GEESE IV

Well, there I was, once again, on the day of rest for some religions, ( Saturday, for those who might not know.), walking through what I shall from now on refer to as Goose Field. However, this time, I was coming from the other direction, having tried to meet Soupeater somewhere on the road, and having missed him. As I came down the hill, I could see my usual flock ( gaggle?, gang?) of geese ahead of me. They were sort of spread out between the two ball fields.

I was late, and decided to cut the corner, and save the time where it curves around. However, I realized that I would end up walking right through them. Now, as I had a wee bit of liquid courage in me, coupled with the fact that I am a human, and felt that we should be in charge here, I would walk right through them.

So once again, I found myself heading for a showdown with this gang, yo. I put on my best strut and just headed right for them. ( They were NOT in takeoff position, and they were on the wrong end of the runway in any case.) There was a bit of an opening between two factions of the gang, and I felt that I had ample room to go right through the group.

As I got closer to them, my steps began to falter a bit, and I thought about going to the side, since I had visions of having my ankles pecked into bloody messes by these hoodlums. However, I thought " this is ridiculous, there is no reason to be afraid of some geese", even if they move around in a pack, and stare at you balefully.

So I kept going, straight for the opening between the two main sections of geese. As I got closer, a few of them ( I guess the lookouts) pick up their heads, give me a stare, and start to honk a bit.
Not to be deterred, I continued on.

As I passed through the opening, the geese closest to me sort of slunk away, shooting me annoyed glances before looking away, and muttering quietly. If I understood Goose, I would assume they were saying "the nerve of this guy, interrupting my meal of grass and constant bathroom time. Why can't he go around like the rest of the pesky humans?" I then safely emerged on the other side, and continued on my way.


Thankful to have both my ankles and my dignity intact.

Hits and Missives

What is our fascination with Hit Counters? I see that here at Dr G we are approaching the next level in the decimal system, and that brings me a wonderful feeling. So I thought to explore the issue a bit.

To continue what Soupy has recently stated with great erudition, it could be that we feel vindicated knowing that people are interested in what we have to say, and they come back to see what new pearls of wisdom have formed in the oysters of our minds?( darn, that is a good one!)

Or in a slightly different vein, it could be a validation of our selves, and the fact that we are relevant ( to some people at least) and they want to keep up with us due to other social ties.

Maybe it goes back to old rivalries of our youth, and the need to be "better" than someone else for ridiculous reasons. ( "MY bedtime is ten minutes later than yours. so there!" " Oh yeah, well I have THREE baseballs, and you only have TWO!") Especially when there are family members with different blogs, and counters on each, then it goes right into sibling rivalry, which, as many of you know, has been SOOO much fun to follow here.

All these reasons could be why some bloggers feel the need to start their counters at an artificial number, either to justify the time before a counter on the site, or to make them feel EVEN better about themselves. (That being said, there is of course the usual potential for abuse, where a blogger hits his or her own site many many times to get the number up. I don't mean checking it to see that a post looks good, if there are old comments, etc, which can be ten times in a row, or something of that nature, I mean just driving up the numbers. )

Either way, thanks for your continued interest and support.

And keep coming back, we have people we need to pass!!!

Speakin , writin, and ....

Us bloggers write as much in order to get our views publicly aired as we do to satisfy our need to create a work of art - a word painting for lack of a better simile. A real neat turn of phrase, a pleasing juxtaposition of long and short words creating a natural rhythm while artistically expressing a thought or concept or criticism or praise. A poem in prose form. That is the true goal; expressing our opinions in style.

Not wishing to adopt false humility, I can state that I think I have this area covered quite well. However, when it comes to speaking in public, I am envious of just about anyone who gets up behind a lectern or a microphone and lets loose a stream of words no matter how banal or inane. The problem is that when I speak, I sound like the word painting I was just talking about. That doesn't go over well at all. The two disciplines don't mix or even come close to each other.

Yes, a speech needs, first of all, to be written out so that the speaker can practice its delivery or sometimes just thought out and with experience the speaker doesn't need to actually see the words on paper. The content is all important, the style less so. A speech must convey a message in the simplest form and catch the listeners' attention from the first moment. Fancy phrases won't do it unless you are really aiming for your speech to be read and understood only 50 years in the future, and even so, it must be relevant and interesting now.

So how do you deliver a speech that will energize your audience, be reasonably erudite and grammatically correct? I don't know and am hoping for some helpful hints from our readers.

A Fool's Game

Things have heated up again, as they do every time a new US president tries to make his mark on history and sends his envoys to beat someone up in order to force a settlement in the middle east. The truth is that it is an unsolvable problem because each side wants the same unique piece of geography.

I recently read an article which mused that Israel someday will be serious about trading land for peace. It seems to me that Israel has very little land left to trade away, especially for some evanescent "peace" which is sometimes nothing more than a temporary lull in the existential threat. The arabs are like the mafia running a protection racket. When you stop paying, they go back to destroying your store or beating you up or worse.

All of history proves that the arabs will never give up their demands for what they want. To them, Israel is a cancer patient and they are the doctors. They say: cut off this limb and you'll live a little longer, cut out this organ and you'll feel better for a while, but we know, and they do as well, that eventually you'll be so weakened from the amputations and operations that you'll die from the treatment. If you give them a State of Palestine, regardless of their promises and international guarantees, they will use it as a platform to rearm for a while and then once again to attack Israel. They want all of the Mediterranean coast and won't stop till they have it.

This isn't a fictive scenario. Germany did the same thing, under far more restrictive conditions than would be imposed in a mideast two state arrangement, during the interregnum between the two world wars. They rearmed and again tried to expand their borders to what they considered their historical ethnic territory.

And now comes Jimmy Carter, private citizen, the most feckless and incompetent US president in history, with a long record of virulent anti-Israel bias,to further muddy the waters. He has meetings with bloodthirsty terrorists and murderers dressed in western style suits to further the impression they wish to convey that they are civilized humans, to plot against Israel and its allies. The US has suffered for 35 years from this bumbling fool, first as a president who brought our country to the nadir of its popularity and then as the poster child for every crackpot cause that took his fancy and made the US look bad. He can best be described by Harry Truman's phrase: "itinerant saboteur."

I think Carter is the last straw. No one is serious and nothing is going to change. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

More Anonymous

Truth be told, there is some difference of opinion here at Dr.G on anonymous posts. The Grain seems to be swayed toward allowing anonymous posts, mainly for some of the reasons pointed out in some of your comments. The Soup would like to ban all posts from anyone whom we don't either personally recognize or can't get any information on. That's why we have this half baked policy.

This blog was established by Dr.G in order to present clear and reasoned positions on the issues of the day as well as mutual entertainment for the reading public and the writer. I was asked to join the creative staff to lighten the load on Dr.G who is busy composing for other blogs and rants. While this blog was never envisioned as a social networking site on the order of Facebook or linkedin, neither was its purpose as a public convenience, open to opportunistic barbs by unknown ill-wishers who hide behind their anonymity and then disappear.

The advantage to requiring some sort of identity by which a commenter becomes an individual (by using the same name all the time) is to establish a more meaningful and serious dialog among the participants.

We feel that our comment policy is the best way to establish a community that cries together in distress and laughs together in happiness.

AN OPEN LETTER TO ANONYMOUS

Dear Anonymous,

We love to hear from you hear at the good doctor, but the Grain and the Soup have both decided that there shall be no anonymous comments posted, no matter how on point or pithy, since it is TOO easy to hide behind, and people occasionally get a little too carried away when they are hiding behind complete anonymity. This is the posted policy herein, ( please glance to your right and see the first entry there.)

So I implore you, dear readers and commenters, please pick a name, any name, so long as it is not anonymous.

Specifically you, anonymous commenter to materialism, we liked the comment and want to share your pearl of wisdom with the rest of the greunkern community. So just resend it, just pick a name first.

This post really does not need any comments to it, but know just writing this shall cause a flurry of comments, mostly from you ornery people. ( now I REALLY did it!)

Materialism

People are imprisoned by their desires. Life is good, no real problems and then they want, want, want. What is it they need? Something they don't have, and what they do have suddenly becomes worthless, tasteless, giving little or no satisfaction. They yearn for what they don't have especially if others do have it. And when they finally achieve, at what cost, their current goal, it satisfies for a while but the novelty soon wears off and the next object of desire puts them back into the state they were in before their latest, must-have, acquisition. So why go for the first thing? You know the hunger will return and it costs so much to only diminish the feeling for a small while so why bother?

How many things in life have you acquired that still gives you satisfaction today? The things G-d gives you for free; light, air, springtime, summer, fall, winter, children, cherished spouses, parents, children, grandchildren, give you real satisfaction at little material cost.

To quote a noted religious leader, author and lecturer, " The enemy of good is better."

S day

A previous post by Soupy, who has been real quiet lately, mentioned that he runs into family. I had a similar situation that is so momentous to me that I feel I should share it with all of you (you are indeed lucky people today!).

I spoke to all of my siblings yesterday.

Now this may not be a very big event for most people, and certainly not for some, but it really stood out to me.

I am , of course, not counting family get-togethers or occasions, when there is G-d forbid a family emergency, or when I see them and speak to them in person, I am referring to when we are all busy with our lives.

I am not a real phone person, and I don't just pick up the phone to casually shmooze with people. In fact, I speak to a friend of mine, who I consider to be one of my closest friends, about every six months, and it is usually because I need something from him.

So for me to speak to each of my siblings by phone is really something out of the ordinary for me. Granted, if you have been following the last few posts, you will see that there is probably a good reason for it, in that I seem to be a lightning rod for any and all comments and opinions, usually unsolicited, often pointed. However, they are family and still must be tolerated, since you can't choose them, as the saying goes. (In truth, my friends are no better, but I don't have that many anyhow, and as I said, I rarely speak to them, so they are manageable.)

Maybe I am mellowing at my advanced age, and appreciating them more. Maybe I have found a new talkativeness and feelings of closeness with loved ones, or maybe I enjoy their collective sage advice and opinions.

I'm not sure, but I AM sure THEY will let me know why.

Just Setting the Clock

My Grandfather was an interesting man. Not wishing to eulogize him here, which would not have been his wish, ( and would be almost 19 years too late) I just want to explore one facet of his psyche,

Clocks.

with apologies to anyone who knew him better, these are my recollections.
This was a man who was punctual to a fault and appreciated clocks. His house was LOADED with them, and they all were set to the correct time.

In fact, it was well known that daylight savings time, and the switch back, were momentous occasions in the house, as each clock was reset to the correct time. I remember sitting in the kitchen in Paramus and thinking that I never had to turn my head to see what time it was.

To a degree, I have a similar attachment to time keeping devices. I love clocks. I think there were 17 of them in my first one bedroom apartment, and I have always attempted to relive the experience of never having to turn my head in ANY room to see what time it is. At home we also have projection clocks that shine the time on the ceiling at night. Currently, we have about 25 clocks in the house. ( I counted them last night, a lot fewer than I thought, much to my chagrin. I shall try to gt more, if I can sneak them past Lovey.)

However, I am remiss, ( and I guess the blood has thinned somewhat) in keeping all of my devices set to the same time, or sometimes set at all. I have endured ribbing from Lovey and others that all of the clocks in the house show a different time ( including, incredibly, the atomic clock, until I figured how to set the DST button, so it stopped going back an hour every time I reset it). I also am not so diligent about keeping up with the daylight savings time switches, and sometimes a clock will go ( gasp!) a day or two before I get around to changing it. However, others in the family have kept up the tradition. Let me explain.

I have one cousin who has three oven clocks, and they were ( at the time I was there, might still be) set to all change at THE EXACT SAME SECOND. Now that is dedication, but all this is a prelude to my real reason for this post.

I went to the Yankee game a couple of days ago with one of my favorite cousins. One who was very close to my grandfather and this clock thing must have rubbed off in a big way. We were going home from the game when he looked at the clock on my radio and saw it was off. Now I bought this car second hand, and there was no manual for the car, much less the after market radio. I was off by an hour ten at first,which went down to ten minutes with the DST switch, then I had some battery issues, and each time the battery died, it reset. When I finally changed the battery, it was EXACTLY 47 minutes fast, so I would just do the math.

This would not fly for my dear smiling cousin, so he started trying different combinations to get it to work, finally took off the detachable face, and pulled the model number. (Tinkering to get things to work better was another habit of my Grandfather, and that has been transferred to many members of my family.)

I wasn't home ten minutes when he e-mailed me both the manual and the specific section that covered the clock. ( He also absorbed a tremendous ability to take care of things IMMEDIATELY, which is something I admire, am envious of, and should aspire to).

Well, I got in the car the next day, and promptly SET THE CLOCK. It was at that point that I had this tremendous feeling of elation that I FINALLY had a clock that was correct! I was thrilled, I called my cousin to thank him, not realizing how good it felt to actually be able to look at a clock and have the correct time without doing any math, especially for the timing of the traffic updates, which rule my life twice a day.

I guess there is more of Opa in me than I realized.

If you cut me, I will bleed ( maybe)

This public castigation and critiquing ( see comments to GEESE III) has to be addressed. I can be silent no longer.

Why is it that everyone feels my business is theirs? I have somehow muddled my way through 42 years of life, granted, with alwaysolderthanyou in the picture the entire time, but without the help of FBB for the first 8 years, and I would like to think that I am doing a somewhat decent job of existing.

Now, if the definition of existing means spending $14.00 for a slice of chocolate cake, of course called something like Piéce Magnifique de Chocolat to justify the price, then I will have to beg to differ.

I am a simple man, with simple tastes. Now don't get me wrong, I will enjoy an occasional expensive meal, look forward to it, in fact. I feel what you pay for is the ambiance, the change, of location, and superior food served to you by surly people. However, when it is done, I don't feel that I need to go that extra distance to complete the effect and have the dessert in the same place as well. I like donuts, I like coffee, I like a good deal. Hence, a donut/coffee shop for dessert, in another location, which extends the night out, as well as the dollar, seems like a logical choice, irrespective of the name of the store.

I truly do not know how I managed to survive the first 8 years of life without good advice foisted upon me.

Now moving on to more unsolicited advice. As I have been forced to state, and shall reiterate herein again upon being attacked for my prose, (although I appreciate the over 600 visits thus far, and realize that a word printed and not read may not have been heard in the forest, ( to mix a metaphor)),

this is MY blog.

I will respect all comments and opinions, but it is still my call whether to accept them. For those of you who may or may not have blogs of your own, feel free to use any stylistic devices you wish. I will take any comment under advisement, and proceed accordingly. It is not sibling rivalry, it is free speech and choice.

Nevertheless, I will knock down the fourth wall and allow a peek at the thought process behind the decision to use English. When this blog explodes on the national stage, and the hits come in fast and furious, I do not wish to alienate anyone ( who I haven't already alienated by snarky responses) who is not familiar with certain sectors of the population. Therefore, I keep the language generic.


And Hamayvin Yovin

GEESE III

The geese are back with a vengeance. As you may recall, I occasionally have to go through a field on foot to get somewhere. Well, I was on my way there again this Saturday when I decided that as I was trying to catch up to Lovey and the girls, and I was going a different route, I would cut right across the first field, instead of using the winding path. (Note: even though I was going to the shul on the other side of town, I had not eaten or drank anything beforehand, so the CANNOT be blamed on any outside influence).


So I hit the field and I was going towards the far end when I noticed that the geese were back. But then I noticed something different about them. They weren't in the usual skulking about looking surly mode. Nope, something was definitely up with them. They were sort of lined up in a row, about 20 across, just looking at me, and not moving.


I just continued walking across this very large field, feeling like I was participating in the shootout scene at the OK Corral. The geese were puttin' up a racket, honkin' and hollerin' about, but I just kept saunterin' towards them, one foot in front of the other.


Well, all of a sudden, when I was about 200 feet away, the honking reached a crescendo, and then they started to move.


Towards me.



Fast.


And I realized that I was standing, all alone, right smack in the middle of the goose airport runway, and they were taking off in formation.


Now, if you have ever seen geese take off in unison, it is a sight to behold, they start running and honking and flapping, and slowly get airborne. Right at me. Then over me. It was both thrilling and a bit Hitchcockian.


Well, after they cleared the trees at then far end of the field, I continued on my way, passing the five remaining geese who, I guess were the ground crew, or on lunch, or something.


They, at least, were skulking about.

Piff to You

I have been getting snide remarks from others that I have not posted in a while. The truth is most of what is in me has to be distilled down for the masses, so as not to cause damage. ( To who, i will not say) .

Now I have looked about at other blogs, and there have been gaps of, would you believe, 2 WEEKS where there were no posts, even though it is posted to by a couple of people who seem to have plenty to say! From the 7th of the month, to the 21st. And THAT blog did not have one of its contributors on vacation.

So now we have a similar scenario here, where this blog has been resting our fingers a bit before we ramp up for the summer surge of blogs. ( As well as tooling around the yard). The last post here was the 7th. This one is the 21st. So i just duplicated the other slothly blog and kept the same gap, without going one shorter, and grandstanding, or one longer, and letting them come back with " Oh, yeah, well OUR graphics are better than yours, and we have shorter gaps, so there!"

So enjoy another post about posts, the old standby when the other thoughts are still percolating about in my head, and today, being baked in the sun as I enjoy the top down.

Gotta go ride.

Random Thoughts While Whiling Away the Time at an Airport

I usually travel to Virginia and the Carolinas in the springtime. Their's is more advanced than ours by May with most of the fruit trees having blossomed before I got there. The strawberries are ripe and delicious, sweet as the sweetest candy, while ours aren't even thinking of coming up yet. Maybe it's my imagination, but the quality of the morning light on the deeply green trees is somehow different from other places. I have taken many pictures over the years to capture the mood but they don't do justice to the reality.

Driving around in this area of woods and shacks, I am struck by the prominence and seeming importance religion plays in the area. Churches abound here and they don't come small. Sure there are your little roadside clapboard one room churches, but many are huge, with high capacity parking lots and much activity even during weekdays. There are billboards proclaiming the need to repent and pray. I even saw one sign which read, simply, "HOLINESS!" Not sure what that was supposed to mean but it certainly has somethiing to do with religious observance. The radio stations, those that aren't public radio and that don't play rock and roll, offer up a steady diet of sermons, scripture readings, and gospel songs as well as interviews with repentant sinners who offer advice on how to keep your marriage afloat and stay out of debt. Some of it is really quite interesting, especially the scripture readings. Some of the programs contain some pretty anti-jewish bias but that comes with the territory.

Speaking of religion, apparently, a very popular radio personality catholic priest was photographed on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, bare chested, embracing a woman in a bathing suit, and the picture was published in a spanish language tabloid. This caused his boss to remove him from his post for a violation of his vow of celibacy. I don't know. They finally get a priest with normal proclivities and they punish him for it.

Georgia is known to be the second largest chicken producer in the US, after Iowa. On entering Gainesville, GA, a large water or oil tank on the side of the road proclaims "Gainesville, the poultry capital of the world." As I came into Gainsville the other day, I was behind a flat -bed truck carrying live chickens in coops. I subsequently passed another such truck on the highway (the coops on this one were empty) and counted the coops. There were about 600 of them stacked eight high in four ranks and about 18 rows all on one truck and the one with live chickens had a lot more than one chicken in each coop. They were just hunkered down in the coops, looking balefully at the traffic behind them. At least these could see the road. The ones inside probably couldn't see anythiing.
Naturally, driving 802 miles in four days ( a little less than on some trips) I have to listen to the radio, and when I have enough of the preachers, I listen to, you guessed it, NPR. NPR seems to have a bit of a truth hangup when it comes to the Mexican flu. They keep insisting that both scientists and themselves are baffled by the fact that no one seems to die from this disease anywhere but in Mexico and they offer up some really strange reasons for the phenomena, that it's been around Mexico for a long time and therefore is very potent, etc. It seems to me that any child could tell them that the state of hygiene and medical care in Mexico is not a standard a country should aspire to and in a filthy crowded and congested place like that it's a wonder there haven't been more deaths. It's that political agenda again.

The longest lines in the United States are to be found in the post offices. As you enter a post office, there is a line at the stamp vending machine. Proceding further into the manned (or womaned as the case may be) section, you will see a bar usually shaped like the letter L where people can place the item(s) they are mailing. Rarely are there fewer than 15 people waiting along this bar and just as rarely is there more than one person handling the customers. There are plenty of other people behind the counters walking back and forth and pointedly ignoring the line of patient potential mailers. I think the line of customers scares them and that's why they retreat behind the wall as soon as the crowd builds up. If they would fire these people, who don't do anything anyway, they wouldn't have to raise the postage every two years.

Someone should throw a pair of shoes at the chief of the postal service.

I Remember When...

Talk about the generation gap. I feel like Arnold Fine today. Here's what happened.
I was talking to Boo about when Lovey and I were kids, so I threw out during the conversation that the person we were talking about should have just used her cell phone. Now to Boo, this made perfect sense in her 11 year old mind, as she has no concept of a cell phone free world. So I told her the person could not have used a cell phone, because no one had them.
Incredulous look.

Well, since Boo thinks I'm kidding her all the time, she didn't really believe me. I told her, and Big Sis, who had joined the conversation at this point, that when I was a kid, no one had a cell phone, and when I was a teenager I know a person who had a car phone. Even then, I had to stress A person, as in only one. Boo then asked me how people communicated. I told her pay phones, but when I started working I had a beeper.
Absolute.
Blank.
Stare.
This one, she couldn't even COMPREHEND, never having seen or heard of the technological advance of its time. So I explained that you called a number, and left a number, then the person would get to a phone and call. She still didn't truly grasp the concept until I told her that newer advanced models had answering services send text messages. THIS she was able to understand.
Its incredible how what was a great advance in our day is considered an obsolete relic by the current generation. I finally can imagine the wonders that the generation before me experienced with even more amazing advances, and I have a new found respect for older people who adapt and utilize the new technologies.
But I still feel old.

The Joke is on Us

When I decided, during my college days, that I would like to be a lawyer, I naturally chose political science as my major because that was considered to be the accepted path of pre-law. At the time, you couldn't have found a more politically naive, unpolitically aware, young man in all of New York. I grew to like the subject immensely and although I never did become a lawyer, I have a lifelong, keen, interest in all phases of politics, from grassroots movements to international relations. Paradoxically, I intensely dislike the strategic maneuvering that is the politicians' chief emphasis and I am nauseated when forced to be in the company of professional politicians. It takes me a week to get the odor of their mendacity, their selfishness and their pure evil out of my system.

The structure, the nuts and bolts, of politics is what intrigues me. The why and the how. Maybe that's why I took so many history courses as part of my major. The nature of power, how one person or group achieves power over another person or group was a subject I was saving for a doctoral dissertation if it ever came to that (it never did).

While listening to NPR and reading Newsweek (dare I mention those names on this blog?) it occurred to me that all I have to do in today's environment to understand the nature of consolidation of power is to sit back and relax and experience it as it happens before my eyes.

Obama's appointees, people like Rahm Emanuel, Lisa Jackson, Carol Browner, whose zeal and religious fervor entails sacrificing our freedom and economy to the great god climate change, are beginning to drop into place; and you stand by helplessly as their grip on the levers of power squeezes the life out of our liberty and businesses. All the while the victim cannot even mount a feeble protest.

How have the american people, known for their sagacity and innovativeness, become such imbeciles, convinced into thinking that it is worth spending $4 billion of our money
for something like smart electric meters, a pie-in-the-sky pet project of Obama's, that will benefit no one but their manufacturer. It's like a scene from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." And it is happening before our complicit eyes.

The incompetence of this administration will make even Henny Penny cackle.

Uncle Him

Over the Holidays, I had the opportunity to spend it with lots of family. Especially of note is that it is one of the few times a year that I see my sibling from the middle of the country. She has a little girl who really does not see much of me, and seems to share the same sentiment that all my nieces do towards me, someone to be tolerated because we are related.

Well, I was sure that she did not have any idea who I was, since I rarely see her even when she is here ( she is either sleeping or busy doing toddler type things, that do not include me). Her mother vociferously disputed that, so we put her to the test. While she was visiting, we asked her whose house she was in. She answered Aunt Lovey's, which was correct. We then further inquired who else's house. She looked at me and said

"Uncle Him's"

Well, she WAS correct, but that is all I need, ANOTHER identity.

Upon further bothering, she did get it right, though, but I think the idea of Uncle Him has some merit. Maybe I will start a blog.....

Out, Out Darned New****k

I am having a problem with the mind set of some of the people that comment here at the good Doctor (what else is new?) First of all, in a slightly related matter, I would like to welcome back Dr. Uhberschnitzel as a follower, we missed you!

Now on to the issue at hand. Why is it considered censorship and fascism when one exercises his right of free speech if it isn't condoning a liberal position? No one is more slanted than the left wing press, yet they are the first to scream censorship, even as they practice it every day, in how they release sound bites, who they allow to write in their op-ed pieces, and who they choose to feature. These last two come to mind with the New York Times not allowing McCain to write a piece, and one of the two ( I don't remember which) national weekly rags ran a puff lovefest piece on the pre-burka wearing creature that lives with the President, but nothing on Cindy McCain. I waited in vain for the piece on her, and it never came.

I posted a comment and was attacked for suggesting that a euphemism be agreed upon for one of the National Weekly Rags ( or both, for that matter). This was done to protect people. I have not disallowed discussion, I merely requested that it be euphemismed to protect the sensibilities of the readers who might be offended by what they stand for, or their very mention. Also the children, who should not be intrigued to go read that garbage that passes for journalism.

( I know, I know, they throw the token bone to the Conservative in the back, but then they force him to write every third column about baseball, and wear the bowtie)

So how about us all getting along, and working for change, and changing the name of that aforementioned rag to something we can all agree upon.

I shall start. Newsbleak ( Oh wait, now that Bush is gone, that should be Newsgreat)

All the News we decided you must see, slanted our very own way ( too long?)

Obama's Voice

Pelosi's Panderer

The Rag ( i like that one) .

OK , now its your turn, and remember, its important to have dialogue to create change, its what the President's teleprompter would want.

Quick Takes

Today Obama told CIA staffers, "I will be vigorous in protecting you," but who is protecting the United States?

Henny Penny

Since Dr G was shutdown for the passover holiday (we couldn't sell it) there have been no posts since April 7.

Green being all the rage in the Obama administration, publications like Newsweek get on the bandwagon and everything they report is flavored by the new ideology. One such article in the last issue is an interview with the new energy secretary, Steven Chu. He comes with good credentials being a nobel prize winner for physics. The first thing that caught my attention was that he and his fellow scientists bemoan the fact that they can't control climate change. His underlying motivation is to somehow poke G-d in the eye and get control of the weather. Lacking that, he hopes to at least slow the inevitable (according to the science community) progress of global warming.

If there is one thing that has always gone without saying it was that humans are incapable of influencing the weather and even the greatest atheist agrees that it is out of our hands. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century we experience the ultimate "kefira."

One of the arguments emphasizing the danger of climate change is that dead vegetation in the polar regions, should world temperatures rise, would release untold billions of microbes which would eat the vegetation thereby releasing an overwhelming amount of carbon dioxide into the air. I can't believe that a nobel laureate could believe such poppycock. If the microbes that were alive when the polar reqions were verdant couldn't prevent the arctic climate from becoming colder why would their reawakening cause increased warming?

In the same issue, Fareed Zakaria characterizes senator Inhofe (Oklahoma) as someone "who has compared the EPA to the Gestapo, , Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose and environmentalists to the Third Reich."

I like this guy, Inhofe. He sings my song. Many of my friends can tell you that I have been saying for decades that if the greens ever get in people will go up the smokestacks in the name of environmentalism.

I think the time has come...

Brooklyn Postscript

So I was shopping for the holidays, and wouldn't you know it, my travels brought me back to the same store as last time.

So I finish running around like a chicken without a head, and mosey on to the checkout line. I see a nice looking line, a couple with a big order checking out, and a gentleman behind them with not too many items in his wagon.

This time, I'm smarter. I ask him if he has any minions floating around the store still collecting items. He informs me that he is alone, and there will be no surprise wagons showing up. i get in line behind him and relate the story of my prior visit. We chuckle about it.

Meanwhile, the people in front of him bought half the store, and they are having it boxed. Based on the amount of time it is taking, they are either having it packed like fine china, or they are packing it for a trip to China. Either way, I stayed in a strategic position so that no one could escape from the chute at the counter, and I kept an eye on them as they worked, so there would be no sneaking off through the exit. But they behaved.

By now, I had exhausted my conversation with the guy in front of me, so I turned around and saw a gentleman there with a wagon of basically Matza, just alot of it. Figuring that the Pesach season could use some leavening, I looked at him with the straightest face I could muster and said ...

" I have eight more wagons coming."



Shopping for Passover ( this trip) $200.00

Parking at a meter $.25

The look on this guy's face. PRICELESS

and I paid with a Visa