5-2-2008 Election night redux

I just suffered through the world premiere of Steve Rodham Corbett’s polka song, “Let’s name the baby kielbasa.”

Jesus…H….Obama!

I didn’t think it even remotely possible beforehand, but I am embarrassed for him. The poor bastard, the professional pot washer that never was.

Please don’t encourage him.

Pity him.

Speaking of the radio station currently suffering from the enfeebling malaise that is a complete lack of competition, Kevin and Nancy really crack me up. When a Democrat is embroiled in a swirling controversy, as is Barack Obama with his half-crazed, racist pastor, according to them, that’s a distraction from the real issues that Americans care most about.

Oh, but when a Republican has a controversy whirling all around them…well, you know the predictable deal. That’s not a distraction, that’s important and it needs to be fully investigated, and then fully investigated all over again. And then a grand jury needs to be convened. And a special prosecutor needs to be empowered. Er, a card-carrying Democrat flack needs to be empowered as a special prosecutor, that is.

Nope, nothing hopelessly partisan going on there.

My Aunt Rosemary passed away a couple of weeks ago in Woodbridge, Virginia. As was her wish, she was cremated. And come next Saturday morning, she is coming on home to Wilkes-Barre and she will be forever laid to rest within inches of her mother and her sister…her sister which would be my mother.

In this far-flung family now horribly short on matriarchal leadership, Aunt Rosemary was long-reputed to be the one and only rich person that somehow made it out of here. I’m not sure how rich her and Uncle Mike actually were. She once invited me to use her beach house on Virginia Beach. And at the time, when I had two kids in diapers, and a third one recently removed from the diaper scene, that sure sounded pretty rich to me. If only, right?

Thing is, other than her parents, I can’t recall anyone that my Mom loved more than her big sister…Rosemary. She loved Aunt Claire--her first-cousin--who died so long ago, I can barely remember her face. And she endlessly panged for another encounter with my sister Rebecca, who died so long ago, my only memory of her is the picture I still have of her in her smallish casket. But above all else and the miles that separated them throughout the entirety of their adult lives, I know that Aunt Rosemary always held a special place in her heart.

All I know is, when I was a kid, Aunt Rosemary was always nice to me. Always. No matter what. And no matter what horrible things I did to her daughter…my cousin. And I appreciated her for that. Maybe I even loved her for that. Not sure. And after being transplanted here from Connecticut, that was not the norm. I was the kid who was supposed to be the problem child. The kid who wouldn’t shut up no matter what. The kid that didn’t know his place. The kid with the chip on his shoulder. The kid who railed against all that he had been through, but who continually railed against the wrong people. And the kid that did not cower in fear, as did his cousins as if by rote.

All of my numerous aunts and uncles were always viewing me with this perpetually skeptical and sometimes overly judgmental eye, but not Aunt Rosemary. Looking back, I’m not sure why that was, except to speculate that through her ongoing conversations with my mother over the many years, she understood. I think she knew I was high maintenance, and I think she thought it was perfectly understandable why I was the way I was. And I think she thought I’d eventually get over it, grow out of it. And I did. Somewhat. But it took a decade or so longer than even she would have believed possible.

Putting all of that aside, and based on my experiences, if my Mom loved her unconditionally, then she was someone definitely worthy of being loved.

As an adult, I rarely saw her excepting for funerals she flew in for. And strangely, I now find myself missing her terribly. I’ll see what remains of her next Saturday. But I’ll always remember her for being so much more than that.

Rosemary Lovullo…my Mom’s sister.

The following e-mails--the following three, in fact--were generated in direct response to my The deep do-do do-gooder post from 4/27/2008.

From the e-mail inbox Marky,

First of all I like local talk radio, I wish there was more of it. I rarely hear Kevin since I'm a night shift guy and usually just catch an hour or two of Sue Henry while having my coffee. I'm on my way to work at 3:30 so I get just a taste of Corbett.

I like Corbett when he sticks to local issues like the the latest outrages in Luzerne/Lackawanna County. He has a great show with many of the local players calling in.

Sue asked me to call in on election night which has become sort of a tradition since this was my 3rd election in a row that I got some air time. She is a class act and a Red Sox fan to boot.

I wanted to talk about the local elections since that is what I usually write about because everybody else was doing the Prez thing. But Steve has had nothing else on his mind for the last 6 weeks. And yeah, I was unprepared for that exchange. How dare I not vote for Hillary and know what the final vote total would be.

Anyway, I won't do that again.

Gort

Bloggers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your carpal tunnel

https://members.tripod.com/~wilkes-barre/index-873.html

http://gort42.blogspot.com/

http://lulacpoliticaletter.blogspot.com/

http://www.theamericancheckup.blogspot.com/

http://www.bigdanblogger.blogspot.com/

http://zenspoliticalrants.blogspot.com/

http://nepaignorance.blogspot.com/

http://www.mhryvnak.net/blog/

Dude, I did warn many of you about this guy’s many insecurities. He has to be the center of attention at all costs. He has to be the center of attention no matter what. And he’s a user of people. Make no mistake about it, he’s a user. If you can help him be the center of attention today, he’s your biggest supporter. And if you refuse to sign on for his most recent self-aggrandizement tour, you are not worthy of his vacuous love and affection.

Another thing. Despite all of his hollow “free speech” bluster, if you do not completely agree with him at all times, you are someone in need of serious correction. Or, as he likes to say to people not of a similar ideology, “You’ll grow out of it.”

Gee, if the end-all result of growing out of it is ending up remotely like “Dojo” Rodham Corbett, I pray to his newly-adopted phony God that I never, ever grow out of it. Mental retardation, or Corbett? Irreversible mental retardation, or Corbett? Uh, please, take that sizable chunk out of my diseased cerebral cortex and let’s call it far beyond even. Please, anything but that.

As for the election night ambush, if Sue hasn’t apologized to you, she sure needs to and soon. If I invited you to come on over here to the modest adobe and physically assaulted you, you’d be pissed beyond belief. And if I invited you to come on over here to the modest adobe and then verbally assaulted you, you’d be pissed beyond belief. Fact is, you were invited here, and you were not assaulted any which way, despite the fact that you and I rarely see eye-to-eye on much of anything of note. But, you were invited to participate on WILK, and you were unfairly assaulted by none other than WILK’s resident Neanderthal, Steve Rodham Corbett. Not that it matters much to him, being patently unfair to an unsuspecting invitee. For him, every passing day is yet another pathetic vehicle by which he can feed his enormous, yet completely undeserved ego. For a guy that comes off sounding like a do-gooder chick, he sure has some set of balls.

He provides a warm, inviting mouth for the local politicians he interviews, a prehensile target by which they can further their mostly unproductive careers. Oh, when some lowlife blogger who covers local politics as well as he does calls in, well, then, his mouth becomes far, far, far less than inviting.

If there was anyone he should have welcomed with open arms and without any preconditions, it should have been you. Simply because, the two of you want basically the same things and aspire to cover the same things. But, being that he’s a former “journalist” who’s obvious superiority complex flares to the level of a record-setting solar flare when he’s confronted by those who dare to be journalists on the internet, you were a moving target in a target-starved environment on election night. In my mind, you should have seen it coming.

So, when Sue invites you next year, tell her to go pound sand unless she divorces her insecure radio assassin, who wouldn’t dare ask a tough question of a single local politician other than Tom Leighton. Or as he said to me via the e-mail inbox, something about “the proper time and place.” Truth is, while Rodham Corbett talks all tough on local politicians, he saves the tough talk for the competition…the bloggers.

By the way, can somebody tell that barely literate asshole that “athlete” has all of two syllables, not three?

Ath-a-lete? This is what has become of my local talk radio station? Ath-a-lete?

Why did Nancy put an asshole on my radio?

From the e-mail inbox Gort,

I was going to try to tune in to hear you that night, but my dislike for passively listening to squabble shows on the radio overcame my manly love for you. I figured I would get a post-game recap, and now that I have, I'm glad I didn't listen. I might have hopped in the Tercel and headed up to Wilkes-Barre to teach Mr. Corbett a lesson in manners. Clinton supporter to Clinton supporter.

No offense to Sue, but I just can't take that guy seriously. Or take him, at all. My strongest memory of him - still very rusty and probably incorrect on some of the major points - is from back in 1989 or 1990 (or was it 1991?) when Mr. Corbett nearly single-handedly upended the Glen Wolseffier case (the dentist who killed his wife - unless he wasn't found guilty, in which case he's the dentist who was alleged to have killed his wife). Steve did something very naughty, which I believe involved recording phone conversations with the good doctor without his knowledge. Eventually these recordings came out, and I (sort-of) remember that Mr. Corbett started off one conversation with something like "I'm sittin' here drinking orange juice like a homo." Or something like that. I remember thinking at the time the comment would have made Anita Bryant very cross indeed. This was duly reported in the Citizens' Voice way back then, perhaps by Mike McGlynn. Mr. Yonki, I have heard that you have a semi-photographic memory for such things. Can I get a witness?

I'm planning a post called "The Demonification of Hillary Clinton" about the nasty, negative, irrationally hateful portrayals of the potential Democratic Presidential nominee that are being pumped out, not always by Evil Republicans. It would also explore the attacks on Clinton supporters, and the way Clinton supprters are constantly being put on the defensive, forced to explain their position, being looked upon as stupid or reactionary or, worst of all, racist for daring to support her instead of Obama. Knowing that an Obama supporter has been subjected to similar abuse does not make me feel like any sort of cosmic balance has been achieved. Instead it feels like we're all being tipped even more precipitously over the edge of the abyss.

I leave you with something I heard in church yesterday, when I was accidentally paying attention for a moment. It's from the First Letter of Peter, Chapter 3, verses 13-17, and while it doesn't refer directly to Barack Obama or his supporters, some would say it's close enough:

13 No one can hurt you if you are determined to do only what is right;
14 and blessed are you if you have to suffer for being upright. Have no dread of them; have no fear.
15 Simply proclaim the Lord Christ holy in your hearts, and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you have.
16 But give it with courtesy and respect and with a clear conscience, so that those who slander your good behaviour in Christ may be ashamed of their accusations.
17 And if it is the will of God that you should suffer, it is better to suffer for doing right than for doing wrong.

- HXXXXX
a.k.a. d.b. echo of Another Monkey
('cause, you know, ultimately, we're all just monkeys with typewriters, thinking we might be the first one to bang out the complete works of Shakespeare. You. Me. Corbett. All of us. Each of us is just another monkey.)

From the e-mail inbox I'm sorry I missed gort on the hillary for president show. If nothing else, I'm sure it was interesting!!!

ZXX

(Editor’s note: The following e-mail has nothing to do with Steve Rodham Corbett.)

Go figure.

From the e-mail inbox Alright.
It's out there. An alternative source of fuel. I think the government is only thinking inside the box on this one. They want to turn FOOD into gas? Corn, Rice, etc... It takes fuel to make that into fuel!

I don't know....The boat left and I wasn't on it.....I'm missing the point on this one.... You still need GAS to make the boilers heat up to distill the corn mash to make the Biofuel.

For the past five years I've been brainstorming this, and in the last three I've been researching this stuff up. Go with me on this. It's a little out there.....

Between Russia and the U.S. of A. , who really dominated the space race starting in the Fifties and pretty much dominates it now? No, not won the Race, that was Russia's Sputnik, I said dominates it....

That's right. US

Now, I emplore you, to envision this. Why hasn't a Space Shuttle ever gone on a Mission farther than "Orbit"? Why haven't we had a Mission to say, THE MOON and back- just to stretch our legs? Why the Moon? For practice....

Read on,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium3

Now why aren't we up there mining this stuff and taking a risk, that setting up the right equipment, the right people...the right ideas, we might actually come out on top as a supplier of a cleaner ( I still have to research the waste He3 produces) fuel for not only our Country, but for our other Allied Countries as well?? We can stop relying on other Countries for our fuel source.

Go figure that; America back on top.....

Let's go outside the box a little further......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutchinson_effect

Hutchinson has supposedly shown ways to render metals and other materials weightless, into liquid, and has combined them. Trouble is, he dosen't know how he does it (when and if it really works). Interesting that someone may have Tapped into a different field of physics....we can only hope. The Germans did similar experiments in Poland during WWII called the "Bell" experiments. Weird stuff, has something to do with the Rhine Valley sightings, or the Foo Fighter sightings ?

I don't know, UFO's and the Philadelphia experiment and Crop circles getting created by Plasma Balls that defy gravity, I don't buy it. My feeling is that UFO's are propaganda left over from the end of WWII and the Cold War. Whenever anyone sees strange lights in the sky, 99/98% of the time it has to do with something the Govt. Be it a test run of a reconnisance fighter, or a training exercise at night with flares, or whatever. It's usually the Govt.

The Travis Walton Story you ask? Yes, Fire in the Sky did scare the life out of me enough, But my feeling is that the story was made up. Plain and simple. Let me take that back, it wasn't a frightning movie, it was an unsettling movie.

A L I E N was a frightening movie. That's a movie. The sequels are okay, I'm talking Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Lambert and Parker and Dallas and Ash.. That ALIEN. The first human-host Xenomorph, the Nostromo, and Jones-the first cat (besides Josie) to travel in deep space.

The Philly Experiment concerning the USS Eldridge is an interesting story, but I don't believe the Navy transported a ship by trying to bend light waves or deflect light waves to produce radar invisibility. That was a bad movie by the way.....terrible.

Crop Circles and the Plasma Balls? Sorry. The only thing close to a plasma ball would be Ball Lightning. And since ball lightning supposedly blows up after a time, I highly doubt it would etch Mystic Rune Symbols into the corn. More like set it ablaze.

This was an interesting "Myth" I was told by a few people years ago, "Hey Tom, you ever hear about the bass-player from Iron Butterfly....

Get this, supposedly this guy is a brainiac, MIT honors and all. he does all this research on Einstien , and pretty much picks up where Einstein leaves off. He figures out a way to send something somewhere faster than the speed of light. The Govt. gets wind of this, and one day....Poof! like that he's gone. No trace of him, none ever see's him again."

Now I've heard this from a few people way back when, and it always fascinated me. Then I was on Wikipedia entering random subjects and this came into mind so I looked it up.

Still interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Taylor_Kramer

Weird right?

So, my point is pretty much this, I'm sick for one of watching the gas go up while my family goes broke and Shell And Exxon make substantial profits. This is a commodity that will never go down in price.

I guess that's all I got. The wheels go when I start looking to see if I've alloted myself enough money to get gas for the week. I can't believe this.....

Now that I vented, maybe I cleared enough of my sanity to allow me to play some Bass???????

Let's see.

- Tom

Dude, other countries do mass transit. Some “developing” nations do bicycles and rickshaws. Some nations utilize what god gave them--their feet. And still other nations worry about transportation only when their horribly emaciated children need to be rushed off to a refugee camp still in possession of the highly sought after substandard foodstuffs we would rather die than eat.

I know we’re used to an expected high standard of living as if it‘s a birthright, but I’m wondering if we’re steadfastly denying the inevitable. I’m wondering if we’re ignoring the writing on the wall. I’m wondering if what could only be called excesses are sustainable in the long term. What if…what if…OPEC called for an oil embargo as early as tomorrow? What would we do? Would we change anything we do? Or would we suddenly reverse course and cheer on a president who launched into a war for oil?

I’m thinking that, all of a freaking sudden, a war for oil would be not only be preferable to emulating what others on this troubled globe of ours do on a daily basis, I’m thinking that it would generate very favorable polling numbers for the commander-in-chief, whoever they might happen to be.

Tell me I’m wrong.

Whatever. I didn’t mean to sound like I’m lecturing you. It’s just getting a bit old listening to the richest people in the world complaining about how tough they have it.

Trust me, I dunno.

I’ll be out and about in a Wilkes-Barre police car tomorrow night. This will be my third ride-along. And these police ride-along events always make me feel somewhat contradicted going in. A big part of me would just love to find myself in the middle of some really, really hair-raising stuff. Tazers. Fisticuffs. Gunshots. You name it. If it’s adrenaline-fueled craziness, I’m there.

And then the other part of me wants what most police officers want: A quiet shift sure to deliver me back to those I know and love.

We shall see.

Later