcement officers, speaks volumes about your lack of patriotism, your dearth of civic-mindedness, and your dislike of law and order and the principles which govern us as a civil society. It is simply disgraceful and intellectually, if I may use that term, embarrassing.

Bork was the equivalent of emperor Palpatine when I was in college...

after he fired Archibald Cox, he became the second-most-hated after Nixon in our little neck of the woods in Rochester, NY. When Nixon resigned during the summer, those of us working on campus put up a sign that said:

"They fired the shit heard round the world"

Little did we reckon that we would have to deal with Bork for another 40 years...

CNN should justs STFU already and let us experience this...nt

Two dentally-related gun stories with associated whack-jobs...

1. About thirty years ago, I had a patient who was a Philadelphia Sherriff's Deputy who carried a weapon. One day, this asshole came in, more manic than usual, withdrew his gun from the holster and placed it on top of my radiator with the barrel pointing right at me. He thought that was funny. I very quickly moved out of the way, told him to holster it and either wear the holster or hang it so the weapon was pointing down towards the floor. He complied, laughing the whole time, called me a pussy, etc. he was dismissed from the department a couple years later for unspecified actions. His comrades-in-arms all said that he was "nuts".

2. There were two dentists, both now deceased, who worked on Vine Street in a union-based dental practice. I interviewed with the guy who was known as The Fat Man, about 425 pounds or so, and while I'm being interviewed, he ate a whole 16" hoagie by putting one end of it in his mouth and shoving the other end forward, like a garbage conveyor. He didn't stop chewing for an instant, talking with his mouth full the entire time. Anyway, he and his partner carried openly in belt holsters located at the small of the back. I believe the weapon of choice for the Fat Man was a .38. When he asked me if I had any questions. I asked him if it would be ok if I carried if he hired me. He asked me if I had a gun and I said no, and whipped out my Gravity Knife which I used to carry all of the time, and flipped it open in one quick move. It was an acquired skill. He stopped chewing for a minute and gave me one of those big smiles, and offered me the job right there. I politely declined by phone the next day.

Crazy motherfuckers...all three of us, there. Four if you count the first story. I was very good with the knife...years of butchering in food preparation and throwing practice as well. Scares me today, what mistakes I could have made then.

"Gun control" in Pennsylvania....

Those of you from elsewhere might wonder why PA is always regarded as a swing state when we have these two gigantic metropolitan areas which should make us deep blue. The reason is that the rest of the state...well, let me relate a story to you:

I have a friend, originally from NY, who married a lady from outside Williamsport, located in the north central portion of the state. He moved up the and gave me a perspective as to the mindset of those who reside there. He said, "The real unemployment rate up here is close to 40%, what with Sylvania and Bethlehem Steel closing. If a political candidate could actually promise full employment, new schools, repaved roads to replace the horrors of driving up here, water and sewer, and cable TV which is reliable along with better rural electrification, but he or she wanted to ban private ownership of bazookas and tanks, he or she would lose in a landslide. That's how Narrow the thinking is up here."

And he had an arsenal: four rifles, two shotguns, a working WWII Luger, and enough ammo to hold off the Revenoors, as Snuffy Smith used to call them, for days. He had a closet filled with all kinds of rounds, and said to me in all seriousness, "This is nothin'. You should see some homesteads, they look like Ft. Bragg."

So a few years ago, and I had posted this at the time, he called me up and said,"I feel like Jed Clampett. They told me my worthless land was filled with frackable material and I'm rich now. Unbelievable." He moved to Florida and retired more or less at age 52. He gave away his guns to his brother-in-law.

Oh yes, he was known as a 'pacifist' up there, 'cause he wasn't totin' any REAL weaponry, or, as they pronounce it up there at times, "weepins".