Monday, July 8, 2013

Exploding Cigar


A thousand years ago when I was just a kid, it was customary for a new father to pass out cigars, proudly announcing that he and his wife successfully procreated, adding yet another human to the world's purposeless billions.  On the other hand, one could easily purchase exploding cigars at a novelty shop, assuring the unsuspecting "gift" recipient of an unpleasant experience upon lighting up.

Intended originally as President Obama's and Hillary Clinton's shining example of lives and government reborn and made better as the "Arab Spring" proceeded, Egypt now instead fundamentally transforms into a deeply miscalculated exploding cigar, and "newborn" president Morsi, representative thug of the brutally thuggish Muslim Brotherhood, inevitably became the child nobody with even a modicum of common sense wants playing in a nursery equipped with the toys of radical Islam.  Should he experience continuing presidential unemployment, assuming the Egyptian army releases him, it's probably not unreasonable to expect an appearance on "Dancing with the Stars," in a likely futile attempt to revitalize his sagging sharia law-loving image. 

The moderates of Egypt, and Egypt's military -- a military which enjoyed a long history of cooperation and friendship with the United States, until Obama and H. Clinton went all out to destroy everything moderate in the Middle East via moronic decisions, willingly turning over the keys to the radical Muslim Brotherhood -- offer a glimmer of hope, though revolution at this point won't necessarily end up with a good result.

Can not a significant portion of everything on fire in the Middle East be pinned upon the Obama Administration and its perpetually nonsensical tactics, paucity of common sense or decisions made by nothing more or less than a cluster of horses' asses who believed everything they learned from university professors who should have been locked up in mental institutions long before they invaded classrooms and poisoned young, innocent minds still incapable of critical thinking?  This is what's running our country as chaos reigns in the Middle East.

The thing is -- one need not have been a genius to predict the bitter fruit destined to be yielded via the so-called "Arab Spring."  Libya, Egypt -- and next, what's up in Syria. then Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the rest?  A common barnyard chicken could have calculated the high probability of this mess -- yet there was the mainstream media, praising and encouraging "democracy" in the Middle East.  Morsi's idea of democracy, regrettably, involved extremist Islam and authoritarian rule, and that was hardly the package he sold to voters during the elections.

Hey Egypt -- did a lot of you ever feel like maybe you elected the wrong person to lead your country?  Yeah, some of us in the USA know exactly how you feel. 

When I posted mummy movie photos and made fun of the "Mummies' Brotherhood" a couple of years ago, my intention was not be to be humorous, but to demonstrate that the Muslim Brotherhood is not cute and not worthy of tolerance in the civilized world.  Unfortunately, somebody seems to have put all his chips on the MB's integrity, to the point of inviting its good ol' boys into the White House.  Fortunately, a significant percentage of Egyptian people feel otherwise about this gang of throwbacks from centuries past.

If large numbers of Americans burned with the sort of rage engulfing fired-up Egyptians right now, Obama would be impeached, at the very least, Hillary would never be allowed to run for any office ever again, Holder would be held responsible for his actions, IRS officials would be  convicted, Napolitano would be grilled about the intentions and purchases in the name of Homeland Security -- and the prisons which some in government intend for us would instead be populated by they.  And people such as Clapper, who blatantly lied to Congress and later "apologized" -- and he's apparently not alone -- would also answer to the U.S. justice system in earnest.  But no, political considerations give everybody a free ride except you and me.  We're not in the club, only way down in the caste system.

Most of us want to be on the right side of history, attempting to do the right thing every day, but the white and black hats are just morphing into too many shades of gray (yes, more than 50 shades. . .) in the U.S. and abroad.  

Meanwhile, a substantial portion of Obamacare's assault on national health care was just pushed under a rock by his staff, destined to remain there -- conveniently, but, oh, surely not intentionally -- until after the 2014 midterm elections.  This was the biggie involving the employer mandate, a piece of legislation resulting in expenses and trouble for everybody, almost guaranteed to result in huge job losses all over the country.  Say what you want about the Republicans (and we can), but the infamous Affordable Care Act mess was voted upon in the House with 100 percent Democrat support and, thanks to a little strangely applied assistance from Chief Justice Roberts, this boondoggle, quickly escalating in cost, will soon grab Americans who (as usual) weren't paying attention right by the throat.  Maybe those who otherwise put their faith in 'news" issued by bought-and-paid-for members of the propaganda media should have had a clue about the future when congressional sorceress Nancy Pelosi explained that we needed to pass the bill before we could know what was in it.  What b.s.  No wonder I suddenly have such measured respect for the moderates in Egypt, who knew right away that they were being subverted.

We strive to reiterate that the government should have played a minimal role in the health care system, allowing instead that thousands of insurance companies, via good old-fashioned American competition, compete across state lines to offer real and truly affordable choices for everybody.  One page of federal government legislation would surely beat more than two thousand pages of ongoing legal entanglements.  This fresh hell is just beginning, and I wouldn't wish to be a congressional representative when folks finally interrupt their digital TV entertainment hypnosis to learn what's been done to them.  May I suggest stock options in torch and pitchfork factories?

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama gives away billions of dollars to help Africa build non-green power plants while our own infrastructure crumbles.  Congress, where are you?

IS THERE A PILL FOR THAT?   Just great, now that well-known doctors' union, the American Medical Association -- and physicians generally raise their hackles when one suggests the A.M.A. is a doctors' union -- has classified obesity as a disease.  If you think diet fads are all over the map, wait until the drug companies get into this act. . .and speaking of the drug manufacturing cult. . .

JUST WATCH THE CUTE PUPPY AND PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE WAYS WE CAN KILL YOU is apparently the theme of one particular TV drug commercial.  I'm quite familiar with pharmaceutical  commercials featuring scenic places intended to capture your attention so you don't notice all the potential side-effects listed like Halloween poison candy ingredients -- but the current one showing a puppy romping around simultaneously with voice-over dialog of potential medication hazards is just too much.  The drug companies won't be happy until everybody of every age is chronically medicated, and we generally are anyway because pharmaceuticals, once swallowed, have no eventual destination for their byproducts except the perpetually shared urine stream of millions, and urine efficiently and dutifully deposits excreted drugs into municipal water supplies.  Some experts. . .um. . .some experts would say the amounts are too minute to make a difference, but just who are the experts?  Still. . .that darned puppy was cute, and fortunately puppies only pee on the carpet, not in the municipal water supply.

THE LONE RANGER RIDES DIES AGAIN:  Could the same folks who rooted for the Arab Spring also have suggested yet another remake of "The Lone Ranger" story?  The most obvious fault of this lengthy, overblown box office disaster reset was Johnny Depp with a crow on his head as Tonto.  Take the crow away and what d'ya have?  Cap'n Jack Sparrow dressed as Tonto, mate.  I realize Depp possesses his own Native American heritage, but one suspects that if Jay Silverheels were alive today he might chide the Cap'n directly.  Besides, didn't the producers know about the implied curse?  I grew up in the fifties watching Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger on TV, and long after the series ended Moore was notorious for making public appearances as his TV character, always wearing the famous mask as he encouraged a new generation of children with a moral outlook.  In later years, however, a major Lone Ranger motion picture was produced, obviously with a younger cast (an actor named Spilsbury or something played the title role), but Clayton Moore was hardly forgotten -- the producers outraged the nation by insisting that they held rights to the Lone Ranger name and Moore could no longer appear publicly as the Ranger, nor be attired with the trademark mask.  Heartbroken, Moore, with no choice, eventually replaced the mask with absurdly large sunglasses and began billing himself as Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger.  The movie?  It bombed. 

Fast forward to today -- Moore has been dead for years, and a second large-scale Lone Ranger movie blazed onto the screen just days ago.  But this version, like the last, bit the box office dust, and not even the corporate fairy dust of Disney studios could magically whip up a blockbuster here.  An implied curse?  Even in death, actor Clayton Moore, apparently endowed personally with all the moral attributes of the Lone Ranger, may have had the last laugh.   You can wear a dead crow on your head, but don't mess with the mask, pretenders.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK:  Aren’t you glad you don’t live in New York?  Or don't you wish you lived in New York?  Disgraced former government notables Eliot Spitzer (a.k.a. client #9) and Anthony Weiner (specializing in self-nude pics, honoring the Internet with his favorite photos), to nobody’s amazement in NY, plan to run for office again.  Word to other political candidates in NY – If you hope to win here. get an early start on developing and personalizing your scandals, the crazier the better -- anything the mainstream media can slurp up in order to divert public attention away from higher political agendas and scandals in Washington.