Well, there hasn’t been all that much sun, but as I’m sitting here right now I can honestly say it’s sticky enough to make this song appropriate for the season. This is going up early today, since I may not have an opportunity to post it tonight.
A great song.
Mel Brooks may have been right about how good it was to be the King, but it’s not always that great to be the President. Consider today’s meet and greet among Obama, Gates and Crowley. Crowley had “Blue Moon”, a more than respectable brew that I personally foreswore only when I learned it was a product of the evil Coors corporation. Gates had Red Stripe, a Jamaican beer with which I’m not familiar, but which I would daresay is worth drinking. What did Obama have?
Bud Lite!
The only thing one can say in its favor is that it passes unaltered through the human body, exiting in the very same state in which it enters.
Why did Obama choose the worst of all brews? Could it possibly be that he actually prefers to drink that abominable concoction? Never believe it!
Consider his dilemma, however. This is the guy who was criticized during the campaign for using a reasonably decent mustard, instead of good old American French’s. (I know that sounds odd, but you know I’m right). Had he chosen a decent brew the story of the day would have been Obama’s elitism. Sure, it’s okay for a Cambridge cop to drink Blue Moon, but for Obama, only the lowest common denominator, and I do mean both lowest and common, will do.
And this brings us to the question of wine. Many commentators mentioned that Gates was more a wine than a beer guy. But wine was out of the question. When you drink wine with someone you share a bottle. Poor Gates and Crowley would have had to drink whatever Obama had on offer, and I’m not sure you can still get either Ripple or Boone’s Farm.
Why does Bill Kristol go on the Daily Show, not to mention Stephen Colbert? Is he a glutton for punishment. The poor fellow is hopelessly outclassed, as his latest round with Jon Stewart proves.
Why must we turn to a “comedian” if we want to see one of these guys called to account? As a certified “serious” pundit, Kristol normally enjoys the luxury of unaccountability. He can pontificate freely about anything, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever point out that he is always wrong. He can make any assertion, secure in the knowledge that no one will pursue a point far enough to make him look like the hypocritical pompous ass that he is.
So, I guess we should give him credit for his willingness to expose himself to someone like Stewart, who can unmask him for what he is. The interview is well worth watching. I’m not posting it here because it’s quite long in the unedited for TV version. Stewart deftly gets him to admit that the military gets the best health care in the country, in a government run program that none of the rest of us, according to Kristol, deserve. This from a guy who wants to assure us that the quality of our health care will surely deteriorate if we have the option of getting our health insurance from the government.
Getting back to my original question, perhaps the only reason Kristol goes on the Daily Show is that, despite taking a shellacking, he can spread his lies secure in the knowledge that, unless Stewart is forearmed, he won’t be able to catch him up. I call my wife to attest that I said “That’s not true!”, when I heard Kristol say this:
“One reason the price of health care is going up so fast is because of government programs. The price of Medicare and Medicaid have gone up faster than private insurance. That’s well-documented.”
Stewart didn’t have the facts as his finger tips, but as Ezra Klein well documents here, the statement was totally false.
Jim Bunning is hanging up his glove. He won’t be running for re-election to the Senate.
This is a good thing. I have never liked Jim Bunning.
When I was just a wee lad I spent many a day in front of the black and white tube watching the Red Sox, and many a night listening to late games with a transistor radio under my pillow. I stuck with them when all was dark, when the Fenway park that is now always filled sometimes drew crowds in the hundreds.
One dismal day, I watched as Jim Bunning no hit them. I was quite young, and had no patience with the idea that a no-hitter was a great thing to watch, even if it was against your own team. My agony increased as each Sox batter walked back to the dugout. To add insult to injury, my hero, the greatest hitter in the history of the game, Ted Williams, made the last out, which if memory serves was a puny pop-up. My misery was complete.
Well, not quite complete. Besides being a Sox fan, I was already a confirmed Democrat. It would have made it even worse had I known that the perpetrator of this monstrous act was a Republican. But then, maybe only a Republican could commit so foul a deed.
Now Bunning leaves the Senate, where he has proven that there actually are standards that even Republicans feel bound to enforce. It’s alright to be a climate change denier, a birther, a diaper wearing john, or a hush money paying philanderer, but it’s not alright to be just a little (well, actually, a lot) senile. At least it’s not okay to be senile and a flop at raising money.
Great video from the Huffington Post
During the election campaign I had the dubious honor of appearing on a talk radio show in which I was paired against some looney tune author of a scurrillous email that had made the rounds of the nutjobs. I didn’t know who the guy was when I agreed to go on the show, and I was amazed when a number of callers brought up this birth issue, which I had never heard about before. I remember I said that I wasn’t interested in paranoid fantasies and preferred to talk about actual issues.
There may be more than just fear of the base that motivates these Republicans to play cute with this issue. It may be that they feel there’s some points to be gained over the long term by questioning Obama’s legitimacy, even in so ludicrous a fashion. That’s what they did to Clinton, after all, from day one. It doesn’t matter, really, whether any individual allegation has merit. The accumulation of charges, endlessly repeated, does its work. And of course, this particular meme has the added attraction of raising the race issue sub silentio, since it pushes the theme of Obama as the “other”.
In the short term, if they can get people talking about Obama’s birth certificate, they can get them to stop talking about health care, and the thousand unnatural shocks to which Republicans have exposed the body politic. Democrats are notoriously bad at controlling the conversation, and so far they have been unable to make the Republicans pay any price for catering to people who are certifiably insane. Perhaps that’s changing a bit. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), is introducing a resolution in the House congratulating Hawaii on its 50th year of statehood and stating as fact that Obama was born there. Michelle Bachmann (R-nutcase) objected to a vote on the measure due to the lack of a quorom. That presents an opportunity for Democrats, since they can force a vote be getting a quorom. It would be interesting to see how many Republicans make themselves scarce by absenting themselves from the proceedings.
It is somewhat dispiriting, speaking as a member of the Democratic base, that while Republicans will do almost anything to avoid offending the crazies who are all that’s left of their party, Democrats often embrace the opportunity to offend the progressives to whom they turn to fill their coffers when election time rolls around.
Chris Dodd came to Groton yesterday, to speak at a Town Committee fundraiser. I took a number of pictures, which you can view at the link here, or at the link on the upper left on my home page. Since I had the chore of sitting by the door taking money I couldn’t take in the speeches nor could I take any video. However, Terri Roper took video of the whole thing, along with interviews of some of the attendees, who included Ned Lamont, Dan Malloy, Nancy Wyman, and State Representative Gary LeBeau, who told me he is forming a gubernatorial exploratory committee. I hope all those explorers don’t get completely lost. Terri will be putting it up on the local cable network, and when she does I may try to put some of it on youtube.
We had a little more than a hundred people there, judging by the financial proceeds, maybe a bit more since not everyone paid to get in.
I didn’t get to hear all of Dodd’s speech, since I had to duck out to mind the table, but I was very gratified that he expressed his appreciation to me for penning the resolution the Committee adopted back in May.
Here he is, with Liberal Drinkers and Waterford Democrats Atul Shah and Jessica McLaughlin.
You can read Ted Mann’s account of Dodd’s appearance here. As Ted mentions (perhaps too much-why do these nutjobs deserve so much press?) there were assorted teabaggers outside. As I pointed out to Ted, one of them was an old man holding a sign opposing “socialized medicine”. Had I been in the mood for pointless argument, I would have asked him if he had spurned his Medicare benefits and social security checks, consistent with his principles. It is an odd thing that in this country we simply re-define popular programs that are socialistic as “not socialism”, thus maintaining our ruggedly individualistic purity by definition, if not in fact. If Obama’s system passes, and if it does indeed drive private insurance out of the mix (we can always hope) future generations of teabaggers will no doubt redefine socialism to exclude the medical benefits they will, at that point, not want to give up.
We were happy about the turnout. My wife, who organized the whole thing (along with Ruby Silva, Natalie Billing, Liz Duarte, and Town Chair Betsy Moukawsher) can now relax, we have a few more dollars for our treasury, and we are in good shape going in to the fall elections.
I’m not sure I want to make a habit out of this. Old rock stars, whether of the top or second tier, are dropping off with some regularity, so this feature could start to resemble the obituaries.
John “Marmaduke” Dawson of the New Riders of the Purple Sage died recently, so it seemed appropriate to scour youtube for an appropriate video. I couldn’t find any live performances from the early seventies, when Jerry Garcia played with them. This one is from 2002.
I apologize if this video is a bit herky jerky, I imagine that lot’s of people are watching it at present so it might get hung up a bit.
As any regular reader of this blog knows, the average number of comments per post is zero.
Recently, I posted a picture of a dazed bird, and wondered if anyone could explain the phenomenon. I got three comments (I’m not including one I put up to thank the first commenter for the helpful information) which, if you do the math, exceeds the average even if you multiply that average by infinity. What I find baffling is how these folks got drawn to the site in the first place. I got the distinct impression that they weren’t regular readers. It’s not like the site would be at the top of the heap if you googled “bird”. Each of them obviously knew a lot about birds, so it was cool to get the comments, but it’s still mystifying.
This is not the first time that a throw away post has gotten a large number (for me) of comments. I often spend an hour or more on a post, trying to get it just right. Sometimes it never comes together; I conclude it’s crap, and it doesn’t go up. (Yes, that’s right, I’ve written stuff even crappier than the stuff I actually post). Most of those posts over which I’ve sweated get no reaction, but this one, which was a five minute filler, got three comments, all of them pretty informative, about a subject that I don’t normally write about. The internet is a mysterious place.
Dave Collins reports in the Day about Andrew Lockwood, candidate for a seat on the New London City Council. Lockwood, who “earned” a law degree from the Massachusetts School of Law, an unaccredited (by the ABA) law school in Andover, MA. Since then he’s apparently flunked the bar on a number of occasions, which in my humble opinion requires a great deal of effort.
But it’s Lockwood’s various scrapes with the law that drew Collins attention, including a number of arrests, lawsuits, etc.
Among them, Collins singles one out for special attention:
The most worrisome allegations that I turned up against Lockwood, in a routine search, were contained in a story The Day published about 10 years ago.
It reported on a lawsuit in which three separate plaintiffs claimed Lockwood was part of a “racketeering” scam that duped them into buying overpriced properties and securing mortgages for them with phony appraisals and credit applications. The suit also named two lawyers, a mortgage broker and an appraiser.
One of the plaintiffs, who the lawsuit said could neither read nor write and functioned at a “noticeably low intelligence level,” was enticed into buying a house for $63,500 that Lockwood had paid only $20,225 for the year before, according to the litigation.
Lockwood helped him fill out a credit application that erroneously reported that the plaintiff was a general manager of the car dealership Lockwood owned at the time and made $60,000 a year, the lawsuit said. The two other plaintiffs in the lawsuit had similar stories.
Lockwood told me that he never helped make out the application, that the plaintiff was simply a tenant whom he referred to a real estate agent to buy the house. He said he made substantial improvements to the house, contrary to the claim in the lawsuit, and that it was worth what it sold for.
The lawyer who brought the lawsuit said Thursday that the plaintiffs received a settlement in the case, although he could not recall how much or whether Lockwood had to pay anything.
Lockwood told me he did not pay anything to resolve the suit and that he believes the mortgage company involved was found to be at fault.
That was one of my favorite cases, but it’s true, my memory of the settlement terms is hazy.
I actually sued Lockwood twice, but in the second case I got out due to differences with my client. He eventually got a judgment against Lockwood, but I doubt that he ever collected. Lockwood is probably right that he didn’t pay anything to settle that case in 1999. When you do this work long enough you have a sixth sense about identifying the defendants that are effectively “judgment proof”. Some folks are always in the money, but never seem to have visible assets. I went after the lawyers, where the money is.
Anyway, that case, it turns out, was an early warning sign, a portrait in miniature of the practices that nearly destroyed the economy. These were subprime loans of the lowest order.
My clients had no business buying houses. The “general manager” of the car dealership, (as well as his wife) was on SSI due to the fact that he was mentally retarded. He certainly didn’t knowingly lie about his source of income. He could barely read. I had two other clients in the same case, each of which had similar stories, though they weren’t retarded. The common thread was poverty and Lockwood. (I don’t believe for a minute that he put substantial amounts of money into those houses before he flipped them; I certainly saw no sign of any improvements.)
The interesting thing, unsurprising in retrospect, was the fact that the bank involved (Ameriquest) was totally uninterested about the scam when I called them about it. I realize now that they couldn’t have cared less. They had sold the paper and made their money, and didn’t give a rat’s ass about repayment. Silly me. Back then I believed that mortgage lenders were interested in repayment. I probably should have sued them too, thinking about it now.
So this case had all the elements. Inflated home prices. Corrupt brokers. Crooked appraisers. Deceptive loans (all of the loans had balloon payment requirements the clients could never have made) and creditors who passed the risk to deluded investors. Lockwood was a minor but essential figure in this particular scam.
When Collins called me the first thing I asked when he told me Lockwood was running for office was whether he was running as a Republican. It was with much relief that I got an answer in the affirmative.
Republicans don’t do well in New London, and the odds against Lockwood are high. It’s a sign of how truly desperate they are that in the face of all of this evidence the town committee chairman is standing by his candidate.
By the way, Lockwood’s comment to Collin’s article (scroll down at the linked article) is well worth a read. Is he truly that illiterate, or does he think anything goes if you’re writing on the internets?
I mentioned this some time ago, but it’s been a while so I’ll repeat myself. The Groton Democratic Town Committee is holding a fundraiser on Saturday, at which Chris Dodd will be the featured speaker. The event will be held at the Mystic Marriot on Route 117 in Groton (Groton gets no respect. Let me emphasize that the Mystic Marriot is not in Mystic). For the princely sum of $20.00 you can see Chris Dodd, Susan Bysiewicz, Dick Blumenthal and Nancy Wyman. Joe Courtney may be there, his schedule permitting, and there are even rumors (unconfirmed at this point) that a certain former candidate for the U.S. Senate may be in attendance. No promises on that last one.
If you’re from the Groton area, come on down. If you’re not from the area, but you’ve always wanted to see Groton, here’s your chance. Make a day of it. Check out the Monument; gawk at the Nautilus, whatever. If you want, you can go to Mystic and join the rest of the tourists. Just make sure to pay your $20.00 at the door.
This, by the way, may be our year in the local elections. Tonight we nominated a full slate of candidates. Two years ago we nominated only four candidates to the nine member town council. All four won, but we remained in the minority. This year we have nine candidates, including four incumbents. All we need to do is add one, and we take over the town. Then we will wield the infinite power that comes with total political domination in Groton. You can help foment this political revolution by attending the fundraiser and paying your twenty bucks.