He’s telegenic, he’s a lawyer by education and degree, he’s sufficiently analytical, he’s got a network show and books very fine guests….

So he’s in the middle of a serious discussion and out pops the question: “Well, you know what Jay-Z says?”

I turned to my wife and gave two answers:

1. Yes, he said: “I just flushed my motherfucking earbuds down the fucking toilet. Fuck!”

2. (A much saner response). “No, but I know what George Bernard Shaw said….”

I know that John Oliver did a great piece on Ari but my God…it’s so lame. He needs to stop.

It is primitive, but it works every single fucking time. All of us remember when he was supposed to give a speech all those years ago and was an hour and 15 minutes late routinely, and the camera would be fixed on an empty podium, and the commentators would be talking about him incessantly. In no way, shape, or form can anyone buy airtime like this for anything at all whatsoever.

Obviously, by stating that he was going to be indicted on a given day, that would cause incessant discussion from the moment he announced that to that day and beyond, precluding anything else that might be newsworthy. This whole business with him reminds me of a friend of mine, who in his 20s, took up with this woman who literally would not let him out of bed. She essentially destroyed his life by appealing to the basest of instincts, and he became addicted to that attention. He knew better, the entire time, but there he was, missing work, not interacting with anyone else, and diving into ruin. Of course, she left him for someone else on a moment’s notice, and there he was, empty, jobless, bereft, mourning the “love of his life“ and has never been the same since.

This is how the media is with this jerkoff. They can’t stop themselves, and in a crazy way you can make a case that Trump gets much more press than Biden does, and even if he’s not the president, he is certainly the primary focus of attention in this nation and in his warped mind, that may actually be good enough. This whole thing is just so fucking sick and repulsive and the worst part is that years from now people in charge will throw up their hands and say, what were we to do? Or deny that this ever happened.

Which reminds me on this anniversary of the Iraq war of my classmate, who, years after the war, when we were discussing the complete and utter fallacy of its being, said “who would’ve known that?” Well, I replied, just about anybody with a brain… including the thousands who protested who could tell it was all lies a priori. How did we know? Because they said it was true.

What a circus we are living in.

Many years ago in the 1980’s I treated the lawyer who was ultimately responsible for what was the first major Savings and Loan collapse which presaged the crisis, Sunrise Savings and Loan. The situation made not local, not national, but international news. This guy’s name was in every major paper and tv network in the world, and I was in the middle of major treatment of him and his wife.

Within two days, I had seen them both and I’m going to give you the story, well rehearsed, that they gave me:

“This has all been good news for us and our firm. We have many people who are enlisting our services for themselves and we had to take the phones off the hook because we can’t handle the business. All this media-based nonsense will pass. Nothing illegal happened and even if we are indicted no jury would ever find against us. We are American heroes who are smarter and shrewder than anyone else.”

Well, you know what happened with the S and L crisis…this particular fellow supervised the disappearance of over $400,000,000 and it was just the very beginning of the nightmare. But the lesson to be learned is that the sociopath, which he was, knows exactly how to manage any event including catastrophe. That’s TFG’s methodology-he’s saying that multiple indictments will catapult him into the WH.

As a post-script: the lawyer/banker I talked about is living in abject poverty, never had a good day again.

All these folks on the teevee machine are presently debating the strength of Bragg’s case, the fact of the matter is that we have absolutely no idea what the charges are. There have been many hours of testimony and who knows how many documents and recordings. It is entirely possible that the Stormy Daniels case is a fake out: that they’ve got him on felonious behavior which far transcends the legal implications of her case, albeit there is no question that she was paid to shut her mouth prior to the voting and this, coupled with the FBI’s move with Hillary’s emails was sufficient to give this prick the election.

Bragg apparently initially didn’t want to perform but again IMO something else was a catalyst which made it impossible to ignore.

I know it’s simplistic but hey…so is the simpleton in question .

Hoping and “praying”.

Here in Philly, there was a fundraiser at a restaurant, called Jack’s Firehouse, and the guest speaker was none other than Pat Schroeder. It was a big crowd, we were waiting for her, and I was standing at the top of the steps, and finally she arrived and said hello to everybody with that nice smile that she had shaking hands and when she got up to the top of the steps, she said hello to me and I congratulated her on doing so well against Robert Novak the night before on CNN’s Crossfire.

She clasped my hand and started talking to me about the show, and the particulars of what had been discussed, and the state representative, who was escorting her, said “representative, we need to go in the back”. I presume that she meant that she was going to have to meet with the big money donors .

Well, the representative turned her, and in an extremely harsh voice, said “when I’m finished speaking with this gentleman, then I will accompany you, and you’re just going to have to wait.“ Then she turned back to me, put the smile back on her face, and said, “now where were we?… Oh, yes… “ And we finished the conversation.

That state representative, whom I knew from various political get togethers, never spoke to me again, - she would walk right past me without saying hello, because she thought that I had dissed her, which, of course I had not. She kind of disappeared from the scene , having married a rich doctor, and not having to worry about much I suppose.

Whilst showering at the ungodly hour of 4:45 AM, I was considering when these indictments might come down and I thought of a passage from Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island wherein a pirate ship threatens the castaways/colonists. All seems lost, but then:

“The colonists’ situation was desperate. Their retreat was discovered. They could not oppose any obstacle to these missiles, nor protect the stone, which flew in splinters around them. There was nothing to be done but to take refuge in the upper passage of Granite House, and leave their dwelling to be devastated, when a deep roar was heard, followed by frightful cries!

Cyrus Harding and his companions rushed to one of the windows—

The brig, irresistibly raised on a sort of water-spout, had just split in
two, and in less than ten seconds she was swallowed up with all her criminal crew!”

****************************

I’m awaiting….with bated breath, the swallowing of this criminal crew. . I believe it’s going to be a cascade of indictments, but I’m often mistaken….🙏

Suella Braverman who is the Home Secretary who made those xenophobic statements which have caused all the ruckus in Great Britain, of Indian descent, was actually named after the Sue Ellen Ewing character from the TV show Dallas.

Which reminds me of a story from many years ago, when I had a patient named Brandy. We got to talking one day, and I mentioned that that was a hit song which I absolutely despised when I was in college. She proceeded to tell me that she was actually named after that song because both her parents loved it so much. It taught me a valuable lesson: to not make such statements in the workplace to people who are essentially strangers . You just never ever know…

Go for broke.

She should find a judge who will sign criminal warrants on the charge of Obstruction of Justice for all the legislators who voted for this “law”. Have them served and watch the fun begin.

B cause that’s EXACTLY what they’re doing.

Lock them up!!

I was thinking to myself, as I was driving home from a long day at work, listening to MSNBC live stream on the radio of my car, that the Republicans from the beginning of their, as far as I’m concerned, purloined Congress, have utterly and completely fucked up. It’s as though they’re a football team that has possession of the ball, fumbles it, kicks it around, and finally gets knocked out the back of their own end zone for a two point safety and loss of possession. Yes, I know most of you hate Football analogies, but this one I believe is apt.

Over the years, I have known a fair number of Philadelphia politicians and their staffs. Now we have had a reasonable number of morons in public office here, and I mean morons. The joke we used to make is that you could add up the IQs of half of the city council and still have a two digit number when you were done . I cannot begin to tell you how incredibly stupid some of these people were, and I have firsthand knowledge of their idiocy. We had one guy who did not renew his drivers license as a sitting council person and decided that that was unnecessary and of course, was caught in the act, and , again “of course, it destroyed his political career. He actually had the temerity to say to me personally, that there is no reason for him to have to go through nonsense at the DMV because he was an important person. The absurdity was staggering. We also had elected representatives who were functionally illiterate to the point where they could not read my consent forms prior to treatment and used the famous, well-worn excuse that they “had forgotten their glasses”.

We also had many uneducated individuals, but they were people who possessed a lot of street smarts and were very very clever, and although they were not formally educated, I would say that they were in their own way. Brilliant in the scope of reading people, manipulating people, and advancing their “cause“.

One thing each of these individuals had in common is that they had on his or her staff, an absolutely brilliant, educated, substantive person who had terrific insight and abilities which reached far beyond those of the individual for whom they worked. I knew a few of these people, and they were remarkable in their own right. When Frank Rizzo was mayor of Philadelphia, he had two men working for him, who in their prime were extremely bright: Hillel Levinson, and Martin Weinberg. These were two of the shrewdest individuals I have ever met and easily could work at the federal level as policy-makers and fixers.

Which brings me to my point: I don’t think idiots like Gym Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Lauren Boebert have anyone like this. They achieve notoriety, and yes, I mean notoriety, by mouthing off in the extreme and being horrifyingly aggressive in all respects. But there is no second act for these people. That’s why it became so easy to parry their now well-worn out thrusts which of course the President did so brilliantly during his State of the Union speech. This is why Jordan’s attempt at disparaging the Democrats has fallen way short, not only because he has no facts to back up his case but importantly, there is no creativity or shrewdness here. He’s just another dumb fuck who looks and sounds like a dumb fuck. And that’s what happens to these people.

The reason I know this to be the case, is this for many years I treated this one popular but incredibly stupid elected official and his staff from his office. As I indicated before, one of his people was one of these very very sharp individuals, who was his legislative aide titularly, but was serving as his “brain“. This poor gentleman, who was actually a very nice guy, died suddenly of a heart attack, and that was the last anyone ever heard from this elected official, who lost badly in the primary, which, in Philadelphia for elected official, is extremely hard to do. It was as though the puppeteer died, and the puppet thought it could wave around, and continue to perform. As we knew with our former president, in one sense he is sharp, because he was able to snooker a great many Americans into believing that he was their savior, but in fact he did not possess the intellectual capabilities to further his goals, and did not surround himself with individuals who were bright enough and forceful enough to guide him in the “right“ direction by convincing him to show certain restraint or humanism, which, thank God for that, probably saved democracy in America.

I will leave you with an anecdote: those of us old enough to remember Mayor Frank Rizzo, remember the fascist reign which he exercised over the city of Philadelphia, and thus over the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in terms of voting bloc, and the iconic photo of him in a tuxedo with a knight stick in his cummerbund. Rizzo, in his own right was a tinhorn Mussolini, but following his departure, he was remembered by the vast number of people for being the mayor under whom a policy was enacted such that senior citizens could ride free on public transportation, at first in off peak hours, but it quickly evolved to all hours, and all transportation, including trains. This legacy, which continues to today, is a fantastic benefit for the citizens of all ages because younger people don’t have to take off work or worry about child care to drive their elderly parents with limited income around. This was conceived by his deputy, and made Rizzo a hero among a great number of individuals of all races in the city. It was positively frightening to hear African Americans positively talking about a man who declared war on their neighborhoods and on their people. He did use the police as the Gestapo, but if mom could get a free ride… we’ll, forget about the public strip searches and clubbing a and grotesque police abuse. He’s the hero. It’s funny how you can buy somebody’s soul for the equivalent of a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

Starting with Braden and Buchanan which evolved into Novak, Kinsley, and others.

I must’ve watched hundreds of these, but the one I remember, the one I will never forget, is the one where at the end of the show when just the two moderators were there exchanging conclusions and debate points, Pat Buchanan said to Michael Kinsley “After abortion we’re coming after birth control.“. And Kinsley just sort of waved his hand dismissively and said “Oh come on Pat, don’t be ridiculous.“ I remember thinking that you take these fascists at their word, unlike liberals who tend to overpromise, and then deliver moderation, fascists go for the throat every time. We see that now in this incarnation of 1930s Germany in which we live.

The other more humorous moment which I distinctly recall, was that in one episode Novak had obviously lost one of his crowns on his front tooth, and the cameraman instead of staying back was shooting his face so you could see the preparation of the tooth and the fact that he had lost the crown. If the cameraman and the Director had liked Novak, they would’ve just panned backwards, and on the old analog TV sets you might or might not have noticed it. But there was no missing this. I remember running around my house looking for a camera so I could take a picture of it but had no film.

When Novak died I was pleased that no one would ever again be subjected to that horrifying scowl and sneer. He was mean and nasty.