"Phony Scandals" vs. A Phony Administration

It's been a long time since I've seen a U.S. president so intent upon telling the people that everything's just fine inside his Administration, that there's nothing to see here.  Last week he referenced nebulous "phony scandals" taking public attention away from all the, um, good things he wants to do.  By phony does he mean. . .IRS terrorism. . .or the NSA dipping its fishing hooks into places they were never supposed to go?  Does he mean Benghazi?

In other words, maybe there's much more to investigate about this bunch than we already know, and we already realize Obama's may be the most secretive and closed "open" Administration in history.

And now something new, not chronologically new, but certainly fresh on the public radar -- and this one may trump the horrors of Obama and Hillary Clinton's continuing Benghazi "scandal"  several times over. 

But first a necessary diversion. . .

Radio talk show hosts of a political bent, either local or national, frequently seem to exist purely on the basis of their arrogance.  Egotistical?  You bet.  But, for better or worse, their success usually translates into their ability to infuriate as well as inform.  If you just listen to the message you'll learn something.  If you actually phone in to engage the host, you're probably asking for trouble because they always win after the telephone disconnect.

Michael Savage comes to mind, and we've mentioned him previously.  Yes, he loves animals and generously supports saving elephants and other critters whose very extinction creeps ever closer because of the evil that men do.

But Savage (okay, that's what he goes by) routinely throws up a rather caustic side on his popular evening radio show.  Dr. Savage, a successful decades-long author of everything from spy novels to books about nutrition, can be annoying, crude and rude with callers, often belting out his concerns for America's troubles and the world's traumatic events in a piercing rant, and occasionally he emphasizes his points by shouting into the microphone like a madman wielding a jackhammer. 

By the way, he doesn't seem at all interested in the subject of UFOs.  Maybe that just depends upon the day of the week.

Yet -- it took me a long time to acknowledge one little detail:  The man is brilliant.  He sometimes becomes tangential, but he knows where he's going and how to make a point.  And, wow, is he on to something big now.  Something terrible.  Something that may reach way, way up in Washington, official depository of mystery, corruption and, more often than we probably are aware, heroics.

Ever since August of 2011, when 30 American service personnel -- including team members of Navy SEAL Team Six, the unit whose highly trained specialists killed Osama bin Laden just months earlier -- and several Afghans perished mysteriously in a helicopter crash, Michael Savage has smelled a proverbial rat, and he wasn't about to let this tragedy and numerous unanswered questions be swept under a rug of bureaucracy.  He repeatedly called for an investigation and conducted interviews with parents of the slain men on the air, as circumstances behind the crash became increasingly bizarre and families' frustrations in attempting to get answers more problematic.

Now, thanks in no small part to Michael Savage's unrelenting pleas and outrage, Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on National Security has promised a full investigation at last.

Grace Vuoto, writing for the World Tribune on July 26, reflects parental frustration in getting answers from both President Obama and military higher-ups:  "Instead of being told the truth about  what happened that night, they have been bullied, mocked, intimidated, ignored and repeatedly lied to."

Further, the families are aware of evidence indicating they've flat-out been mislead, and being informed that the helicopter "black box" disappeared in a "flash flood" hardly satisfies them.  All bodies were cremated before the families were even informed of their disposition, and parents' reports of their sons quickly writing out wills even before whatever mission they were on transpired are intriguing.  Further, why did satellite surveillance supposedly become suddenly disrupted just as the crash took place?

There is much to explore about the crash, allegations of murder, last-minute replacement of Afghan personnel by possible Taliban members aboard the fatal flight and -- according to Savage -- suspicions that the chopper and its crew may have been taken out in revenge for bin Laden's killing.  He had raised such questions in his latest novel, A Time for War, and as interest piqued amongst World Tribune, Fox News and other sources, everything came to a head and firmly grabbed congressional investigators who became amazed and outraged by, especially, the accounts of how the families were treated by officials.

Obviously, the military's Commander-in-Chief and his tools of opportunity provide a major focus of interest here. 
 

Let's be hopeful that Rep. Chaffetz and his colleagues get to the bottom of what seems almost a bottomless pit of lies and corruption regarding this incident.  The families, at the very least, deserve to know what really happened to their brave and dedicated children who served to protect all of us.  They, the soldiers who were and are citizens just like us.

Cash, Landrum and Lorenzen

Is the December, 1980 Cash-Landrum UFO incident solved?  That's precisely the question posed in the headline appearing in a July 9 online article by Shawn Jason for the Examiner.com.

The case has been covered at length for years amongst numerous sources, so I won't repeat all the details here.  However, Jason's attempts to re-explore and confirm what some suspected over the years -- that a fleet of helicopters accompanying a strange, and peculiarly acting, object in the air involved, not a UFO, but a secret United States project -- actually leans toward a plausible explanation.  Final word?  Who knows?  In any case, what Jason has done is to reach back to 1999 and the magazine, Popular Mechanics, which discovered under the Freedom of Information Act the existence of a super-secret  Lenticular Reentry Vehicle.  It is a serious malfunction of one such nuclear-equipped vehicle, suggests Jason, that caused mild to severe effects upon the three automobile occupants, both outside and inside of their car. 

During and after this bizarre event, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and her grandson Colby experienced a variety of symptoms, and a nuclear radiation aspect became suspect from the start.. 

As updated by Shawn Jason: 

Dr. Brian McClelland, Betty Cash's personal physician, later stated that the witnesses suffered radiation exposure on a level felt three to five miles from ground zero of Hiroshima or 2-3 grays of radiation. A full-body exposure at one time to 5 gray or more from high-energy radiation leads to death within 14 days. The victims encounter only lasted for approximately 15 minutes. All three had classic symptoms of exposure from nausea, vomiting and burns, to hair loss, swelling and diarrhea. Their health issues were immediate, starting only a few hours after the sighting.

Indeed, legal action was eventually undertaken to sue the government for damages due to chronic health effects and even death, but to this day there has not even been an official admission that the U.S. had any involvement.

We touched upon the Cash-Landrum incident way back in a blog entry of January 31, 2008, and if you reference that date you'll find the entire letter from which only a portion is featured here.  I'm revisiting the subject today simply to reaffirm that APRO's Coral Lorenzen, unlike a lengthy list of folk intent upon screaming hysterically from the start that this was an extraterrestrial craft event, instead saw a trail of obvious crumbs from the start, and waited for medical evidence to support her opinion that this was no alien spacecraft incident.

The visual above, as well as the letter originally posted in its entirety, contains extracted names, and I left these out because there's no point in revealing them now.  However, anybody familiar with UFO research history may easily recognize missing name identities.  For the rest of you, suffice it to say that the late Coral Lorenzen conducted a long-running battle of condemnation regarding the organization MUFON and its director -- quite likely for good reasons -- and she was absolutely enraged that certain individuals affiliated with MUFON were publicly touting  the extraterrestrial alien spacecraft hypothesis, despite the evidence.  Her reference to the ABC-TV show, "That's Incredible" merely denotes an audio recording of the program's segment on the Cash-Landrum case.

Though controversy continues regarding the Cash-Landrum event, Coral Lorenzen's original concerns about the witnesses' experience of horror remain no less relevant today, and "today" encompasses an era often burdened with UFO "investigators" who see aliens around every corner, particularly when financially lucrative encounters or TV cameras drooling for stories of the incredible, true or not, come into play.  As usual, sensational nonsense frequently trumps sober voices and reasonable documentation because the facts just aren't as sexy as bull crap attired in an alien negligé.  And speaking of sex and bull crap. . .

 To my readers in New York City who may soon enjoy the opportunity to vote for Anthony Weiner as your next mayor:  (I'll try to disregard the fact that his wife has Muslim Brotherhood connections in her family.)  Look, I don't care if the guy sends out pictures of his genitals all day and all night, and without a good supply of "perverts" and folk looked down upon just because they think differently from the masses, the world would be an intellectually desolate place.  Nevertheless, if I had a crystal ball -- well, if I had a crystal ball the damned thing would roll off the table and smash into a zillion pieces because I'm rather a klutz when it comes to keeping round things in place.  Anyway, if you elect Weiner, I'm entertaining this little scenario where all sorts of people in NY will be staying up all night, hoping to find ways to encounter this guy and fabricate a trail to accuse and sue him for something sexual.  The problems might occur within his own office, among the staff.  Whatever the circumstances, lawsuits could fly and New Yorkers could end up paying out millions and millions of dollars for sexual harassment actions, true or not.  This is New York, after all.  Of course you'll pay and pay and pay.  Trust me, people are just wringing their hands, praying for Weiner to become both mayor and official NY sexual lawsuit lottery machine.  Nice to know he's undergone "therapy" in the meantime, however.  That worked out well, I'll just bet.  As if there are no  psychologists in the world who enjoy naughty pictures as much as the next patient or therapist.  Okay Anthony, Dr. P. R. Vert will see you and your pal Carlos Danger now. . .and, make no mistake, Dr. P.R. Vert is open for business all day and all night long, armed and ready to either attack or cater to everybody's demons.  Beware, New York City, you'll get what you vote for -- again.

If I Had a Son, He'd Look Like Sum Ting Wong

Okay, let's dispense with this one right up front:  Yes, those phony names for the Asian airline crew were funny, particularly as recited without hesitation by a member of the revered TV media in California.  I mean, Saturday Night Live couldn't have pulled this off any better than the authoritative delivery shoveled out on a TV news program.  Offensive?  Insensitive? Don't know about that, we really need to grab a laugh or two anywhere we can these days from a pretty humorless world.  And as far as the Asian airline goes, now determined to sue the TV station -- those Asian corporate litigation-lovin' folks maybe need to worry less about being "defamed," and worry more about the dead and injured passengers violently "deplaned" from their own aircraft.  The divert the blame strategy is soooooooo "old hat" now.

By the way -- ever notice how local TV station news personnel often can't even properly spell the words appearing in "crawls" traversing TV screens? 

 Who?  Who?  Who? 

Q.  Who killed mega-star entertainer Michael Jackson?

A   Michael Jackson killed mega-star Michael Jackson.

Q.  Who killed talented Canadian actor & singer Cory Monteith?
A.  Talented Canadian actor & singer Cory Monteith killed Cory Monteith.

 Q.  Who caused flash-in-the-pan Canadian amusement Justin Bieber to urinate

his most talented creation into a mop bucket?
A.  Flash-in-the-pan Canadian amusement Justin Bieber caused himself to
urinate his most talented creation into a mop bucket.

 Q.  Who keeps the Obama bunch associates out of prison?

  A.   Obama Administration attorneys, a lapdog media and a willingly
uninformed populace keep the Obama bunch associates out of prison.  So far.

 Q.  Who are the real heroes of sports and entertainment?

 A.   There are no real "heroes" of sports and entertainment, but there is the military. . .
which, by the way, cleared the way for all of the above to do what they do.

 Q.  Who cares?

 A.  Who cares?

What happened to TWA Flight 800?  A very controversial documentary has emerged about this older, still infamous airliner explosion.  Was a terrorist missile involved?  Whatever the truth, disturbing accounts by eye-witnesses who were not allowed to testify during hearings, some of whom claim government officials warned them not to talk, are of creepy interest.  Which reminds me -- how's that UFO disclosure going for you?

A cruel observation:  This Administration has become an international laughingstock, not to mention Putin's own Punch & Judy Show, leaving citizens of the United States the only population this bunch, led by the worst and weakest president ever, can truly bully and manipulate.  Funny how that works. 

The main thing the nationally irrelevant George Zimmerman trial settled is that we continue to have a dependable population of street thug morons, sub-animal entities and avowed communists who foam at the mouth anytime they have an opportunity to take to the streets, cause mayhem and steal things as they trash storefronts.  These people don't care a whit more about Trayvon's death than they do for the always impressive statistics regarding black-on-black murders and violence, especially involving young black victims (hello Chicago, hello Philadelphia, hello Cincinnati. . .).  National media rarely cover such matters, preferring instead to go orgasmic over TV non-sensation preacher Al Sharpton's and the Rev. Jesse Jackson's abilities to whip up demonstrations as if administering a fire sale featuring real fires.  The outstanding thing such rabble-rousers have done over the decades, unfortunately with implicit cooperation and legislation initiated by Democrats, is to keep the black man and woman down and subservient in this country, never allowed to become more than victims of "white privilege."  Instead of protesting the justice system in Florida -- which worked exactly as it was supposed to -- those who insist upon remaining black and angry might serve themselves better by shrugging off the long disconnected, and frankly rather clownish, Sharpton and Jackson, and start looking up to rock-solid black role models such as military hero Allen West and esteemed neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson.

And whilst some cities experience minor riots and others rage, where is the President?  Shouldn't the instigator who announced even before the facts were in that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon say something to calm the atmosphere of anger in the streets?  No, instead we have Stevie Wonder and. . . Miley Cyrus???. . .and other celebs who, regrettably, have an hypnotic effect and ability to influence the mindless among their fans who are unable to think for themselves, and those fans look upon their idols as if substitutes for their own brains.

So Eric Holder steps in, the Dept. of Justice's knight in shining armor, and he's going to do everything he can to see if this can be twisted, bent and forged into a civil rights matter, and in today's climate the concept of double jeopardy doesn't mean a damn.  One is no longer either guilty or innocent, because first the DOJ has to bite off a piece of you, and then other courts make sure you're sued for civil damages.  Zimmerman -- ah yes, the racist who was so racist that he and his wife tutored minority children in school lessons and helped minorities in other ways.

But Eric Holder may not care about such things any more than thugs of the street care about Trayvon Martin.  Holder cares about special justice, social justice, guns you shouldn't have and stand your ground laws.  Holder, the lovable chief DOJ embarrassment who should have exited or been tossed from his job long ago, and certainly after Fast and Furious -- about which he reportedly continues to refuse releasing documents -- came to light.  The F&F operation resulted in numerous Mexican (and American agent) deaths, and to date nobody seems interested in taking responsibility.  Meanwhile, those who should take responsibility will instead concentrate on nudging the legal system more to their liking.  It's all about control and power, and soon Trayvon will be known as Trayvon Who?  While many agonize over Zimmerman and Martin, political demons continue their sleight-of-hand tricks in the shadows, relatively unnoticed, focused upon a myriad of ways to rule and regulate our lives.

(Strange little interview with Martin's female friend on Piers Morgan's TV show. . .where she admits warning Martin on the evening in question that Zimmerman might be a rapist. . .and that his little brother was at home. . . and then maybe Martin worried about his home location being discovered. . .leading one to believe that Martin may have panicked and started beating Zimmerman. . . as the initiator of violence.)

The immigration Trojan horse rolls on as both Democrats and Republicans can't move quickly enough to show more concern for border-jumping criminals than they do for your legal  family.  You see, in some twisted mindset we owe it to the lawbreakers to forgive, accept and shut up.  As political tears flow like mighty rivers for those folks, I've become increasingly confused and sometimes I'm uncertain if I'm referencing La Raza or the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly because each has visited the White House.  As I recall, one includes members destined to destroy America, while the other is composed of people who hope to bring the country down.  Hmm.  Well, that's no help at all. 

An additional observation:  The congressional progressives and cowards of either party, poised to throw out the legalization welcome mat to 11-30 (??) million criminal aliens, will make their biggest mark by screwing over the youth of America -- their own children included -- who will have no choice but to grow up and endure a constant battle for jobs, education and a reasonable life itself as they fight their way through growing crowds and mobs of human misery.  Your kids are about to embark on activities of daily living in a third world country, unless the House is warned and voter demands are insisted upon to avoid all new immigration legislation.  Not to sound trite, but we already have legislation from years gone by, still awaiting proper enforcement. 

It's long been a mystery why Congress continues to host a black caucus and an Hispanic caucus, yet deprives some of us of a Caucasian caucus to address our own special needs.  Now, I'm not inciting racism here, and if you skip over to my Air Force blog's first page you'll find a group photo featuring a black NCO who was my supervisor at a USAF hospital in Texas -- and the sergeant consistently wrote excellent performance reports for me and was a good friend.  No, I'm not a Klan member -- and as you recall from history, the Klan was a  Democrat concoction, anyway.

Nevertheless -- I hear a lot these days about "white privilege," and as a white male I assume that references something such as my white privilege pre-induction military draft physical during the Vietnam Era.  Or maybe the subsequent Air Force enlistment was my white privilege.

Years later, re-joining government employment as a civilian with college, I took a nationally administered federal government test in the early eighties, did well on it and hoped it would advance me to even more white privilege with a better job.  Alas, the government was sued by entities convinced the exam was unfair specifically to black and Hispanic people, the government lost the case, and it was subsequently replaced with -- nothing.  With that occurrence, yes, I understood all too well that this ruling indeed bestowed white privilege upon me and others.

However, far from doing favors for minorities, I believe the lawsuit's result actually said to talented minorities that they were considered too stupid to pass the exam -- and they, like I, were cast aside so that some other system could be developed to allow considerably less talented and/or less prepared and/or less educated people to assume government positions.  And that's why, in the current day and age, you wonder how government at all levels is filled with often incompetent people who can't do their jobs and certainly can't bother serving you.  My test results may have been discarded to pretty up the race card -- which I understand all too well -- but, not to worry, I still have my white privilege.  Whatever that is.

Edward Snowden -- From Russia Without Love:   His well-touted heroics are starting to fade and young Ed's options seem tenuous at best.  Still, I'll go with my original half-kidding suggestion -- that he be given immunity so he can return to the U.S.  Looks as though the government couldn't be much worse off from his leaks than it already claims to be.  Nevertheless, there are always whistles ready and waiting to blow.

Janet Napolitano departs Homeland Security to run the vast University of California system.  With her expertise, I'm sure she'll turn in plenty of illegal alien university students.  But seriously -- why did she leave?  Are the Democrats trying to sweep troubled times and old faces of controversy out of the way so everything looks brand spanking new and innocent by the time midterm elections come around?  True enough, the electorate quickly forgets.

 
Stoning those who are already stoned at The Rolling Stone:   Okay, so they chose Boston's favorite radical Islam terrorist cover boy for this month's issue, and a lot of people aren't pleased.  One thing's for sure -- that bad-boy cover will sell magazines o'plenty.  However, secondarily we might hope that those who actually purchase the issue will read and learn valuable lessons about a jihadist murdering throwback human monster incarnate.  Had I been the editor, I suspect I might have paraphrased from a famous caption of the old Rolling Stone issue spotlighting, by then, a long deceased Jim Morrison:  He's hot, he's sexy and he's  dead  not dead yet, but we're hoping! 

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.