Showing posts with label Bill de Blasio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill de Blasio. Show all posts
Monday, May 18, 2020
Always an Enemy / Blue States, Stick a Fork in Them / My Childhood Pandemic
Always an Enemy – The shortages were breathtaking: surgical masks, medical gowns, ventilators, tests, reagents needed for making the tests, swabs, and, yes, even epidemiologists who might have been able to foresee this calamity – The United States got caught, again, with its pants down. And, guess where we have to purchase all these products we now need to confront this pandemic? Somehow, through negligence, a collective attention span of about 10 minutes, no foresight or planning, complacency, and only meager stockpiles available, America found itself in the extraordinary position of pleading with our archenemy China for emergency support and aid.
And, how does our overmatched, overwhelmed and frankly idiotic President handle this national emergency at its height? He insults China, and accuses them of starting the pandemic in a Wuhan laboratory; he begins to refer to the virus as the ‘Chinese virus.’ Instead of attempting to tone down the rhetoric a little, and curry a little bit of good will, Mr. Trump chooses to go full bore with his accusations.
Whatever the truth is about the origins of the COVID, and we certainly cannot prove right now if China intentionally started this horror, America needs desperately the products that China possesses or can manufacture to fight this virus. So, Donald Trump, for once just hold your tongue and shut up. Pick up the fight much later, please, if you must.
But he won’t. Mr. Trump needs enemies. That’s the life force that propels him, I think, every waking moment. His very troubled psyche cannot tolerate equanimity; he’s always been a disrupter, a destroyer. And, to our peril, he’s the current President of the United States, as his own internal wars have metastasized. I think it’s becoming so apparent lately: he no longer is in control of his destructive impulses, and he’s leading America down a very frightening and ominous path. God help us.
Blue States, Stick a Fork in Them…Mr. Gripes is going to disappoint his lockstep, Democratic friends with this item, but I think Mitch McConnell’s right regarding his stance on, as he puts it, the ‘blue’ states’ calamitous waste of federal money.
One has to acknowledge he’s spot-on that these states and cities, with their hugely populous urban centers, have squandered for many years billions and billions – trillions of dollars, actually – not, as they profess, to actually ameliorate the economic and residential conditions of the urban poor, but to perpetuate the incredibly corrupt, profligate, and unaccountable Democratic power bases that have ruled, with essentially no opposition, for decades – since the end of World War II, in fact. The proof is in the pudding: the urban under classes, even as they vote in overwhelming numbers for Democratic candidates in every election, have less earning power now than 30 years ago. Nothing’s changed. Except for those trillions of dollars down the drain.
Let’s look at New York as an example: Mr. Gripes has lived in and around New York for a good part of his life, and the out-of-control spending with the sole purpose of maintaining political control and power has been and continues to be appalling.
A perfect example: our present mayor, Bill de Blasio, ignoring valid charges of nepotism, placed his hapless wife in charge of some spurious ‘mental health’ initiative four years ago. It’s been a colossal failure from its onset. For one thing, its mission was never fully explained. And, proving that it’s been nothing but a shell organization, there has been no progress report as to its aim or its ensuing effectiveness, and whether any goals were reached. As one critic asserted, the initiative – named ThriveNYC – mainly is an exercise in ‘pamphlets’, i.e. a raft of flyers distributed at public libraries to be picked up and read by library patrons [no one reads them, of course].
And with the multitude of pressing mental health issues – domestic violence, suicide, depression, feelings of isolation, loss of jobs, et alia-- emerging now with so many people in need of urgent attention, we hear not a thing from Thrive. Not one word as to its contributions, which probably do not exist. In a just world, it’d be an egregious scandal. And, what a waste of money: the program has burned through $1 BILLION[!] over its four years’ existence.
[In reality, Mr. Gripes, who can sniff out political chicanery and venality from ten miles down the road, knows the sole reason for Thrive’s creation: it’s to raise the profile of Mr. de Blasio’s wife, to be followed up by her running for some worthless office in 2021, keeping Bill’s name in the news; then the plan is for him to run for President again in 2024.]
Tales of criminality like this make Mr. Gripes’ blood boil. And there are so many examples of the squandering of billions of dollars over the years, on the part of our urban mayors.
Well, finally it all has caught up with blue state cities. Having wasted so much of their federal largesse and at the moment left with nothing but humongous debts, these states have no political currency any more: they’re broke and are going to have to beg. An angry Mr. McConnell is correct: why should more federal aid be forthcoming for these bankrupt cities, when we all know that they’ll misuse that money again? I understand his resistance to throwing more billions at these money pits.
What’s going to happen? The states will eventually receive federal financial aid they desperately need to pay for teachers, cops, firemen, public hospital workers, and the like. That’s a given. But, Mr. McConnell and his Republican allies are no longer, I think, going to simply sign off on additional funding for the urban politicians to spend as they see fit, to feather their own political nests. Strict conditions will be imposed on any federally funded program for a city: no more gazillions to spend on propping up corrupt, unaccountable Democratic urban administrations and their phony, slush-fund non-profits and fraudulent ‘programs.’ Finally, a politician says, ‘Enough is enough.’
My Childhood Pandemic – From the early days of this viral pandemic we’re all experiencing right now, I felt in my bones I had been through this before.
What that earlier experience was, I just couldn’t pin it down. Mysterious, yet the emotions seemed very familiar. Indeed, a sense of déjà vu: absolute dread and fear about what lay ahead of us, and a firm, paralyzing belief that I was going to be powerless to fight the coming storm. This was a repetition of a suppressed memory.
Well, ten days ago, I finally recalled the earlier pandemic that so affected me: almost 70 years ago, in 1954, a polio ‘scourge’ grabbed the United States by the throat.
The back story: as a child, I was obsessed over current events – I followed world developments closely as a young kid. I didn’t really understand or absorb much of what I was reading, but just enough to sometimes scare the hell of me [Russians dropping the atom bomb on us, for instance]. During that 1954 summer, as I recall it, the heat never let up day after day. And, of course, I linked up the intense heat wave to a rising incidence of polio. In this child’s mind, that meant that polio, and its attendant horrors, would inevitably get me.
I perused the newspaper every morning, and noticed that the number of polio infections was increasing daily and, even more worrisome, coursing its way up the East Coast. One day, there were, say, 14 new cases in Georgia, then a couple of days later, 20 cases in North Carolina, then 30 more polio victims in Virginia, etc. And it was overwhelmingly kids who were afflicted. This pattern went on for weeks; I was certain polio would soon get to Long Island, and kill or paralyze me, my brothers and sister, and my friends. I just couldn’t shake that nightmare scenario.
[Let’s remember that the medical term for polio is, in part, infantile paralysis—it disproportionally struck children.] That fear of losing the use of my arms or legs, or being shackled to an iron lung for the rest of my life was horrifying to me. Death, in fact, would have been preferable.
Then, everything changed.
Sometime early in July, out of the blue, I and my siblings were abruptly sent to a summer camp for six weeks. It was located in Massachusetts, in some remote corner of Cape Cod. I loved it there, and in the face of a glittering Atlantic Ocean nearby and a summer of playing baseball with new friends, the polio fears abated a bit. I didn’t read newspapers either. I just felt much safer in the Camp Chappa Chala alternate universe, arguing incessantly and annoyingly I’m sure, with New England kids about who was better, Ted Williams or Mickey Mantle.
A miracle then followed: camp ended in late August, and, not long afterwards, Dr. Jonas Salk invented a vaccination for polio. I don’t remember when we got our initial vaccines for polio, but I do recall climbing up stairs at an elementary-school auditorium stage, lined up with all my classmates in a long procession, and receiving a shot. Everyone in my school was given an injection, hundreds of kids. Then a month or so later, getting another one, ‘the booster shot.’ Polio had been eradicated in America, just like that.
From the certitude that I was going to either die or end up immobile in a hospital bed for the rest of my life, I had survived unscathed. A question remains to this day, however: did my parents by design send myself and my siblings up to that camp on Cape Cod to insulate us from that scourge ‘pandemic’ racing up the coast? I’ve often wondered about that lately. I’ll never get an answer.
By Jim Israel
May 7, 2020
‘Mr. Gripes’
.
Friday, January 17, 2020
Robbery/Murder of Barnard Freshman / Iraq Tells Us to Leave / Donald Trump Never Ceases to Amaze
The robbery/murder of a Barnard College freshman student a few weeks ago in Morningside Park near Columbia University hit Mr. Gripes hard. I’m a graduate of Columbia College, who lives a subway ride away; for decades, I’ve participated in all kinds of Columbia functions, i.e., attending football and basketball games; sitting in on university lectures, Class Day and Graduation Day events. Just like many of my classmates, I am a member of the extended Columbia family, and proud of it. The senseless killing of a ‘family’ member was horrific. I’m incensed that it could have occurred.
I blame partially the city politicians for the crime; New York City, as anyone who lives here knows, is not a ‘safe’ place, yet over and over we hear from our leaders that New York ‘is the safest city in the country.’ That assertion, often proclaimed by Mayor de Blasio, was and is irresponsible; any reasonably intelligent New Yorker knows the city is often a dangerous place, especially now with all the homeless and mentally disturbed hassling us on the streets and in the subways. Mr. de Blasio was contending for President -- running his mouth with the manifest lie that the city is the ‘safest’ might have impressed voters in Iowa [although I doubt it] but no New Yorker believes that the city is virtually crime-free for a moment. The Barnard student, new to New York, may have been lulled into a false sense of safety, and that could have contributed to her death.
And here’s something else I’d like my readers to ponder: a few months ago, a law went into effect banning ‘stop and frisk’ actions by the NYC police; the argument was that stop and frisk searches in the hands of some cops were abused, with minorities disproportionally targeted. Of course, there may have been abuses; some cops unaccountable for their activities will certainly take advantage. But, let’s remember that there’s no free lunch in police law enforcement. The police banning of stop and frisk means there are going to be some future crimes committed by young men that could have been thwarted by police action. This is a fact: the Barnard student was stabbed by a 14-year-old, looking to rob someone, and carrying a six-inch knife, at night in a city park, an activity that police on the ground could have prevented. An unspeakable loss.
Iraq Tells Us to Leave….In the immediate aftermath of the Suleiman killing, the Iraq leadership has demanded that the United States, in theory its ally, evacuate American military bases throughout Iraq, and leave immediately. Huh?
That’s what they want us to do? The American response should be obvious: ‘Hasta La Vista, Baby. We’re out of this hellhole. Give us six months and we’ll be completely gone. And we are never coming back EVER.’
What a strange situation: here we have the Iraqis, who certainly can use our assistance to combat terrorist forces in the county, and who are supposed to be our allies, telling us to leave. What the hell’s going on? For one thing, we got rid of your homicidal monster Hussein, didn’t we?
So, let’s take them at their word, and get the hell out as fast as we can. Enough already with the ceaseless bloodbath that is the Middle East: we’ve given up enough American blood, and things aren’t getting any better over there, so let’s end it once and for all. If the nut-job, would-be martyrs who run these countries want to continue with all the killing, and after all the billions of dollars in assistance we’ve poured into Iraq [and the rest of the Middle East], our soldiers should pile on planes and ships and come home quickly.
Oh, by the way, let’s make sure to retrieve and ship home every piece of military hardware, including guns, tanks, computers, hammers, and every nail, everything, that’s over there. Otherwise, as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow in the East, down the road, all that material and armaments left will be blown back to kill us by future enemies, the same countries that claim they are our ‘friends’ at the moment.
Donald Trump never ceases to amaze me: just when I’m convinced he’s reached the absolute bottom in terms of his crudeness and cruelty towards human beings, he always surprises me as to the depth of his meanness and venality. The other day, he posts a doctored photograph of Nancy Pelosi clad in Muslim garb, including an hajji covering on her head. This happened after Ms. Pelosi had the temerity to ask questions regarding the decision to kill Iran’s General Suleiman. Mr. Trump, in his inimitable meathead fashion, was insinuating Ms. Pelosi was backing Iran. What a jerk our President is.
The gesture by Mr. Trump reminded me of a historic event in 1953 featuring Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and a subcommittee hearing he was heading.** Mr. McCarthy’s committee was searching for Communists amidst the federal government in televised proceedings. A couple of months into the hearings, Joe McCarthy accused the opposing Army attorney of harboring a young Communist in his legal firm. The opposing attorney, Joseph Welsh, listened to Mr. McCarthy for a minute or two, as the senator railed against the young man. Then, in beautifully understated, quiet language, Mr. Welsh replied, ‘Let us not assassinate this lad any further, Senator. Have you no sense of decency?’
At that moment, the career of Joseph McCarthy was finished. Public approval vanished, as President Dwight Eisenhower decided after the hearings to abandon Mr. McCarthy. His heavy drinking increased, and he was dead three years later.
Thankfully, Mr. Welsh’s words still reverberate today, almost 70 years later. Readers, I leave you with this: ‘Mr. Trump, have you no sense of decency?’
** ‘Point of Order’, a documentary on the McCarthy-Army hearings, by Emilio de Antonio, 1964, is available on DVD. It’s very good.
Mr. Gripes
By Jim Israel
January 15, 2020
I blame partially the city politicians for the crime; New York City, as anyone who lives here knows, is not a ‘safe’ place, yet over and over we hear from our leaders that New York ‘is the safest city in the country.’ That assertion, often proclaimed by Mayor de Blasio, was and is irresponsible; any reasonably intelligent New Yorker knows the city is often a dangerous place, especially now with all the homeless and mentally disturbed hassling us on the streets and in the subways. Mr. de Blasio was contending for President -- running his mouth with the manifest lie that the city is the ‘safest’ might have impressed voters in Iowa [although I doubt it] but no New Yorker believes that the city is virtually crime-free for a moment. The Barnard student, new to New York, may have been lulled into a false sense of safety, and that could have contributed to her death.
And here’s something else I’d like my readers to ponder: a few months ago, a law went into effect banning ‘stop and frisk’ actions by the NYC police; the argument was that stop and frisk searches in the hands of some cops were abused, with minorities disproportionally targeted. Of course, there may have been abuses; some cops unaccountable for their activities will certainly take advantage. But, let’s remember that there’s no free lunch in police law enforcement. The police banning of stop and frisk means there are going to be some future crimes committed by young men that could have been thwarted by police action. This is a fact: the Barnard student was stabbed by a 14-year-old, looking to rob someone, and carrying a six-inch knife, at night in a city park, an activity that police on the ground could have prevented. An unspeakable loss.
Iraq Tells Us to Leave….In the immediate aftermath of the Suleiman killing, the Iraq leadership has demanded that the United States, in theory its ally, evacuate American military bases throughout Iraq, and leave immediately. Huh?
That’s what they want us to do? The American response should be obvious: ‘Hasta La Vista, Baby. We’re out of this hellhole. Give us six months and we’ll be completely gone. And we are never coming back EVER.’
What a strange situation: here we have the Iraqis, who certainly can use our assistance to combat terrorist forces in the county, and who are supposed to be our allies, telling us to leave. What the hell’s going on? For one thing, we got rid of your homicidal monster Hussein, didn’t we?
So, let’s take them at their word, and get the hell out as fast as we can. Enough already with the ceaseless bloodbath that is the Middle East: we’ve given up enough American blood, and things aren’t getting any better over there, so let’s end it once and for all. If the nut-job, would-be martyrs who run these countries want to continue with all the killing, and after all the billions of dollars in assistance we’ve poured into Iraq [and the rest of the Middle East], our soldiers should pile on planes and ships and come home quickly.
Oh, by the way, let’s make sure to retrieve and ship home every piece of military hardware, including guns, tanks, computers, hammers, and every nail, everything, that’s over there. Otherwise, as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow in the East, down the road, all that material and armaments left will be blown back to kill us by future enemies, the same countries that claim they are our ‘friends’ at the moment.
Donald Trump never ceases to amaze me: just when I’m convinced he’s reached the absolute bottom in terms of his crudeness and cruelty towards human beings, he always surprises me as to the depth of his meanness and venality. The other day, he posts a doctored photograph of Nancy Pelosi clad in Muslim garb, including an hajji covering on her head. This happened after Ms. Pelosi had the temerity to ask questions regarding the decision to kill Iran’s General Suleiman. Mr. Trump, in his inimitable meathead fashion, was insinuating Ms. Pelosi was backing Iran. What a jerk our President is.
The gesture by Mr. Trump reminded me of a historic event in 1953 featuring Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and a subcommittee hearing he was heading.** Mr. McCarthy’s committee was searching for Communists amidst the federal government in televised proceedings. A couple of months into the hearings, Joe McCarthy accused the opposing Army attorney of harboring a young Communist in his legal firm. The opposing attorney, Joseph Welsh, listened to Mr. McCarthy for a minute or two, as the senator railed against the young man. Then, in beautifully understated, quiet language, Mr. Welsh replied, ‘Let us not assassinate this lad any further, Senator. Have you no sense of decency?’
At that moment, the career of Joseph McCarthy was finished. Public approval vanished, as President Dwight Eisenhower decided after the hearings to abandon Mr. McCarthy. His heavy drinking increased, and he was dead three years later.
Thankfully, Mr. Welsh’s words still reverberate today, almost 70 years later. Readers, I leave you with this: ‘Mr. Trump, have you no sense of decency?’
** ‘Point of Order’, a documentary on the McCarthy-Army hearings, by Emilio de Antonio, 1964, is available on DVD. It’s very good.
Mr. Gripes
By Jim Israel
January 15, 2020
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Trump's Still Around / Venezuela's Plight / Our Disastrous Mayor
Not So Fast, Democrats -- On several occasions, with the all-too-obvious backing of much of the ‘independent’ press, the Democrats were going to ‘stick it’ to Donald Trump, and ‘swipe’ a Congressional seat away from the Republicans, paving the way for a Democratic sweep in the 2018 House of Representatives general election.
Four times this year, the Democratic candidate, gleefully riding a palpable anti-Trump sentiment among American voters, was presumed to be a favorite to win the race.
Guess what? Never happened. Republicans: 4 for 4 – Democrats:0 -4- a big fat zero.
The Democrats act shocked that this could have occurred. How is it possible a villain of the proportions of Donald Trump can possibly win and win and win? Don’t voters see through the act?
No, they don’t. And Democrats – that means you Nancy Pelosi and the never-reticent Chuck Schumer – better find superior candidates and offer real substance to voters. Forget all the noise about which bathrooms to use, women’s pay, or immigrant reform; these issues don’t mean anything to people who are surviving from paycheck to paycheck and have been beaten up by the business and political classes for decades – of which, incidentally, both parties are guilty . Nancy, you need to come up with solutions, not more impossible-dream scenarios.
At least, Trump supporters will say, he’s yelling and screaming, and shaking things up. Obama didn’t do any of that: he solicitously took possession of a 425 page policy book, and retired to peruse it quietly in his study until midnight. Too damn quiet for a lot of people.
Mr. Gripes is absolutely not a fan of Donald Trump, not one bit. He’s everything that I abhor in a President: he’s got no intellectual curiosity, he’s a mean, dishonest son-of-a-bitch, he doesn’t care about his American constituency one whit, except as to how it feeds his excessive ego, and, let’s be honest about this, his pocket book and net worth. We’ll never know to what extent while he’s in office, but just imagine how much his family is amassing in terms of his fortune. We all know if we looked under the rock, the picture would be horrific.
Despite all the baggage, the lying, the duplicity, and the blatant incompetency, Donald Trump, unless he resigns, will be with us a long time.
Mr. Gripes has a couple of theories as to why Donald Trump remains in a strong position, despite the predictions of his doom:
Barack Obama : the ex-President appeared for a couple of months to be on permanent vacation, jumping off yachts, snorkeling among the Midway Islands, golfing at St. Andrews in Scotland. I hope you enjoyed yourself, Mr. Obama, because on your return home, you must have realized just getting off the plane you have zero power and influence. Your sycophantic fans think you still have clout, but in the real world, you don’t have any. It was a great run, but it’s really over.
To the Trump backers, Barack Obama has been the devil incarnate for a long time, a detested and reviled individual. A Trump supporter might say, ‘Donald Trump beat Hillary, and accomplishing that huge feat, managed to eviscerate and obliterate the Obama-Hillary conspiracy.’ And readers, have you noticed the ‘scorched earth’, anti-Obama policies since January 20? President Trump, like his voters, simply wants all traces of Obama and his eight years of liberal thinking and legislation eliminated.
For that one overriding achievement, the Trump supporters are willing to give the President a huge hug, no matter his outsized faults. ‘We will be eternally grateful,’ is the screed of the Trump crowd. Whatever President Trump does or does not do from now on, he’s done that.
There’s another less obvious possibility why Mr. Trump will probably not face his moment of truth any time soon: the ‘Trump bump’ on Wall Street. Since Mr. Trump’s triumph in November, the stock market has rocketed up. The affluent class in this country – Let’s put it at 25% of the population – has been significantly enriched since November. The upper classes, who were not Trump voters and certainly are still worried about his steadiness, feel less anguish and fear now that their IRAs are fattening up. People feel pretty good right now: as heavyweight Joe Lewis said regarding the check handed to him after one of his successful title fights, “One thing about money: it sure settles the nerves.”
It’s never mentioned by the big-mouths on network television, but Mr. Gripes senses this feeling of enhanced financial well-being among certain Americans mitigates against persistent Trump protests. The one demographic sector -- the upper middle class --that could effectuate regime change remains quiet. That sector was the driving force of Richard Nixon’s ignominious exit; Watergate was the excuse. When that class finally moved against Mr. Nixon en masse, he was finished. We’re a long, long way from that happening this time.
Venezuela --In my mid-teens, for one week during a summer, I accompanied my father to a medical conference in Caracas, Venezuela. My dad enjoyed the company, and both my parents must have figured a short trip to a foreign country might be a ‘learning experience’ for me, instead of wasting my time at home obsessing about Mickey Mantle and his home runs.
Well, I did sit in on a cardiology lecture for 45 minutes, observing one enlarged, blood-engorged heart after another. I decided on the spot that my activity for the next three days would be exploring Caracas on my own.
Despite the opulence of the hotel swimming pool, I chose to obtain some ‘carry-around’ money from my dad, and with the admonition not to ‘go too far’ from the hotel, I began to ‘tour’ the city. Caracas, from what I recall, was not a picturesque city, in the tradition of, say, Barcelona or Paris. In fact, it was a drab place, dominated by oil derricks in those days, and resembling New York City somewhat in its grittiness. Sightseeing was not one of its strengths.
But, I discovered, in my sojourns, that the Venezuelans themselves were helpful, kind, generous and very pleasant to a 15-year-old, sheltered boy. [On multiple occasions, shopkeepers would step out into the street, and present to me -- I offered to pay, but was refused – some kind of meat pie that must have been a national dish. I ate a ton of them.]
I always remember with fondness how friendly the people of Caracas were to me, with no ostensible animosity at all. I felt at ease with them immediately.
So, when I read these days of the apparent complete breakdown of the Venezuelan state, the political arrests and shootings, the dissolution of its institutions [judicial, economic], the ‘stolen’ elections, I react with two emotions: a profound sadness for those kind people and utter rage at – once again as has been the case since 1917 – the goddamn Communists who run the country.
It’s always been the same story, beginning with Nikolai Lenin taking a train to St Petersburg and starting the Bolshevik Revolution, the monster Josef Stalin, the murderous Mao killing tens of millions of his own citizens, or the psychopathic Fidel Castro, within two months of his ascension to power, executing hundreds of his own citizens and expropriating private property: these criminals will cruelly treat anyone who may challenge the one-man dictatorship, and then dispose of them quickly via a noose or firing squad or imprisonment.
What’s absolutely stunning about Communists is that the story has been and always is the same: they usurp control with ‘power-to-the-people’ promises, and obliterate the one class that could do wonders for the country: the intelligentsia and the small business owners. Within a short time, without the assistance of the people who actually have the ability to run a country successfully, the Communists manage to destroy the economy, impoverish the citizens, and rule without mercy. They become homicidal psychopaths; holding on to power using any means available becomes the ultimate goal. And, of course, the United States becomes the universal scapegoat for these bastards.
The baboon Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, elected in a free election in 1998, and his successor Maduro are no different: they devastate the national economy [inflation the last time I looked was running at 720% annually!], to the point now citizens can’t get enough food, and Maduro and his henchmen hold on to power through only one means: the gun.
I just hope that Maduro, when he is finally overthrown, is treated just like Benito Mussolini was at the end of World War II: the former dictator of Italy was executed, then hung up, naked, by his ankles, at a public gas station, so his fellow Italians could confirm that he was dead, and then enjoy spitting on him. That would be entirely fitting for Mr. Maduro.
Our Incompetent Mayor – Mr. Gripes, once a card-carrying liberal, has been disenchanted with them for a long time: Conservatives, i.e., Republicans, invariably govern utilizing ill-conceived, cruel and economy-destroying policies alongside hollow promises, but Liberal ones, i.e., Democrats, go one better: they promise the world – balanced budgets, an ‘even playing field’ for all, ‘progressive’ actions without moneyed influence – but they lie, connive and cheat exactly like their Republican colleagues.
EVERY politician alive is interested in three things: raising tons of money, destroying his opponents, and getting re-elected. Nothing else, especially sound and responsible policy, matters.
Let’s look at the case of the present mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. A pleasant enough man whom I know from our local YMCA, he’s sadly turned out to be nothing more than another grubby, low-life city pol who’s looking for money virtually every waking moment. Oh, sure, he invariably talks up his ‘progressive’ stances, but it’s a bunch of baloney.
An example: early in his term, a couple of years ago, he advocated, very strongly I might add, replacing the work horses which lead tourist carriages around Central Park, with automobiles [!!]. These electric-run autos would be built along the designs of vintage antique cars, i.e., the Ford Model T. Why the hell, Mr. Gripes wondered at the time, would our mayor look to replace one of the signature city tourist attractions with a car? [Or, as a friend of mine asserted, ‘Like New York needs more cars?’]
My father, long before Watergate, taught his children that ‘if things don’t really make a lot of sense, follow the money streams….’
It turns out that the chief backer of the plan to eliminate the horses and replace with automobiles had donated $300,000 to Mr. de Blasio’s Democratic primary campaign. The donor was and is a very wealthy real estate developer in the city. That money was subsequently used to buy TV advertising spots which attacked the mayor’s chief primary rival, Christine Quinn. Later, Ms. Quinn was beaten badly in the primary. It turns out that these horses are housed in stables located midtown on the West Side [52nd Street], a property that has long been coveted by real estate developers. Mr. de Blasio’s contributor, whose group ultimately donated $1 million to the full campaign, it seems, wanted very badly to eliminate the Central Park horse-carriage business and empty out the stables. Then builders would bid on the now-unoccupied space, with the winner putting up a high-rise apartment building on the site, netting presumably hundreds of millions in the current red-hot New York real estate market. The way New York City bidding works, guess who’s most likely to ‘win’?
I don’t think for a moment the developer cared about the welfare of those animals, which was his justification for pushing to eliminate horses in Central Park. Real estate moguls – look at Trump’s sordid history – don’t fret over a matter of a horse’s work load for a second. These guys would run over the horses with their limousines if it meant getting their hands on that valuable piece of property.
Another facet of this plan actually made Mr. Gripes even angrier: the Mayor proposed building a $25 million stable to house the retired horses in Central Park -- public land by the way. $25 million to be paid out of the city budget [NYC taxpayers] for a building that’s to hold maybe 80 horses! This is not a Frank Lloyd Wright design we’re talking about. It’s a horse stable, for God’s sake, a simple, inexpensive construction of some wooden walls and roof; an oil by Cezanne is not required. The entire deal reeks of pure larceny and corruption, and yet the legislation almost passed.
Through divine intervention, perhaps, on the eve of the vote to approve in the City Council – usually a lap-dog organization for de Blasio, akin to Khrushchev’s Politburo --the project was killed. It was even too toxic for our typically brain-dead municipal representatives. Alas, our fine Mayor promises to revisit the entire issue after he’s re-elected. In New York City, big donors ultimately get paid.
Jim Israel, aka Mr. Gripes
July 12, 2017
Four times this year, the Democratic candidate, gleefully riding a palpable anti-Trump sentiment among American voters, was presumed to be a favorite to win the race.
Guess what? Never happened. Republicans: 4 for 4 – Democrats:0 -4- a big fat zero.
The Democrats act shocked that this could have occurred. How is it possible a villain of the proportions of Donald Trump can possibly win and win and win? Don’t voters see through the act?
No, they don’t. And Democrats – that means you Nancy Pelosi and the never-reticent Chuck Schumer – better find superior candidates and offer real substance to voters. Forget all the noise about which bathrooms to use, women’s pay, or immigrant reform; these issues don’t mean anything to people who are surviving from paycheck to paycheck and have been beaten up by the business and political classes for decades – of which, incidentally, both parties are guilty . Nancy, you need to come up with solutions, not more impossible-dream scenarios.
At least, Trump supporters will say, he’s yelling and screaming, and shaking things up. Obama didn’t do any of that: he solicitously took possession of a 425 page policy book, and retired to peruse it quietly in his study until midnight. Too damn quiet for a lot of people.
Mr. Gripes is absolutely not a fan of Donald Trump, not one bit. He’s everything that I abhor in a President: he’s got no intellectual curiosity, he’s a mean, dishonest son-of-a-bitch, he doesn’t care about his American constituency one whit, except as to how it feeds his excessive ego, and, let’s be honest about this, his pocket book and net worth. We’ll never know to what extent while he’s in office, but just imagine how much his family is amassing in terms of his fortune. We all know if we looked under the rock, the picture would be horrific.
Despite all the baggage, the lying, the duplicity, and the blatant incompetency, Donald Trump, unless he resigns, will be with us a long time.
Mr. Gripes has a couple of theories as to why Donald Trump remains in a strong position, despite the predictions of his doom:
To the Trump backers, Barack Obama has been the devil incarnate for a long time, a detested and reviled individual. A Trump supporter might say, ‘Donald Trump beat Hillary, and accomplishing that huge feat, managed to eviscerate and obliterate the Obama-Hillary conspiracy.’ And readers, have you noticed the ‘scorched earth’, anti-Obama policies since January 20? President Trump, like his voters, simply wants all traces of Obama and his eight years of liberal thinking and legislation eliminated.
For that one overriding achievement, the Trump supporters are willing to give the President a huge hug, no matter his outsized faults. ‘We will be eternally grateful,’ is the screed of the Trump crowd. Whatever President Trump does or does not do from now on, he’s done that.
It’s never mentioned by the big-mouths on network television, but Mr. Gripes senses this feeling of enhanced financial well-being among certain Americans mitigates against persistent Trump protests. The one demographic sector -- the upper middle class --that could effectuate regime change remains quiet. That sector was the driving force of Richard Nixon’s ignominious exit; Watergate was the excuse. When that class finally moved against Mr. Nixon en masse, he was finished. We’re a long, long way from that happening this time.
Venezuela --In my mid-teens, for one week during a summer, I accompanied my father to a medical conference in Caracas, Venezuela. My dad enjoyed the company, and both my parents must have figured a short trip to a foreign country might be a ‘learning experience’ for me, instead of wasting my time at home obsessing about Mickey Mantle and his home runs.
Well, I did sit in on a cardiology lecture for 45 minutes, observing one enlarged, blood-engorged heart after another. I decided on the spot that my activity for the next three days would be exploring Caracas on my own.
Despite the opulence of the hotel swimming pool, I chose to obtain some ‘carry-around’ money from my dad, and with the admonition not to ‘go too far’ from the hotel, I began to ‘tour’ the city. Caracas, from what I recall, was not a picturesque city, in the tradition of, say, Barcelona or Paris. In fact, it was a drab place, dominated by oil derricks in those days, and resembling New York City somewhat in its grittiness. Sightseeing was not one of its strengths.
But, I discovered, in my sojourns, that the Venezuelans themselves were helpful, kind, generous and very pleasant to a 15-year-old, sheltered boy. [On multiple occasions, shopkeepers would step out into the street, and present to me -- I offered to pay, but was refused – some kind of meat pie that must have been a national dish. I ate a ton of them.]
I always remember with fondness how friendly the people of Caracas were to me, with no ostensible animosity at all. I felt at ease with them immediately.
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| Maduro |
It’s always been the same story, beginning with Nikolai Lenin taking a train to St Petersburg and starting the Bolshevik Revolution, the monster Josef Stalin, the murderous Mao killing tens of millions of his own citizens, or the psychopathic Fidel Castro, within two months of his ascension to power, executing hundreds of his own citizens and expropriating private property: these criminals will cruelly treat anyone who may challenge the one-man dictatorship, and then dispose of them quickly via a noose or firing squad or imprisonment.
What’s absolutely stunning about Communists is that the story has been and always is the same: they usurp control with ‘power-to-the-people’ promises, and obliterate the one class that could do wonders for the country: the intelligentsia and the small business owners. Within a short time, without the assistance of the people who actually have the ability to run a country successfully, the Communists manage to destroy the economy, impoverish the citizens, and rule without mercy. They become homicidal psychopaths; holding on to power using any means available becomes the ultimate goal. And, of course, the United States becomes the universal scapegoat for these bastards.
The baboon Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, elected in a free election in 1998, and his successor Maduro are no different: they devastate the national economy [inflation the last time I looked was running at 720% annually!], to the point now citizens can’t get enough food, and Maduro and his henchmen hold on to power through only one means: the gun.
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| Final portrait of Mussolini |
Our Incompetent Mayor – Mr. Gripes, once a card-carrying liberal, has been disenchanted with them for a long time: Conservatives, i.e., Republicans, invariably govern utilizing ill-conceived, cruel and economy-destroying policies alongside hollow promises, but Liberal ones, i.e., Democrats, go one better: they promise the world – balanced budgets, an ‘even playing field’ for all, ‘progressive’ actions without moneyed influence – but they lie, connive and cheat exactly like their Republican colleagues.
EVERY politician alive is interested in three things: raising tons of money, destroying his opponents, and getting re-elected. Nothing else, especially sound and responsible policy, matters.
Let’s look at the case of the present mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. A pleasant enough man whom I know from our local YMCA, he’s sadly turned out to be nothing more than another grubby, low-life city pol who’s looking for money virtually every waking moment. Oh, sure, he invariably talks up his ‘progressive’ stances, but it’s a bunch of baloney.
An example: early in his term, a couple of years ago, he advocated, very strongly I might add, replacing the work horses which lead tourist carriages around Central Park, with automobiles [!!]. These electric-run autos would be built along the designs of vintage antique cars, i.e., the Ford Model T. Why the hell, Mr. Gripes wondered at the time, would our mayor look to replace one of the signature city tourist attractions with a car? [Or, as a friend of mine asserted, ‘Like New York needs more cars?’]
My father, long before Watergate, taught his children that ‘if things don’t really make a lot of sense, follow the money streams….’
Another facet of this plan actually made Mr. Gripes even angrier: the Mayor proposed building a $25 million stable to house the retired horses in Central Park -- public land by the way. $25 million to be paid out of the city budget [NYC taxpayers] for a building that’s to hold maybe 80 horses! This is not a Frank Lloyd Wright design we’re talking about. It’s a horse stable, for God’s sake, a simple, inexpensive construction of some wooden walls and roof; an oil by Cezanne is not required. The entire deal reeks of pure larceny and corruption, and yet the legislation almost passed.
Through divine intervention, perhaps, on the eve of the vote to approve in the City Council – usually a lap-dog organization for de Blasio, akin to Khrushchev’s Politburo --the project was killed. It was even too toxic for our typically brain-dead municipal representatives. Alas, our fine Mayor promises to revisit the entire issue after he’s re-elected. In New York City, big donors ultimately get paid.
Jim Israel, aka Mr. Gripes
July 12, 2017
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