By Jim Israel [‘Mr. Gripes’]                                         September 13, 2010

Damn it, Earl, Huff and Puff – Let’s first deliver one unassailable assertion: any of the big shots running the national television networks would gladly donate their respective left testicles to Sloan-Kettering Hospital if they were assured that Hurricane Earl would veer suddenly in a due-West direction, with the storm subsequently smashing full-blast into Cape Hatteras. That would have made the month of every network major domo.

An exaggeration – perhaps – but the breathless coverage preceding Earl’s meandering swing up the East Coast was hyperbolic, to say the least. Readers, you can’t count the number of times we viewers were shown shots of correspondents, flung out from Hog’s Head to Seabright to Cape Cod, speaking in ominous, foreboding tones, incessantly warning us that the hurricane was on the verge of crushing the East Coast to smithereens; in the background, meanwhile, there were nothing but gentle waves, kissed by soft, warm winds, under a cloudless cobalt sky, with lovely girls basking on the beach.

It sure as Hell didn’t seem be a catastrophic event, more like a lovely summer day on Antigua.

When the hurricane did finally arrive at the mainland, the gloom among the networks was palpable. Yes, we heard repeatedly that shore residents were ‘bracing’ for the storm, [no other verb is ever used around an impending storm -- always ‘bracing for.’]. With the perennial shots of windows being boarded up, and ships being removed from marina slips, Mr. Gripes wouldn’t be surprised if, in the interest of saving money, TV stations now trot out some old stock footage they’ve stored away after previous storms.

In any event, Matt Lauer of NBC’s The Today Show simply could not conceal his huge disappointment the morning Earl came in. In his heart, as sugar plum fantasies of sky-high ratings swirled about, Mr. Lauer hoped for some damage at least –maybe water cascading over highways, downed telephone lines or, best of all, a beach house, barely attached to its moorings, slowing sinking into the ocean.

Mr. Lauer thinks to himself, ‘All I need are a few great visuals. Katrina will be nothing but a summer squall once I get through with Earl.’ No, Matt may never want another Katrina, but just enough destruction to allow NBC to make mincemeat of those punks over at Good Morning America once again.

So, what to do? Al Roker is sent down to the North Carolina Outer Banks as the hurricane came ashore. Clad in a formidable, full-length raincoat that must have been borrowed from a Deadliest Catch crew member, standing in surf of one-foot waves, Mr. Roker leans into the wind. To a casual viewer, it would appear to be surely a Category-5, 150-miles-an-hour ‘lean.’ [Later, Mr. Gripes looks up the wind velocity: Oh boy, 36 miles an hour.]

Mr. Roker is shrieking now, as if we cannot hear him over the sound of the whimpering wind. It’s a performance that could garner an Oscar for the big man next April. Mr. Lauer, disregarding the Nicholson-caliber acting, picks up a phone and breaks the depressing news to the head honchos up in New York: ‘We unfortunately dodged a bullet. It could have been much worse. You bastard, Earl, you let us down big time.’

‘Sporting Goods?’ – Mr. Gripes wasn’t asking for much when he entered a Sports Authority emporium in Manhattan last month: just a simple pair of swimming goggles. Is that really too much to ask? [Mr. Gripes swims laps a couple of times a week: alas, he’s far from Michael Phelps; as a friend of his puts it, the Gripes Australian crawl, sadly, evokes an image of a “refrigerator with arms.”] I might as well have been looking for Asama bin Laden.

Once upon a time, if one were to enter a sporting goods operation, the merchandise was exclusively athletic equipment – baseball mitts, golf clubs, hockey sticks, every sport with hundreds of articles to choose from, and nothing else. Nowadays, though, customers are confronted with acres and acres of clothing, next to stacks and stacks of shoes. All, sure, the sales personnel are certain to say the clothing is all related to ‘running gear.’ Bull crap. It’s all about high-priced fashion these days.

They’d much rather sell you a Nike ‘tech’ T-shirt at 35 bucks a pop, manufactured for 45 cents in Bangladesh. A 34-inch Josh Hamilton model baseball bat, crafted on a lathe in the grand, old USA incidentally, has a much lower mark-up.

But, Mr. Gripes can be very persistent at times. He needs those goggles, and damn it, he’s going to find them. Just as he, quite inebriated, stumbled through a huge Missouri cornfield decades ago, Mr. Gripes slowly wends his way through about 50 hectares of track suits, thousands of matching outfits each uglier than the next, priced at $198 per.  Mr. Gripes figures at that price these garments must have been spun out of pure gold leaf. [By the way, you can bet your underwater mortgage that no regular runner doing his miles would be caught dead clad in one of those monstrosities.]

Finally, after an agonizing 15 minutes being jerked from one end of the store to another, I did locate a lonely pair of swim goggles. Not before, of course, thrashing through row upon row of $85 swim trunks. What a journey.  Mr. Gripes instantly felt a kinship with the Spanish explorer Cortes; Mr. Cortes’ elation at finding all that Aztec gold in Mexico City could not possibly have surpassed the giddiness felt by Mr. Gripes grasping those goggles at last.

NAFTA – During a pleasure trip through the South a few weeks ago, I observed, quite frequently, large, empty buildings along the highways. Uncomprehending at first, it did finally occur to me: these are the carcasses of what were not long ago thriving factories that provided thousands of jobs for surrounding communities. Now? Nothing but hulking edifices resembling the empty stalag prisoner barracks in Russia’s Siberia. North and South Carolina, and Georgia, too, were 20 years ago the epicenter of the textile and furniture industry in this country.

NAFTA precipitated this disaster. NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement – accelerated the eventual loss of millions of American jobs to countries around the world. Bill Clinton has blood on his hands — he completely blew it. It pains Mr. Gripes to admit this, as he was a supporter of NAFTA, but he was snookered, like many of us, by President Clinton, who touted NAFTA as the answer for American economic woes.

It would open up world trade, not only lowering pricing for many consumer products [It did do that], but create many new international markets for American goods. That was the first grievous calculation. What followed after the NAFTA legislation passed was the worst of all possible scenarios: lower tariffs probably did open up more markets for American goods, but American product simply could not compete with other countries. Domestic costs made that impossible. And, because labor costs overseas were a fraction of what was paid the American worker, many jobs left the country.

Cheaper goods, too, meant that America, caught in a paroxysm of spending far beyond its means, would import more goods, and amass huge trade deficits, which over time will eviscerate a nation’s treasury. Lost jobs and an accelerating debt: that’s NAFTA’s legacy.  From the moment that legislation passed, those middle-class factory employees never had a chance – they were done for. Bill Clinton pulled a fast one: for the promise of a pair of $20 jeans, millions of American workers were essentially eliminated.

I’m embarrassed that I did not notice this phenomenon before. It took seeing those empty factories for the reality to emerge. That’s not unusual, though. Americans are simply not told the truth about so many things going on now. Or, just as likely, we’re in a state of denial, considering everything’s that’s occurred in the last few years.

I wonder: if we’re to take Mr. Clinton at his word, that he was certain NAFTA and the promise of open trade all over the globe were the best option for America, how could he and his economic advisors have erred so tragically in assessing the consequences of NAFTA? Jobs will, after all, always migrate to countries with far cheaper labor costs. That’s a fundamental law of economics. And, our own goods, on a cost-basis, simply could not and do not compete with goods manufactured overseas. That’s another given. Was Mr. Clinton that stupid?

To put it succinctly, of course not. Here’s my calculus: immense multi-national corporations surely foresaw that much diminished labor costs emanating out of NAFTA would translate into much greater profits for their own all-over-the-world businesses. So, they pushed very hard for NAFTA. Those corporations are not naïve. They knew that the $19-an-hour American factory worker would very soon be extinct, if NAFTA passed – they had to know that. In the amoral, only-profits-count world of the multi-national, they didn’t care.

Mr. Gripes wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Clinton’s vigorous and ultimately successful support for NAFTA did not lead to substantial campaign contributions from the big-pocketed corporations. Bill Clinton, perhaps self-deluded into believing NAFTA would fulfill the promise that free traders constantly preached, was almost certainly seduced by the promise of all that cash. In retrospect, it’s so obvious: NAFTA was a great bonanza for big business; they’ve made out like bandits, and are smiling like Cheshire cats these days.

Once again, big business was able to turn national economic policy towards its own parochial interests, and the country’s working middle class, arguably the very essence of the American economic model, was bloodied big time. These kinds of dumb, destructive decisions are not sustainable for long, even for a once-wealthy country like ours.

Jim Israel

September 13, 2010

August 22, 2010 by Jim Israel

He’s a Piece of Work, But He’s Not the Only One –“I f—in’ busted my ass and pissed people off and gave your grandmother a free f—in’ ride on a bus, O.K? I gave your f—in’ baby a chance to have health care… And what do I get for that? Only thirteen per cent of you out there think I’m doing a good job. So f— all of you.”

A lovely sonnet from none other than the poet laureate of American politics, Ron Blagojevitch, former governor of Illinois.  We’re all been titillated by the blasphemous bleatings of Blago,  of course, but Mr. Gripes wants to let his readers in on a secret: there’s no politician alive that does not harbor not only similar contemptuous, dismissive feelings about his constituency, but in their hearts they’re anti-democratic despots as well.

Yes, Mr. Blagojevitch is a “few sandwiches short of a picnic,” as the saying goes, and he was incredibly egocentric and obtuse not to presume his telephones were tapped.  Plus, he’s certainly a vain and desperately insecure politician. But, Mr. Gripes actually appreciates Mr. Blagojevitch for what he’s accomplished: opening up the lid, and letting the fetid air of our political septic tank emerge into the daylight. How politicians operate inside their inner sanctums, away from prying eyes, was exposed. It’s a 24/7 brass-knuckled, cynical world of deals, deals, deals, in exchange for ever-flowing cash, cash, cash.  Upholding democratic principles and keeping the republic safe from our enemies? You must be kidding. They are #2,731 and #2,732 on the ‘To-Do’ list.

Every national politician in this country pontificates on the sanctity of our Constitution, its Bill of Rights, and genuflects at the altar of free, unencumbered elections and the principle of one-man, one-vote.

They’re lying. Their behaviors point to just the opposite.

Politicians, no matter how powerful, are frightened to death they’ll be turned out by voters. They’re scared bleepless. So, they attempt to manipulate and ‘fix’ the system. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who will face token opposition in an election in 2012, raises $24 million for his campaign fund. His weak opponent, whoever that is, won’t have $1 million to run a campaign.  Just think about $24 million for a moment. It’s crazy, right? Not to Mr. Schumer.

That $24 million wouldn’t be needed if Mr. Schumer ran in 40 campaigns. It’s raised to intimidate any opposition from even running. ‘I’ve got a zillion dollars, and I’ll squash you like the pathetic , enfeebled insect you are.’ That’s Mr. Schumer’s war-cry. A fair fight, with both candidates presenting their positions for the voters to mull over and decide? No way. Mr. Schumer is a coward and a bully.

One more example:  Sheldon Silver, present Speaker of the House in the New York State Assembly, was elected in 1976 to the Assembly, and became Speaker in 1994. No one, not even Queen Beatrice of the Netherlands, has a safer seat. He could appoint Charles Manson as his chief aide-de-camp and still win an upcoming election.

Earlier this year, a resident in his district had the temerity to initiate a process of opposing Mr. Silver in the Democratic primary. He goes about securing 500 signatures in the district, a requirement for a run for the Assembly seat. Now, mind you, Mr. Silver can’t lose – he’d win by a 10-to-1 margin. His opposition probably has about $345 in his campaign war chest, left over from his bar-mitzvah, and just enough maybe to buy doughnuts and coffee during the campaign. He’s got no shot.

But, Mr. Silver, paranoid and frightened, opts to contest every signature tooth-and-nail, and manages to eliminate enough names to prevent the opposition candidate from entering the primary.  [One can only imagine how assiduous officials were in combing through those signatures: ‘no dot atop the ‘i’ -- kill it.’  After all, the officials are probably beholden to Mr. Silver for their jobs.]

The last thing Mr. Silver wants to do is face actual voters who would have a legitimate choice – he’s just another Soviet-Politburo despot in sheep’s clothing . He’s a muscle-guy who knows he can  strong-arm everybody.

Mr. Gripes has always enjoyed the political arena. And, it’s not principally the hyper-competition that has intrigued him. No, it’s the mind-boggling, outrageous hypocrisy of the game that really hooks Mr. Gripes. We’re all heard forever the high-falutin speeches on Democracy, Economic Opportunity for All, The Great Wisdom of the Forefathers, The Simple Virtues of the American People, Free Speech, blah, blah, blah. The reality? Small-minded, egomaniacal, avaricious, cynical, bitter men desperately clinging to power.  Shakespeare says it best: ‘the insolence of office.’

I Do Believe – Mr. Gripes is not a religious man, by any account. As a child, in fact, one day my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Loos, asked each of us to write an essay on the nature of our family’s religious beliefs [Yes, in those days, teachers could ask those kinds of questions without a listener of Limbaugh threatening to smash her head in with a two-by-four.] I dutifully went home, and asked my father, “What religion are we?” My dad, who was slotted in his large Orthodox family to be a rabbi but who, at 14 or 15, said, “No way,” and never looked back, glared at me, asserting rather forcefully, “Listen, tomorrow when you go back to school, tell that teacher of yours, ‘The Israels are intense secularists’.” I didn’t know precisely what my dad was talking about, and I don’t remember my teacher’s response, but I certainly do recall that I did not have to write that essay.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally figured out what religion is all about.

I was in the midst of a week-long solo vacation in the South, attending minor league baseball games in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. The weather was hellacious – 95 everyday – but the food was celestial: barbecue [ribs and brisket], fried chicken, smoked turkey, sides of okra, baked beans and lima beans. One evening as I was driving down 121, a two-lane road between Greenville SC and Augusta, and enjoying the All-Elvis satellite radio station, Elvis Presley starts with You’ll Never Walk Alone:

” …And don’t be afraid of the dark,

At the end of a storm is a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind, [soft, but building]

Walk on through the rain,

Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown.

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart [louder, with background chorus]

And you’ll never walk alone. [louder, with chorus]

You’ll never, ever walk alone. [even more powerful, with chorus]

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart

And you’ll never walk alone.

You’ll never, ever walk alone. [reaching a crescendo, with chorus]

Mr. Gripes, twenty minutes after a delicious supper,  is driving fast, 75 or 80 miles an hour, no other cars on the road, amidst beautiful pines, on a soft, warm evening, in the heart of a most courteous and  gentle South: it’s Elvis country. Mr. Gripes sets the volume as high as it can go. Mr. Presley, in that gorgeous, baritone voice of his, sings more powerfully with each refrain of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. [No one sang Gospel like Elvis.] And, for about 2 minutes and 34 seconds, Mr. Gripes, really too old for this, finally experienced divine ecstasy.

Young Man, Herman Melville? – Mr. Gripes has an appointment in an hour. He needs to get on the subway and ride into Manhattan. First, though, he decides to return a couple of books to his local library. He allows for a few minutes to complete the task. He gets in line at the ‘return’ desk. UH-OH.

In front of Mr. Gripes, a mother, a young child in tow, is returning some books. They’re thin books, children’s books. And, she’s not just ‘returning’ books, she’s taking them out as well. Staggering under a pile that, on close examination, looks like 30 books being returned, and 30 books being taken out, along with a dozen or so being renewed, Mr. Gripes can only seethe, and mumble under his breath a jet-stream of epithets that would embarrass a marine. It sure looks like he’s going to be late for lunch.

Mr. Gripes instinctively knows what he’s dealing with. He constructs the profile: her husband is general counsel of a Wall Street financial firm, in charge of making sure overtly illegal strategems are so opaque they’re invisible to the SEC, and pulling down a half-million dollars a year; she’s on extended maternity leave from one more superfluous media relations company; she was cashing in at $200,000 before her leave.

Despite all the trappings of a wildly successful life, Mom is very anxious. Her son, Josh, after all, will be attending school in a couple of years, pre-school, then kindergarten, and someday college. There’s no time to waste. So, she comes to the library every couple of weeks and takes out another 30 books to read to her darling Josh. She’ll read and read to Josh; after all, her husband’s alma mater will be so much harder to get into in 15 years.

Mom wants Josh to be able to read by the time he’s five. He’ll be so ahead of his classmates, and that $40,000 pre-school in Manhattan will open its elegant French doors to Josh with open arms. Josh, like any three-year-old, just wants to play with his toys, kick a ball, build his blocks, and look at books with huge pictures of animals in them. No, no, Mom insists. You’re going to sit here and I’m going to read to you, and you’ll learn how to read. And, we’ll run through multiplication tables, too. Mom is in deep denial:  the reality is that if poor Josh read a book an hour for the next three weeks, he still couldn’t get through all the books Mom’s taken out.

Mom’s a little crazed, and very anxious. Her expectations are that her son will be able to read Updike by five, Dickens at seven, and Thomas Pynchon by nine. And, ah, as a throw-in, memorize the electronic orbits of the halogens by ten. Mom and Dad only want the best for him.

Mr. Gripes feels very fortunate he grew up when children were treated as children. Most of our fathers, sons of immigrants, were raised under rather meager economic conditions, and, as adults, had to fight in a war that demanded additional years of sacrifice; consequently, they wished very much, and worked very hard, to allow their children to enjoy carefree, plentiful childhoods. There were virtually no demands on us, except going to school. Mr. Gripes used to walk out his front door in the morning, with no oppressive schedule on his plate, and not return until his mother clanged a large bell summoning all of us for dinner.

Today, it seems every moment of the day is pre-arranged and structured for children. And, anxiety about getting into this kindergarten or that high school is creating too much pressure on kids. So much is expected of them. Where is the spontaneity that should define a childhood? It’s all so robotic.

As for my reading habits early on, no, I did not have to read Nathaniel Hawthorne at six. Nor Thomas Wolfe at nine.  For non-fiction, later on, I read by the barrelful insipid, adoring American hagiographies, like Lou Gehrig, Thomas Edison or Ulysses Grant. For fiction, worse: I devoured Chip Hilton novels [Mr. Hilton was an athlete who competed in, it seemed, about 1,500 sports], for one; I read all of the John Tunis juvenile baseball novels, and each of the Hardy Boys stories. My absolute favorite book?  ‘Freddie the Pig Plays Football.’ So, for all you hypertensive mothers out there, calm down: there’s plenty of time for Dostoyevsky.

But, I’m daydreaming. I’m still on line and this damn woman looks like she’s going to be checking out books for weeks. Lunch, including spicy chicken with peanuts, Hunan-style, in Chinatown is gone.

August 22, 2010

Jim Israel

Mistergripes.com

July 22, 2010

Schumer – It’s no secret that Charles Schumer, the senior senator from New York, is an aggressive, no-holds-barred, both-barrels-loaded fundraiser. Occasionally, though, he even outdoes himself. You may recall Senator Schumer, before the crash a couple of years ago, raised millions and millions from Wall Street firms, and voted accordingly: he was a fierce protector of Wall Street interests, which included a ban on any oversight whatsoever of derivatives. We all know what that led to. [What a closer the senator must be:  A typical plea might run along these lines: ‘The contribution is unacceptable, Mr.  Blankfein: You’re going to give me the max, you inch-worm, or that loophole is toast.’]

His greed knows no bounds: I read today that Mr. Schumer has raised about $2.2 million in the last mouth, resulting in a grand total of $24 million in his re-election campaign fund. That’s $24 million to spend in an election in which he will have only token Republican opposition. Mr. Schumer does not have to spend a dime to be re-elected. It seems like overkill, right? Not quite: a politician’s campaign fund can be used to purchase virtually anything: cars, huge tabs at swanky, $45-for-a-tiny-appetizer restaurants, gifts to underlings, lavish redecorations – artwork, leather sofas, mahogany paneling, and the like –  of offices, or cabana rentals during ‘working’ junkets to St. Bart’s. Basically, he’s got a $24 million slush fund.

If you happen to be in Washington one day when the Senate is in session, take a stroll past Mr. Schumer’s office. No, it’s not your imagination playing tricks on you; those are real squeals of ‘oink-oink-oink’ emanating from the other side of the door.

A What-the-Hell-Is-She-Saying Moment:  ESPN Sports commentator Hannah Storm, who will not be invited any time soon to join MENSA, at the tail-end of a Wimbledon tennis match in which the combatants have fought each other tooth-and-nail for eleven hours, over three days, to essentially a stalemate, asserts, “One thing we know now: there’s no ‘quit’ in either of these guys.” Incisive commentary, eh? Any more brilliant analysis like that and a stunned Ms. Storm will very quickly find herself broadcasting sports updates every half-hour from 10 pm to 4 am on radio station WHKY Talk in Hickory, North Carolina.

Sting – Sting is depressed. There have been no horrific earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions or floods in the past few months.  Sting is very depressed – the hurricane season can’t come fast enough, but right now there’s no immediate disaster that needs oodles and oodles of cash for recovery. [Haiti? You’re kidding, of course. In A-D-D America, that feels as old as the Spanish-American War.] There’s no pouring-buckets monsoon in Bangladesh or a locust swarm in Cyprus that Sting can parachute into in order to save humanity, and, by the way, garner millions of dollars of publicity for his career which, to this observer, has had a longer shelf life than even the recently departed Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

Mr. Gripes, the eldest son of a doctor, has this suggestion to Sting: enter immediately into the ‘celebrity rehab’ biosphere of the ubiquitous, and equally grasping, Dr. Dru Pinsky; he’ll attempt to fix you up, and he may even come up with a title for your malady: Disastophilia Disorder.

But, readers, don’t despair for Sting. He’ll figure out a way to keep up his face-time on Access Hollywood. Have no fear of that. In fact, his latest reinvention is working his pipsqueak, constipated vocals in front of huge symphony orchestras. Wow, that’s certainly a ‘can’t-miss’ concert. Mr. Gripes can’t wait to camp out at 4 a.m. for the exquisite joy  of writing out a $400 check for a front-row seat. And, what about that long, black coat he wears as part of his on-stage costume? It’s so pompous.  Who does Sting think he is? The Puritans’ Preacher-man, Cotton Mather?

There’s one more charity matter I must address, as I leave Sting forever.

Can for the sake of all humanity we never hear again a rendition of ‘We Are the World’? Please, Whoopi and Bono and Barbra and Steven and Sean and Susan and the rest of the weepy, guilt-ridden bleeding hearts, no mas, no mas, I beg of you.

Mr. Gripes, always a man with ready advice, in fact has a recommendation. Let’s arrange for a ‘Demolish Your We Are the World CD’ Night at stadiums across the country.

[A digression: Bill Veeck, an inventive and wacky owner of the Chicago White Sox some decades ago, and his son Mike conceived of a ‘Disco Demolition’ promotion between games of a double header back in 1979: fans brought their disco-music records to the ballpark, and right after the first game, the records would be collected and blown up with explosives on the field. The event exceeded every expectation:  hoping for a crowd of 12,000, 90,000 showed up, trying to get into Comiskey Park. Chaos ensued, as many disappointed fans scaled the fences to get in. Another problem: the Veecks, exhibiting exceedingly poor foresight, did not shut down beer sales that night. A couple of hours into the first game, after infinite cups of brew were consumed, the records became horizontal missiles, reminiscent of Oddjob’s hat in Goldfinger, whizzing all over the park. Fittingly, with the records now lethal weapons and players justifiably very reluctant to return to the field, the home team was compelled to forfeit the second game.]

But, back to the present: everyone brings their CD of ‘We Are the World’ to a ballpark. Sledgehammers are strategically placed after the game around the field. Fans toss their CDs into huge piles, and take turns smashing to bits every one of the CDs. We’ll all feel much better.

But when the next mega-disaster occurs, what will take WATW’s place, or, more urgently, for heaven’s sake, what will Sting and Bono sing? The fate of the globe is in their hands. Let’s, for one thing, have no more sing-along ‘Love-Is-All-You-Need’, ‘Give-Peace-A-Chance’ druggie-hippie-60’s claptrap, OK? [‘Love’ has done wonders for those brutalized monks in Tibet, hasn’t it?] No more repetitious, tedious one-phrase refrains, please. How about something a little more rocking, with a lot of juice, so the whole world boogies? Brand-new lyrics for Brown Sugar, or for Fats Domino’s All By Myself, might just work.

If that were to occur, Mr. Gripes may even write a check for Sting’s next disaster. On second thought, that’ll never happen.

The Swap – Amidst the endless blather coming out of the mouths of very old, very alarmed ex-CIA cold-war operatives, who have been reborn as bloviating commentators on cable TV, only the New York Post had it exactly right on its front page: ‘Russia and U.S. Arrange Spy Swap…but Can We Keep Her?’ ‘Her’ is Anna Chapman, a gorgeous red-haired beauty, who appears topless, [highlights, alas, airbrushed out] with that luscious head of hair askew on a pillow, reclining in bed on page 1 right under the headlines. My sentiments precisely.

Mr. Gripes does have a few questions: what classified information did these hapless agents possibly hope to discover? Everything’s on the internet: bomb-making plans that terrorists can google, nuclear weapon technology, it’s all there. Maybe they wanted to steal secrets of the peerless, supercharged  American economic engine. If so, they’re welcome to them, along with all the bankruptcies, abandoned factories, and empty Florida high-rise condominiums. Long-term cutting-edge technology for our extraordinary automobile industry? I doubt it – to GM, ‘long-term’ is, these days, praying that the company gets through next month without geysers of red ink. Or, maybe it’s the ‘transparency’ of our gleaming banking system the spies were keen on. Yeah, right — transparency, my derriere. American mega-banks, with their inches-short-of-jail-time schemes, are no more transparent than those lead-lined holes in Area 51 outside of Vegas that were used for underground A-Bomb testing.

One last item: Mr. Gripes read that one of the spies who worked for the Americans was imprisoned in ‘northern Russia.’ Listen, my Russian friends, I know that your country now presents itself as a modern representative republic that’s turned away from its former brutal, repressive methods. But, a prison in ‘northern Russia?’ Come on, Mr. Gripes wasn’t born yesterday. And, Mr. Gripes doesn’t appreciate sugarcoating.

Saying ‘Northern Russia’ has no more cachet to it than those three slices of pizza left out on the coffee table last night. Kill the phrase ‘northern Russia.’ It’ll always be ‘Siberia’ to Mr. Gripes, a habitual reader of spy fiction. The spy, a colonel in the KGB who secreted information over to the Americans, was surely sent to Siberia, where winters are marked by days of 20-hour darkness, brutal temperatures, and howling winds.

And, those kind, gentle prison guards undoubtedly gave the colonel, to ward himself against the 30-degrees-below-O weather, a couple of Hawaiian shirts, adorned with pineapples and mangos, a pair of Bermuda shorts, and sandals.

There’s nothing remotely sinister about ‘northern Russia.’ Siberia –Nazi Germany, too – will forevermore represent the extraordinary capability of human beings to inflict horrific cruelties on fellow human beings.

Jim Israel                                                                                                                             July 22, 2010

Andrew Cuomo, current New York State Attorney General, just announced his candidacy for NY Governor. Mr. Cuomo, to Mr. Gripes, seems perfectly suited to take on the entrenched ossification that poses as the state legislature. Take a cursory glance at the countenance of Mr. Cuomo, and you’ll comprehend why immediately: unlike many politicians, Mr. Cuomo can barely conceal his anger and his accumulative resentments. He’ll pummel those corrupt and lily-livered legislators to a pulp.
One problem, though: with Andrew, New Yorkers are compelled to deal with Mario, his father, once again. This is a pact with the devil. The elder Cuomo, to Mr. Gripes, was an abject failure as governor of New York, and, to a dispirited liberal, a colossal disappointment. Talk, talk, talk, blah, blah, blah: big words, fine diction, and liberalism’s demise were Mr. Cuomo’s only legacies. Any substantial achievements? None. Mario Cuomo was 100% hot air, 1,000% baloney, and 2,000% old, antique politics. And, what an ego: he turns a question regarding his son’s seemingly overwhelming lead over all challengers into an prolonged explanation of how the Great Mario beat Ed Koch when no one gave him a chance.

Please, Mario, give us New Yorkers a break: yes, continue raking in those $60,000 fees for those gorgeous, polysyllabic and inconsequential speeches, but stay the hell away from Albany.
Even Bob Costas, a most articulate sports announcer, was rendered virtually speechless: “preposterous” was his one-word description of Stephen Strasburg’s pitching debut for the Washington Nationals –14 strikeouts, including seven in a row at the conclusion of his night, and the victory, with a capacity crowd of 40,000 standing and cheering with every pitch. For one evening, we were reminded again that baseball is America’s everlasting, elegant national pastime, not quite ready to be usurped by a bunch of 370-pound, steroid-bloated Popeyes crushing each other with bone-splintering force in howling, sub-zero climes.

In 2009, The Federal government allotted in its budget $ 150 billion for education. Consider this: outlays by the Federal government account for o  nly 10% of total funding for education; 90% of the monies come from state and local governments. Just extrapolate that out: in 2009, $1.5 trillion was spent on public education in America. Mr. Gripes can come to only one conclusion: we must be insane.
This country has spent many trillions of dollars on public-school education of our children over the past 50 years, and has there been a thimbleful of improvement? Nope, the system has essentially collapsed. Public schools, especially in urban areas, are a disgrace.

Mr. Gripes, in fact, would wager the equity in his coop that half of all high-school graduates in inner-city  schools don’t possess a nine-grade reading level. Oh sure, I know there’ll be a million more position papers and a million more overpaid consultants telling us taxpayers that all we need to do is throw even more money at the problem, and schools soon will be producing graduates fully capable of facing an increasingly complicated, sophisticated labor market. Yeah, and Humpty-Dumpty was put back together again, too.
One approach that’s not going to work is the now fashionable trend of tying a teacher’s performance evaluation and professional advancement to test scores of students; if my livelihood were tied to scores of my students, you can bet my only approach in the classroom would be gearing instruction directly to that test, which is probably not in the students’ best interests. How about charter schools? A fine concept, creating schools with much smaller class sizes. But, in cities with 1,000,000 or more kids attending public schools, it’s equivalent to Mrs. O’Leary throwing a pail of water on the Chicago Fire – too little, too late to make a dent in the massive problem. And, the teachers union is now a huge obstructionist element in all of this – they’re only concerned with their aging constituents’ tenure rights and spiraling pension benefits.
Mr. Gripes does offer one possible solution to this horrific and expensive situation: have every student take an aptitude-skills test as they enter seventh grade: diligent and capable children interested in college are directed one way; the others learn a trade, based on their aptitude proclivities: perhaps a career in auto mechanics, a physical trainer, a physician’s assistant, a dental hygienist, a chef, fashion design, computer repair, or any of a hundred different substantive livelihoods. Let’s be proactive, instead of making kids take irrelevant courses in algebra, earth science or the history of Mesopotamia. That’s a waste of time.
Yes, Mr. Gripes expects to be soundly criticized by Great-Society, pie-in-the-sky, arteriosclerotic liberals for selling the kids short, but, be real, Lyndon Johnson’s ridiculously grandiose plans for education were abysmal failures; let’s at least stop the hemorrhaging of cash that we’ve endured for half-a-century. All-points-bulletin to all the head-in-the-sand ostriches out there: we’re broke.
Derivatives? Mr. Gripes has for months tried to get his arms around what the hell a derivative is, and he must confess he’s still doesn’t fully grasp the concept. Yes, it’s a futures contract of some sort, but after that, I’m stumped. One fact he does know: in the mortgage-securities market, it’s fundamentally a ‘side-bet’ on whether the mortgage market will rise or fall, and a wrong bet can cause huge losses, if leverage levels are overextended. It’s very, very dangerous, as Americans found out a couple of years ago. And, a derivative is not crucial for the financial markets to function. That leads to one conclusion: let’s just ban them. I know, of course, that Wall Street loves derivatives; financial institutions made $29 billion off of them in 2009.

The argument that derivatives, of no intrinsic value in the functioning of American capital markets, should be allowed just so Wall Street traders can earn egregious fortunes, falls apart when juxtaposed against the explicit perils these instruments can pose. For a change, can the collective will of this country rise up in protest, and tell Wall Street, ‘Enough is enough. The financial health and security of the country comes first. You can take your derivatives and shove it.’ Unfortunately, a supine Congress, awash with Wall Street millions, doesn’t have the cajones or the integrity to terminate permanently the great gamble of derivatives trading.
Zenyatta – Mr. Gripes loves horseracing, and not for the reason you’d think. Sure, one of the great thrills of being on this earth is observing an intrepid steed on which you possess a $20 ticket ‘on the nose’ thunder down the stretch, gliding to an easy victory of five or six lengths. That’s undiluted elation.
But, to Mr. Gripes, and my betting acquaintances will not accept this, it’s the animal alone that’s the great allure of horse racing.

If my readers ever have the opportunity to stand near a thoroughbred racehorse, it’s a breathtaking experience: all of the animal’s extraordinary genetic gifts just jump out: beauty, sinew, willfulness, grace, pride, poise, and, above all, overwhelming strength. Other stellar qualities emerge from the races: courage, perseverance, an unquenchable desire to run faster than his competitors, and sheer athleticism.
At this moment, right under our noses, all of us may be witnessing the most spectacular racehorse of them all. I know, I know, Secretariat was magnificent, but he usually won by fifteen or 20 lengths – there was no drama. This horse wins in a breathtaking fashion.
The horse is Zenyatta. And, delightfully, Zenyatta is not one of those head-case, emotionally brittle male race horses. She’s in fact a filly, and has won each one of her 17 races. She doesn’t bore herself silly reading dreary authors like Toni Morrison and Louise May Alcott or bone up on suffrage history to give herself a confidence boost in dealing with stronger, nastier, and angrier males. With a derisive sneer, she just whooshes by them all and wins.
And, here’s what makes Zenyatta so exciting: she gives all her competitors a head start; 300 yards out of the gate, she settles invariably into last place, way, way behind, and remains there for most of the race. As the race comes out of the final turn, heading down the stretch toward the finish line, she picks up her pace and starts her kick, picking off horses as if they’re standing still. 150 yards from the finish, Zenyatta, having passed 8 or 9 horses, is now running with a champion’s confidence; she’s running effortlessly, ears up, tail straight out, beating the crap out of the rest of the field. The indomitable Zenyatta will not be denied.
In the 2009 Breeders Cup Classic last November, she ran against the best stallions in the world. Indeed, this race was a little more difficult for her, but at the end there she was, flying past champion thoroughbreds one-by-one, to win again by a neck.
The track announcer, as Zenyatta **crossed the finish line, blurted out just one word, accentuating and elongating each syllable: ‘U-N—B –E—L-I-E-V—A—B-L-E!!
May you run for 100 years, Zenyatta.
** Hyperlink of a typical Zenyatta race: Right ‘click’, then ‘open hyperlink.’
http://www.mistergripes.com
Please sign up for a subscription on the site: each column, as it’s posted, will be sent to you immediately.
Jim Israel

June 28, 2010

By Jim Israel

June 4, 2010

E-mail: jamesisrael77@yahoo.com

It’s Time to Go…Let’s study for a moment a film [now on DVD] that Mr. Gripes has no intention of ever viewing, but for whom one brief glance at a theatre trailer told him everything he needed to know:  that is, the movie stunk. The film is ‘Extraordinary Measures,’ starring that old, leathery stegosaurus Harrison Ford. The plot? My readers, undoubtedly observers of too many bad films themselves, have certainly seen a version of this a million times: A stylish, yuppie couple is confronted with a horrific scenario: their child, angelic in mien, comes down with a debilitating illness, and no one can furnish a diagnosis as the child’s condition worsens.

Remote, despotic doctors turn them away, telling the parents they can do nothing. The desperate parents have no place to turn to. Then, a miracle happens: they fortuitously meet our humble hero, himself long shunned by the medical establishment, who initiates a fight against a ferocious bureaucracy and heartless doctors; lo-and-behold, the child’s life is saved. It’s Hollywood tear-jerking garbage, and it’s been a theme that’s been recycled for eons. In this version, Mr. Ford is the savior, exclaiming at one point in a bellow of outrage, as he sits at his desk, “No one tells me how to run my lab!” Imagine: these words emerge from the mouth of the same person who years ago fought off a gazillion slithery snakes, rescued voluptuous damsels from the clutches of swarthy, scimitar-wielding criminals, and halted runaway vehicles while hanging on to the roof by his fingernails. Now, he’s behind a desk, running a laboratory. Whoopee.

Final worldwide box-office receipts: $11 million, which was probably a fraction of the amount of cash some poor sap-producer was compelled to folk over for Mr. Ford’s services. Stick a folk in him. Harrison, you’re done.

_____________________________________________

Saving themselves from themselves – Let’s get something straight right off the bat: Mr. Gripes, despite his often oracular, know-it-all tone, doesn’t for one minute think he’s as smart or as shrewd as most of those top-dog chief executives we hear and read about so much. Hey, to get to be king-of-the-hill of any large institution certainly takes a lot of brains, patience, tenacity and superior social skills. But, Mr. Gripes is certain of this: almost to a man, these big shots are not only totally wrong, they’re borderline hysterical about one issue: regulation.

Lately, with great impetus from the right’s almost pathological screed about free enterprise, Big Business screams constantly that profits in their particular industry will be severely diminished and their ability to run their businesses crippled if powerful regulations are put in place.

Mr. Gripes takes an entirely different tack: he thinks an intelligent, properly managed, no-loophole regulatory climate is a boon to industry. In fact, strong oversight measures may indeed save these very institutions from destroying themselves in an orgy of greed not dissimilar to the debacle we’ve witnessed over the past few years. As history has shown repeatedly, boom times plant the seeds of institutional euphoria and amnesia, which lead to self-immolation. Regulation can act as a buffer.

Look at the awful British Petroleum oil-spill in the Gulf, for example: if the oil industry had invested just $500,000 [per rig] in a shut-down safety device, instead of going all-out to defeat a proposal that would have mandated the use of the mechanism on drilling platforms [I’m not surprised it was defeated – after all, since 2002, the oil industry has spent a mind-boggling $893 million on lobbying efforts.], this whole sordid, costly mess could possibly have been avoided. By rejecting a piece of safety equipment costing a picayune half-a-million dollars, BP will end up squandering tens of billions of its hard-earned assets.

To get this regulation defeated, the oil companies very likely lied about its efficacy as well; they persuaded Congress that the safety equipment did not work, even as European countries reported this particular gizmo in their oil fields has operated successfully and without problems for years. BP is a prime example of how a company’s insistence on short-term profits over prudent long-term management of its resources eventually causes great damage to the institution.

How about the big banks and Wall Street? Institutions such as Citicorp, in their pell-mell stampede for profits, simply lost their heads, and put their very institutions at risk with their over-leveraged loans, off-the-balance-sheet obfuscations, and a host of other barely legal stratagems. And, where did it get Citicorp in the end? When the dust cleared after the apocalypse of 2008, Citicorp had given back TEN years of profit, basically falling into insolvency. Mr. Gripes will say it again: Citicorp, and essentially every other large financial institution, in the absence of firm oversight and accountability, ran off the cliff, jeopardizing their very existence. If there had been tough regulations without exceptions in place, and competent individuals to implement them, Citicorp would still be today a sound, profitable and proud institution, instead of a shell of its former self. That’s irrefutable.

But, unfortunately, these corporations never learn. The allure of huge year-end bonuses propels senior management to game the system constantly – deception and concealment are the orders of the day still. That inevitably leads to big trouble. Just the other day, Mr. Gripes read in the Wall Street Journal that, even after all the losses and all the shame, Citicorp still creates fictitious quarterly statements; Mr. Gripes is no expert on this, but the legerdemain involved offloading some assets to create a false picture of reduced liabilities and less leverage. At its essence, it’s really a blatant manipulation of the stock price, and that’s patently dishonest. Yet they’re still doing this. Companies just cannot help themselves.

My point: Regulations, done correctly, save avaricious corporations, in their insatiable and all-consuming drive for profit now, from an ultimate demise. Never underestimate, readers, the ability of businesses to run blindly over cliffs in their maniacal push for returns. Staggering, runaway profits always bring on rampant institution-wide denial. Regulations and rules would prevent these companies from injuring themselves, or even committing suicide.

May 09, 2010

www.mistergripes.com

Ronnie on the $50 Bill – It’s been bandied about lately by Tea Party members and Republican operatives that Ronald Reagan’s portrait should appear on the American fifty-dollar bill. Ah, all you cowboys, how about pulling up on those reins just a little bit, OK?

If Mr. Reagan’s countenance should one day happen to grace a $50 bill, Mr. Gripes will raise his hand and insist on his own candidate for the $100 bill: Minnie Mouse.

Recent revisionist history emanating from certain quarters posits that Mr. Reagan was one of the greatest Presidents in American history. Before Mr. Reagan is officially beatified, please permit Mr. Gripes to remind his readers of a couple of less-than-glittering moments of his Presidency:

You all recall the humiliating crisis of 1979-80 in which Iranian students seized and held hostage 61 Americans for over a year? They were released, after a seemingly interminable period of 444 days, on the very day of Mr. Reagan’s inauguration. Iran’s been a detested enemy ever since.

In his second term, in 1985, Mr. Reagan, secretly made a deal with the very same hated enemy. It went something like this: we’ll sell Iran arms, [without telling our citizens because we’re actually prohibited legally from doing this], then we’ll take the cash from that deal, and buy weapons for the Contras in Nicaguagua. The Contras will overthrow Ortega and his Communists in Nicaragua with those weapons. [In fact, 1,500 missiles were sold to Iran over three years.] To our addled President, he might have thought he was taking a look at a great movie script.

There was a slight problem, though: the money-for-arms deal was essentially treason, not only countermanding a law of Congress, but, worse to Mr. Gripes, Mr. Reagan actually arming the very enemy that had imprisoned and held hostage fellow Americans. Bill Clinton would have been lynched; God only knows what medieval torture would have been meted out to Barack Obama. Eventually the whole secret arrangement was discovered, and the Communists in Nicaragua remained in power; once again, the rest of the world laughed heartily at the imbecilic Americans.

Allow me at this point to offer a light interlude. Mr. Gripes was intrigued by an altogether frivolous detail of this swap: to get into the good graces of the Ayatollah as the exchange was being worked out, a birthday cake was delivered to him by Robert McFarland, a National Security Council senior official. Yep, a birthday cake for the Ayatollah: I’ve always wondered if there were frosting and candles on that cake; did Mr. McFarland serenade the Most Revered One with ‘Happy Birthday’, too?

Let’s move on: President Reagan, these days trumpeted as our fearless President not intimidated by the big, bad Commies and their Berlin Wall, apparently did not dare make any significant decisions without input from his wife’s astrologer [Joan Quigley].

Donald Regan, the President’s former chief-of-staff, wrote in his memoirs that Nancy Reagan relied often on her astrologer to determine the most favorable days and times for the President to fly on Air Force One or schedule meetings with foreign leaders. If Ms. Quigley indicated that Mr. Reagan’s astrological signs were unfavorable, designated days, and even weeks in some instances, were blocked off on his calendar as periods that no significant work, or even travel, was to occur. In fact, Mr. Reagan’s calendar book was color-coded to indicate which days were acceptable or unacceptable for Presidential activities. My God, this is the presumptive Leader of the Free World we’re talking about.  Ceasing to write at this moment, Mr. Gripes leans back in his chair, and shakes his head in stunned incredulity.

Let’s pretend to eavesdrop on a conversation between Nancy and the President:

“Honey, can I have a moment of your time?”

“Yeah, Ronnie, but make it quick. I’m having lunch with our dear friend Ida Lupino.”

“Ah, well, I’m planning to go to Reykjavík in a couple of weeks to sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with General Secretary Gorbachev. Is that OK with you?”

Angrily, “Ronnie, how many times do I have to tell you: unless all of Jupiter’s moons are in alignment with the trailing star of the Big Dipper and Tip O’Neill’s belly button, you’re under no circumstances to have anything to do with that Russian, OK?”

Softly, “But, honey, the arrangements have been all set. He’ll be real mad.”

“Listen, don’t cross me — the answer is still no. Just tell Gorby to cool his jets, and that you’ll sign that agreement next month, on the 14^th at 3:32 a.m., OK?

One last thing, Ronnie: because you’ve been disobedient and a bad boy, there’ll be no red jelly beans in your bedtime goody bag tonight.”

But don’t despair, guys.  Considering how things are done in this cockeyed country these days, I’ll wager George W.’s portrait will be on the $5 bill next week.

____________________________

Only Boom Times – In retrospect, the vast majority of Americans believed that the boom times were going to last forever. Forget about a collapse; the very idea of an economic downturn was scuffed at by virtually all of us. Roger Lowenstein, in his book The End of Wall Street, describes those frothy times as “a gale of mass hallucination.”

Looking back on his own behavior, as someone who in his gut has always mistrusted mass movements as irrational and potentially destructive, and who is a contrarian by nature, Mr. Gripes can only mutter, “What the hell was I thinking?”

Worse, Mr. Gripes perceived signs early on that, indeed, the fox was being ushered into the henhouse, and there’d be one hell of a reckoning down the road.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, hoping to be reappointed by newly elected George W. Bush, approved the huge tax cuts proposed by the new administration. Mr. Greenspan, in essence, went against his own belief system developed over half-a-century. The chairman’s imprimatur to proceed with deficits was sufficient to push through the tax-cut legislation; its passage was the end of the lofty goal of a national balanced budget. Huge short-term profits over long-term stability and a financial free-for-all became the mantra for the American economy. [President Bill Clinton, incidentally, was successful in balancing his last budget.] The astonishing fiscal irresponsibility and lack of institutional discipline that ensued were certainly foreshadowed by Mr. Greenspan’s blatant disregard of his own fiduciary duty as the country’s No. #1 regulator.

Another omen: Mr. Gripes happened to catch on C-Span very early in Mr. Bush’s first term a Congressional hearing in which Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission, testified. Someone on the committee mentioned to Mr. Pitt that there was extra money available for the SEC to utilize for investigative matters, i.e., to look for crooks. Mr. Pitt, to Mr. Gripes’ great surprise, refused the additional funds, asserting he had enough on hand. Consider that for a moment: a Federal agency turning down money. That never happens. Mr. Gripes was flabbergasted. What’s Mr. Pitt doing?

Now, it all makes sense. Congressional hearings, especially when ‘friendly’ witnesses are being questioned, are rarely spontaneous. The witness is often appraised of subjects likely to come up, and even a rehearsal of questions and answers may occur. My suspicion is that Mr. Pitt knew very well that he’d have the opportunity to turn down that money. The SEC chairman, perhaps with Administration connivance, refused those funds for a very specific reason: he was signaling to the huge cartels [Wall Street, Oil, Pharmaceuticals, Real Estate, Insurance, et al.] not to worry:  free-market forces will be unleashed, and there’d be no meddling regulators messing with the huge corporations from now on.

And that’s exactly what occurred – financial institutions leveraging loans at 20-, 30-to-1 [Bear, Stearns was king: 42-1]; lenders permitting knucklehead homebuyers earning $60,000 salaries to be approved for $600,000 mortgages; borrowers with no proof of income obtaining $500,000 loans; absolutely worthless securities receiving ‘AAA’ ratings; Wall Street firms and commercial banks fabricating off-the-books, ‘independent’ entities to create an illusion of less debt, thereby enhancing quarterly statements. Sure, it’s called Wall Street down there in the financial district, but, let’s be honest, it was the rootin’-and-tootin’ Wild West for almost a decade.

Do you recall the old Westerns in which the cattle rustlers and stagecoach bandits ride into town, guns blazing, scaring the daylights out of law-abiding citizens? The sheriff and his deputies throw down their badges, and ride like hell out of Dodge City. That was big business in America a few years ago. My goodness, we were so stupid.

Jim Israel May 10, 2010

www.mistergripes.com

I encourage readers to sign up for a free subscription [meaning you’ll get my columns automatically immediately after they’re posted] at www.mistergripes.com . Sign-up is located in the upper, right-hand corner.

By Mister Gripes [James Israel]                    www.  mistergripes.com April 28, 2010

Ms. Palin, Thank God…For enthusiasts like Mr. Gripes, political theatre in this country all too frequently devolves into old, desiccated, sclerotic white guys – Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Orin Hatch come immediately to mind – mouthing party lines and boring everyone. Sarah Palin, just like the Lone Ranger, has come to the rescue. She continues to be an absolute delight. A month ago, I happened to come across on FOX an interview Glenn Beck, another Wonder of the Western World, conducted with the lovely Ms. Palin.

I gather this was to be her coming-out party on the station, with a new Sarah Palin displaying, finally, a nuanced and intricate mastery of national governance. I’m afraid it didn’t go as planned.

Mr. Beck starts out with a lollypop question: ‘Who’s your favorite Founding Father?” The ex-governor, taken aback, pauses, freezes, and finally answers, “All of them.” Translation: ‘What the bleep is a founding father? Larry King? The sperm-donor for Octomom? Roger Ailes?  I haven’t a clue. Who the hell is Glenn Beck, anyway?  You sure Katie Couric didn’t supply that question?’ Ms. Palin was stumped.

Mr. Beck, himself at sea now, tosses a follow-up lollypop at Ms. Palin: “What about George Washington?” Ms. Palin starts talking about Mr. Washington’s retirement to Mount Vernon after independence was achieved, with a hope that his public service was over for good. Later, summoned away from his beloved farm and anointed as the country’s first citizen-politician, he reluctantly agreed to be the country’s first President.  Mr. Beck then muses aloud, “Yes, he was a citizen-politician, leaving the farm and taking on the burdens of the Presidency. That’s a good description of you, isn’t it?” Ms. Palin, now broadly smiling and in the full throes of false modesty, concurs. Right then, Mr. Gripes sat up straight, and exclaimed, “What!!” Sarah Palin was never a citizen-politician; in fact, she was the opposite, a politician-citizen. After all, she was already a state governor who gave up public service, becoming a private citizen, so she could get her hands on millions of dollars just waiting for her. As Gary Cooper would say, ‘She up and quit.’ Sarah, don’t bother laying that ‘I’m so humble’ attitude on Mr. Gripes. It won’t work. But, maybe you can’t blame her – George would never have been President if there was a talk show opportunity hanging out there for him on CNN.

The Spat — Do you recall, dear readers, the dispute over subscriber fees that ABC Television and Cablevision waged for a few months that culminated in Cablevision suspending its telecast of the Academy Awards for a short time? Was there any protest from citizens during and after this clash between mighty cartel companies? Not a whisper. We as consumers just sat there and took a couple of left hooks to the solar plexus. Think about that. Once, not long ago, Americans would have been outraged that they had become pawns in the titanic battles between monopolies. We’ve become inured to taking blows like this one; we feel powerless. And we are, simply because our elected officials do not represent our interests any longer. The vast, all-powerful monopolies control, through bribes disguised as campaign contributions, the levers of our government. Our representatives and senators are charlatans. The politicians couldn’t be happier that there’s such an apathetic, listless voting public – that sentiment guarantees their perpetual re-elections.

Haiti: $$ Down the Drain? – A conference a few weeks ago in Port-au-Prince estimated that that it’ll take $11.5 billion in funds to rebuild the Haitian infrastructure – the roads, the schools, the electrical grid, the sewage system, etc. And, the United States promised an aid package of $1.3 billion, and that’s only for starters.

Mr. Gripes immediately raises his hand, and articulates very loudly just two syllables: No mas. On this issue, I’m right there with the wild and wooly guys in the Tea Party. Since the end of World War II, it’s always the United States that’s shelled out vast, unaccounted-for sums in foreign aid. I plea, “America’s days of being the deaf-and-dumb sugar daddy are over.” Just imagine how many trillions we’ve given to all those tin-horn dictators. The autocrats learned how to play the game: just say the words ‘Russia,’ ‘Communist’ or, these days, ‘Bin Laden’ and the dollars rain down like the monsoons in Malaysia. And, lest it’s forgotten, we’re broke. It’s no t even our money that we’d be doling out now; all we’ll be doing is borrowing more money, accruing more interest, and ratcheting up our already monstrous debt to China.

Haiti? Yikes. In a world in which the vast majority of countries operate solely through bribery and corruption, Haiti may win the gold medal for thievery.  Here’s one beautiful example of Haitian criminality: once upon a time, Haiti had a national railroad system. Now? Not a trace. Years ago, ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, the most vicious, murderous plunderer of all the Haitian dictators, decided to obliterate the entire rail network. Every piece – tracks, locomotives, passenger cars, depots – was melted down and sold for scrap. That money then was hijacked by Duvalier, made into gold bars, and squirreled away in banks abroad. Haiti was and is a full-blooded kleptocracy, i.e., a government operated by robbers.

Mr. Gripes is not totally hardened. I understand food, medicine, and temporary shelters must be delivered to that country to forestall famine and illness. The charities certainly are up to that task, and I commend them for their humane efforts. In this one situation, if 30% of the charity-aid monies disappear into the Haitian ethers, as much as it bugs the hell out of Mr. Gripes, that’s the price we have to pay to keep people alive.

But, regarding the permanent reconstruction efforts, America must take responsibility for preventing the Haitian political caste from getting their larcenous hands on our money. Haiti has been, and continues to be, a failed state. [Admit that obvious fact, please, Bill Clinton.] Simply put, Haitian corruption is astounding in its breath. America just can’t shovel billions of dollars down there any longer.

So, here’s my basic plan for rebuilding Haiti: an international agency ought to be created – with huge input from donor countries such as the United States, China, France, Britain, i.e., the big powers. Put in place in Port-au-Prince an organization that will coordinate every facet of the rebuilding from the streets up. Haitian politicians – all of them — cannot be anywhere near the cash or in any leadership position, simple as that. Let’s put, say, the Army Corps of Engineers in charge of distributing the money, and organizing a systematic, timely ‘blueprint’ for the reconstruction of Haiti.

There’ll be incredible resistance to a plan like this, of course – screams from the politicians about respecting ‘Haitian sovereignty’ and the return of ‘Yankee imperialism’. The loudest  protesters will surely be the Haitian political class, who have ripped off, beaten, murdered, macheted and imprisoned citizens for 200 years; they will scream the Haitian ‘people’ must have a say in earthquake-aid distribution.

Mr. Gripes has a plan for the opposition as well: let’s have a honest [That’ll never happen, of course] plebiscite. Vote for one of two options: A. the Haitian government will be in charge of the aid, and apportion the money as it deems fit, versus, B. the United States will have the sole responsibility of distributing the money as it deems fit. Guess who’ll win? Option B’, by about 93% to 7%. Enough of that ‘imperialism’ garbage.

NCAA: The Fix Is In – Yeah, I know, I know. Butler, which plays in a mid-level basketball conference, gets to the finals of the 2010 NCAA Basketball tournament. And all you basketball cognoscenti out there know what that means: every hack, burnt-out sportswriter alive will bring up the movie ‘Hoosiers’ in their columns. God help us all. ‘Hoosiers’, in spite of all the reverential and extravagant praises slathered upon it by fans and media, is arguably the most cliché-ridden film ever made.

Let’s count the ways: A basketball coach, summarily fired from an authentic basketball power for committing an egregious infraction, is blackballed, and can’t find a job anywhere except in some Palookaville deep in the sticks [Cliché #1]; there he befriends a kind, attractive woman, who knows Coach has a heart of gold under a steely, gruff exterior [Cliché #2]; Coach throws off the team his immature, disobedient star, only to let him return later after he’s seen the errors of his ways [Cliché #3}; Star player becomes hero as team, from the lowest division, keeps beating much bigger schools in the state tournament [Cliché #4 and #5]; team comes together as one and reaches finals, although a prohibitive underdog [Cliché #6]. Team wins final game and state tournament on a last-second shot by now-rehabilitated star [Cliché #7]. More clichés abound, but I know I’m getting real tedious.

Real life doesn’t resemble ‘Hoosiers’ one bit, I’m afraid, although sanctimonious sportswriters, who absolutely know better, often assert that sentiment. It’s nothing but fairy-tale mythology, like Zeus living on top of a big mountain in Greece. Mr. Gripes has a better chance of becoming a Tibetan goat-herder one day than a lower-seeded team has of winning the NCAA tournament.

The big shots always win. The tournament is, in a sense, rigged. No, money is not given players to shave points, thereby affecting point spreads. It’s a little more complicated than that: the high-school player of NBA-caliber, can’t-miss talent always ends up at the 15 or so powerhouse teams that dominate the sport year-in, year-out. Why does that happen 100% of the time? Let’s just say there’re material ‘inducements’, usually well concealed [example: a Mercedes ‘loaned’ to an ‘uncle’ of a star], as well as payoffs to ‘street agents’ who then guide their star charges to matriculate at particular big-time schools. Come on, readers, doesn’t the not-so-felicitous term ‘street agent’ by itself tell you all you need to know about the extent of the sewage in college basketball? The Cornells and Princetons of this world, which run honest programs placing academics over athletics, will never win this tournament in 500 years.

By Jim Israel, aka ‘Mr. Gripes’ mistergripes.com                     March 14, 2010

‘Bad Girls Club’….During his convalescence from ankle surgery, Mr. Gripes was compelled to recline, day after day, on the living-room sofa. Writing and, for that matter, reading were out of the question due to constant post-operative pain. Consequently, his main recreational activity devolved to observing day-time television. Yikes. If any of my readers has any doubts about the collapse of the American hegemony, take a week off and just watch cable. It’s become an overflowing sewage basin.

Let’s examine the American women’s liberation movement, for instance. It is in deep, deep trouble. Oh sure, those anxious upper-class mothers in Chappaqua, or Westport, or Orinda will move mountains to get their oh-so-gifted, over-privileged daughters into law schools, and self-anointed feminists, ecstatic that schools are graduating these days more female lawyers than male, envision the dawning of a matriarchal America. Sorry, ladies, it’s not to be: women’s liberation is now narrowly limited to one social stratum, the wealthy and powerful. Throw in college students wasting their time on a ridiculous major like Women’s Studies and that’s the extent of the women’s movement.

Mr. Gripes may appear a bit jaundiced, but I implode you to take a look at the cable reality show, ‘Bad Girls Club.’ A half-dozen young women, in their twenties, are selected to live together in a plush home in some warm southern city. These women do not resemble Susan B. Antony and her suffragettes on the picket lines in the least: they get drunk, they fight, even throwing punches and pulling hair, they form cliques, and they scheme against each other. And, good Lord, do they curse, constantly, with a complexity and fluidity not even a marine clamoring onto Omaha Beach could ever imagine. A backdrop to all this is an unremitting lusting for boys, boys, boys and sex, sex, sex. The damage to the movement is so obvious: every stereotypical feminine trait that women have spent decades insisting is belittling and false is nevertheless accentuated, even trumpeted, on the show.

And, here’s the factor that makes all this so depressing: your nine-, ten-, or 11-year-old daughter, at her most impressionable and innocent age, at home from school in the late afternoon, plops down in front of the television, and avidly watches this filth.  And, the effluvia keeps on coming down stream:  Mr. Gripes noticed the other day there’s a new show out: it’s called RuPaul’s Drag Race, and features some kind of competition between drag queens – imagine your daughter watching this train wreck. Feminism for the next generation is dead on arrival. That’s the way reality T.V. works: it takes fundamental core values and sensibilities, and eviscerates them, favoring always the most vile human behavior.

‘Fear and Loathing in the Heartland’…We all hear the identical refrain each election cycle: ‘There’s so much anger out there in the hinterlands….there’s a huge shake-up in Washington brewing… Incumbents are extremely nervous about November.’ Every two years, it’s always the same media line: revolution is upon us. But nothing changes. Yes, there’ll be a few more or less Democrats or Republicans in Congress, but fundamentally the system is stuck, paralyzed. There’ll be no big changes in November 2010. I’ll give you two reasons: first, Mr. Gripes admits there’s a lot of fear and disgust among the electorate; voters, though, almost to a man, while vehemently insisting ‘they’re all crooks and thieves down there in D.C.’, in the same sentence assert, ‘but our guy is a good guy, and I’m voting for him again.’ Americans are as slow, dumb and obstinate as donkeys, and virtually never vote their own man [or woman] out. In reality, only death, illness or scandal manages to dislodge any of these clowns.

Second reason: the system is rigged before any elections take place. In state capitols, whichever party controls the legislature passes gerrymandering laws that create in perpetuity safe seats for both parties – authentic bipartisanship is at work for once when incumbent Republicans and Democrats carve out no-contest districts, statewide and national,  in backroom deals with each other – Stalin’s Politburo in Moscow circa 1952 couldn’t have done a better job gaming the system.

We, the voters, have sustained this sham for a long, long time. Shame on us. But, there’s another ‘enabler’ afoot here: the media. Choosing to ignore completely any coverage of gerrymandered electoral districts, the media – TV and print – instead go along with the myth that a revolution is close at hand. They – political reporters – surely know better than Mr. Gripes that the rotten system never changes, but the idea that peasants in the countryside, armed with pitchforks, are marching into Paris, hell-bent on killing all the occupants of the palace, makes for a far more dramatic narrative than the rather forlorn and drab theme that our government apparatus is absolutely, undeniably broken beyond repair. Even those self-righteous popinjays, Matthews and Olbermann, should be ashamed of their negligence.

The Olympics, Without Tears…I know, I know, all you American jingoists out there, with the buttons popping off your Ralph Lauren dress shirts because you’re so proud that the good, old U.S.A. showed all those little pissant countries out there who’s still the boss. But, let’s just hold on for a minute.

Alas, it wasn’t a fair fight. The United States, despite all its troubles, still excels at one tremendous skill: using its money and clout to fix the system to its advantage. Oh, we’re so good at that. Isn’t that so, Wall Street?

So, let’s parse some elements of the past two weeks:

My readers surely have seen that rough schemata of a typical man’s brain: 50% of the cerebrum occupied by ‘sex’, 35% ‘money’, 20% ‘food.’ You know what I’m talking about, right? Well, if we did a similar ‘map’ of the countries NBC showcased on its telecast, 99.8% of Earth would be ‘U.S.A.,’ and 0.2% the rest of the world, an area no bigger than Mineola, New York. The jingoism was appalling. I  I posed this question after the last Olympics, too: why does a country, so rich, so powerful, so confident of its own democratic underpinnings, need to resort to a banana-republic cry for approval, and breast-thumping nationalism? Mr. Gripes cannot figure that out.

I’ve always been very suspicious of nationalism. It’s dangerous. It can unleash the mob. It causes wars, and enmity among peoples. In fact, by a matter of degrees, all that ‘U.S.A., U.S.A.’ chanting that went on in Vancouver is nothing but a variation of those 1930’s nighttime rallies in Nuremberg.

Besides, the ‘victory’ for America in amassing the most medals – and, boy, did this country obsess about them – was a hollow one. NBC, undoubtedly encouraged by this country, rigged the system. Paying $12 billion for the Olympics over the past 10 years gave the network a lot of clout. And, NBC sure used it. Case in point: NBC, looking at the whole panorama of the Winter Games, saw an opportunity: it needed more events to fill all those broadcast hours, and needed more American medals to juice ratings. Eureka! Snowboarding, mogul skiing, halfpipe, and aerials were added as medal events a decade ago. Come on, these competitions are akin to dancing bears at the carnival, essentially sideshows, and certainly not remotely related to an authentic sport like Nordic skiing, for example. What a country this is: the competitors in these events two or three years ago were eighth-grade drop-outs who spent their days running from truancy cops and skateboarding off of roofs into empty pools and onto tops of cars, scaring the crap out of the neighbors. Now, they’re lionized gold medal winners. Mind-boggling. NBC was undeterred: if the myopic Americans desperately want those medals, we’ll get ‘em. The system was scammed.

One final observation: NBC , technically brilliant with its telecasts [the cross-country coverage was uniformly fantastic, with virtually every race, ranging from 3 miles to 30 miles, decided in the last 50 yards], sometimes ran off the track in its reverence for itself.

The smug Matt Lauer: I turn the TV on the first day of competition, Saturday, hoping for perhaps a skier careening down a mountain at 80, 90 miles an hour. What do I see, instead? A replay of Mr. Lauer, Olympic torch in hand, clad in an all-white gym suit, trudging slowly – and I mean s_l_o_w_l_y — down a Vancouver highway. My God. He looked like a walking Tampon applicator. Afterwards, in that false modesty of his, he says he was “lucky” to have been chosen to carry the torch. Mr. Lauer, ‘luck’ had nothing to do with it. With those 12 billion bucks your network spent on the Games, if you wanted to ski-jump, somehow they’d find a spot for you on the American team.

A couple of hours later, I regretfully came across Lester Holt gamely, but very gingerly, stumbling down the ice, stone in hand, attempting to master the sport of curling. [An aside: why did NBC opt to televise about 10,000 hours of curling, a sport fully reminiscent of shuffleboard, the soporific game of choice my ancient, half-demented Jewish relatives played in Boca Raton long ago? I defy anyone to watch more than 10 minutes without nodding off.] Mr. Holt looked anxious, as if he were about to fall face-forward onto the hard, cold ice. An enlightening experience for viewers?  Not for a second. The only person enlightened was Mr. Holt, who probably knelt in front of a teleprompter afterwards, embracing the machine, and promising never again to desert it.

I have this one last piece of advice for the NBC big-shots: viewers are only interested in the great athletes and the competitions, and could care less about your millionaire, self- important reporters. That goes for all of them: the insufferable Tom Brokaw, the too-cutesy Meredith Viera, the stuffed-shirt Al Michaels, Al Roker and his run-amok ego, et al., should just shut up and go away for the two weeks.

An archive of some past columns appears on my website, mistergripes.com…

March 8, 2010

January 10, 2010

Tiger’s Not Alone … Sure, Mr. Woods was incredibly reckless chasing and bedding women all over the country, and he’s probably destroyed his family as a result. But, let’s deal with reality: his behavior, in comparison with other professional athletes, is not abnormal. I’d venture to say fidelity is the rare aberration. Rich, handsome, young, vigorous men with nothing to do meeting young, pretty and adventurous women in gaudy surroundings: those guys might as well have a bull’s-eye target on their backs. Spontaneous combustion is inevitable.

Jim Bouton, a pitcher for the Yankees and other clubs in the 1970s, describes in one of his books an incident that occurred at the end of a two-week road trip [He was with the Seattle Pilots at the time.]  As the team’s plane is being wheeled into an arrival gate at Sea-Tec, with wives and girl friends waiting inside the terminal, one of his teammates, catcher Jim Pagliaroni, stands up at the front of the cabin, and exclaims to all his teammates, “OK, guys, act horny.”  That comment cost the unfortunate Mr. Pagliaroni his marriage later, but he spoke the truth.

D.L. Hughley, the comedian, sums up Tiger’s escapades much more concisely, “Fourteen? Hell, that’s a bad week in the NBA.”

Big Al’s Not Happy… It’s inevitable: Al Sharpton will capitalize on any event, grand or petty, to gain some publicity and, let’s never forget, increase the cash flow to his quasi-political enterprises. And, sure enough, the Tiger Woods affair provided an opportunity. Mr. Gripes, though, was surprised at the tack Mr. Sharpton took: he criticized Mr. Woods for selecting only white women as lovers, and extolled the superiority of black women as mistresses. Mr. Sharpton may not realize it, but his comments are definitively racist.  Things sure have changed, though: seventy or 80 years ago, black men were lynched in the American South for merely looking at white women. Now, a black man is excoriated by another black man for copulating with only white women. Everything’s been turned upside-down. God, Mr. Gripes loves this insane, perplexing, moronic, wack-job country. It’s one huge three-ring circus.

Don’t despair long, Big Al. In a month or two, you’ll pick up the phone, and Mr. Woods will be on the other end: “Hi, Al. Yeah, it’s been rough, but at least the kids are adapting well in Sweden. Listen, Big Guy, can you do me a favor: You got Tyra Banks’ phone number?’ Yep, Tiger will come through for you.

Elvis’ 75^th… This past Friday, Elvis Presley turned 75. Mr. Gripes will never miss an opportunity to comment on the phenomenon of ‘The King.’ One of the appeals of Mr. Presley was his sly, smart sense of humor. It’s a side of Mr. Presley that every one of his fans adores.

Here’s a little vignette: Elvis, upon his return to America after a year or so of army duty in Germany, conducts a news conference in hot Memphis. The sweating writers, clad in short-sleeve white shirts and black ties, looking as old and wrinkled as bull crocodiles, are the perfect foil for the incredibly young, handsome and irrepressibly hip Elvis. One of these dinosaurs gets up and asks Elvis, “Is Rock n Roll dead?” Mr. Presley, a smirk slowing creasing across his face, says simply in that lovely Southern drawl of his, “Rock n roll might be dead, but something awfully good is gonna have to take its place.” Perfect. Elvis, we’ll be blowing out candles on your birthday cake 1,000 years from now.

NYC, the Apocalypse …Here’s a fact that nearly knocked Mr. Gripes off his computer chair when he saw it: New York, its acreage 1/350^th the size of the United States, has on its payroll a workforce equal to one-seventh the size of the entire Federal workforce.  That’s unfathomable. Readers, consider the mandated-pension tsunami coming: baby-boomers have just begun to retire, and there’ll be a crush of retirees from now on. As Mr. Gripes explained to a friend the other day, this rusting relic of a ship is beginning to take on a lot water even now; sure, it might take 10, 15, 20 years, but New York City is going belly-up. Mr. Gripes peers in through the front windows of those shimmering restaurants where you can get spaghetti-and-meatballs for only $75 a pop, and observes that no one cares. The good times will roll on forever, just like in the Weimar Republic.

A Scary Prospect…President Obama commits another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, and billions more in aid to create a national security force, to improve living conditions for Afghan citizens, to build schools, blah, blah, blah. We old-timers have heard this song as far back as when Lyndon Johnson lied to us about Vietnam’s golden prospects 40 years ago.  Come on:  all those billions will disappear in a miasma of corruption and larceny, as America will be played for a dumb fool once more. Let’s face it, and I’m certain Mr. Obama knows this: a country with a bloody tribal history of 4,000 years simply doesn’t change in 10 years. Cohesive security force? That’s just not going to happen ever. It’s all a fairy tale.

This time, though, the generals and Mr. Obama are not duped: they simply do not want to scare Americans half to death. Let’s be frank: their grandiose plans are only a plausible cover for the real reason America cannot abandon Afghanistan. After all, Afghanistan, geopolitically, should mean no more to us than some distant state like Tajikistan. There’s just one reason we stay in that desolate, ruined country: its neighbor, Pakistan. Pakistan is now a volatile, tottering country on the verge of chaos and break-up. And – this is key – Pakistan possesses a large nuclear arsenal. The military theatre scenario that scares the hell of Mssrs. Petraeus and Obama is not that difficult to discern.

Let’s connect the dots:  For the Pashtun nation, there are no borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan; their loyalties to a man are to the Pashtun tribe that stretches across northern Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban in Afghanistan, abetted by Al Qaeda, are attempting to destabilize and terrorize the Pashtuns up in the north. Let’s suppose they’re successful, driving out governmental forces and creating a terror state; the chaos then inexorably moves across to the Pashtun area in Pakistan, northern Pakistan is destabilized, and the Taliban take over there, too. Abetted by Al Qaeda, the Taliban intensify the struggle across all of Pakistan as the corrupt Pakistan military and national government are not up to the task. Then the nightmare: The Taliban, with Al Qaeda lurking, topple the central Pakistan government.  And, guess who now gets their hands on the country’s nuclear arsenal? The specter of that horror is why we fight the fight now in Afghanistan.

That possibility alone keeps President Obama up at night.

www.mistergripes.com

jamesisrael77@yahoo.com