29 July 2017

Small Stuff Counts Too!

So I thought I would bring you up to date on some real important news. Was it Tip O'Neill who said "All politics is local?"

The national scene can be dismissed in one paragraph:

Goodbye to Sean Spicer. Melissa McCarthy is out of work.  Newly appointed hit man Scaramucci knocked off "fucking paranoiac" Reince Priebus, and is aiming at Steve Bannon, whom the Mooch accuses of "trying to suck his own cock." (I have no idea what that means on the national level. You'll have to ask the White House Director of Communications.)  Meanwhile, Jeff Sessions is hiding out in El Salvador where the Mooch can't reach him. Sessions now appears to be safe, and so, apparently, is Special Counsel Mueller. The President made a trip to Long Island assuring the faithful he is opposed to crime. And finally, the Congress is now leading Donald around by pulling on the ring they have inserted in his nose, so that he being forced to sign a Russia sanctions bill because of their election interference while the President still insists it was not Putin but a teenager in New Jersey.

Now to the local news:

Doncha love the video of NYC Mayor de Blasio in the subway? Must be a first time for him. And they had to delay the subway trains and get the cops to clear the paying customers off the platform so they could get that shot. How pathetic is the local NYC Republican party that they have NO candidates to run against him? But the video I am waiting for is the one where de B's entire team tries to stuff him into a standard NYC yellow cab. I have trouble getting into and out of those clown cars, and he is 5 inches taller than I. Yet he still fought to obstruct Bloomberg's plan to bring the bigger Nissans into town. De B got a huge contribution of campaign money from the yellow cab industry that hated the more comfortable cars because they cost more. Think that had something to do with His Honor's efforts to keep the bigger cars out of the city?  Maybe I'll put in a call to Mooch, who probably knows the answer. If he doesn't know, Sean Hannity will know for sure.

Now for some East End local news: Our Republican congressman, Lee Zeldin (my spell editor automatically changed his name to Lee Gelding, but I caught that) was mentioned in an earlier post. (He's the guy who bars his constituents from recording their interviews with him because he doesn't want to deprive them of their privacy rights!) Gelding is an avid Trump supporter.  He voted again and again to repeal Obamacare, wants to shut down Planned Parenthood, and when pressed to comment about the President's son meeting with a representative of the Russian government who offered to interfere with our election, Geldeng strained to bring himself to say something negative about Junior: the best Geldong could do was to issue a public statement that "the meeting was a no-no."  I am not kidding, a "no-no." Good thing the founders are dead and cannot see what is happening to their creation: they thought Congress was so important they insisted on making it the first Article of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, the locals here in East Hampton are enduring great privation. The latest edition of the East Hampton Star reports that a citizen, after dining at one of the area's invading richie- restaurants, called a cab to take her home. Doubtless inspired by the President's announcement he would give an anti-crime speech on Long Island, the beach-front-dwelling doyenne was so annoyed when her taxi failed to arrive after a one-hour wait, she did just what you would expect a member of her caste to do.  She called the East Hampton Town Police. And they responded! The incident report indicates a successful police action: the officers suggested she call another cab.

More local stuff:  does the local East Hampton Republican party really have a point when they push an anti-government-regulation agenda? The five members of the East Hampton Town Board are Democrats. They are determined to protect the environment. So when a local woman offered to give paddle board lessons at an East Hampton marina, the Town's building inspector barred the activity. Why?  Because the "marina" had a "marina license."  It was a place where one parked floating boats.  But to "launch" a paddleboard, a "boatyard" license was required and the marina did not have one of those, and so the Paddle Diva's small business was mugged by her government. She appealed to the East Hampton Zoning Board of Appeals, which, after pondering the material question of whether a paddleboard was a boat, affirmed the restriction! Hey, ya can't make this stuff up. When the matter was argued to a local court, the judge promptly overruled the Town from the bench. A written opinion will follow. I can hardly wait to read it. I also would like to know how much of my tax money was spent to spike the young woman's entrepreneurial effort to create a new business that does not rely on serving alcohol to invading millennials.  Hmm, maybe we could use some of those legal fees to build a wall on the eastern bank of the Shinnecock Canal? Glass would be nice, so we could sound an alarm when we see them coming.

Gotta go. There is a report of a striped bass swimming in the waters off the Point, and if I don't hurry, the crush of boats rushing to kill that fish will block the channel leading out of Lake Montauk!

A bientot.




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08 July 2017

Random Thoughts




Question:


Do current political currents require is to park our brains in deep storage?  I mean, really! What do our “leaders” take us for?


  1. Our President says to Putin, “You fucked around with our elections.” Putin says “Nah, don’t believe what your CIA, FBI, and NSA say. Give me the details as to how they came to that conclusion.”
So does our experienced Presidential  diplomat tell Putin exactly how our computer experts figured it out?  I’d be more nervous about the answer to that question if I thought Trump had even the vaguest idea of how we learned the truth.  Besides, our president is still simultaneously claiming i) it didn’t happen at all, and ii) it did happen but it was done by some teenager. (This may not be the “fat” teenager from the campaign. This may be just a new teenager of any size.)
It may not make any difference, because the Russian ambassador, in a post-meeting press conference, said the President “accepted” Putin’s denial. Secretary of State Tillerson, on the other hand, did not contradict the Russian ambassador, but didn't agree with it either. Why would any sentient observer believe either of these guys? They are consistent in one respect: they treat the public like mushrooms; keep em in the dark and feed em shit.


    2.  After the previous congressional break, the “fake news” established media was chock full of videos of Republican congressmen taking heat at Town Halls for voting in favor of the House bill on health care. They were scorched. In my district, my Congressman, Republican Lee Zeldin, who has voted for outright repeal of Obamacare, is now on his July 4 break and has pledged to “meet with his constituents.” But no town meetings for him! Instead, only one-on-one meetings “with the congressman or a staff member.”  Zeldin, who also voted for the House healthcare bill that President Trump labelled “mean,” is taking no chances.  He has announced that “no videotaping or recording of the meetings will be permitted”!  Huh, how is that consistent with keeping his constituents advised of his views? Unbelievably, he explains that this policy is to “protect constituents privacy.”  I mean really, how stupid do they think we are? Whose privacy is being “protected’’ when a constituent chooses to record and publish his meeting with his elected Representative? Ahh, the First Amendment is a nuisance anyway. Let’s ignore it. Feed em shit.


But ya know what? Trump is in the White House, and Zeldin is in the House of Representatives. So either they are smarter than we think they are, or we really are as dumb as they think we are.


Sad.


Finally, it is my duty to report that even the striped bass are behaving like terrorists. Evidence suggests they are on a hunger strike. I could swear I saw a pattern in the floating seaweed at the Point yesterday. Coulda sworn it spelled out, “Fuck you. Eat chicken.’’

A bientot.