Shoot The Lawyers

Gun Shows and Politics

2011-12-17T05:58:00.000-08:00

I like going to gun shows. It is not the guns that interest me. It is the people. I could never understand why the Democratic Party ever embraced gun control as a policy. There is no upside. But there is and has been a huge downside. Want to know why the Democrats lost their grip on white, working class voters south of the Mason Dixon line? No need to read any long winded books and articles employing all sorts of voting data to try and explain electoral behavior. Just go to a gun show.

The people that attend these events are "regular folks." Basically, working class, middle to lower income, overweight, high school education, very patriotic, and not too sophisticated when it comes to anything. Except guns. Economically, they are probably more in tune with the Democrats. But the gun issue is what makes them vote Republican. That is what Democrats could never figure out: that gun is a symbol of their independence and freedom. In the presidential campaign of 1992, I heard Bill Clinton give a speech where he declared that he would never take people's guns away from them. He said it in a southern drawl. It sounded convincing. I knew then that he would win. Conversely, it is accepted wisdom that a major reason the Republicans won the house in 1994 was the health reform issue. Wrong. As Clinton pointed out in his memoirs, the biggest factor was the assault weapons ban that Congress passed in the summer of 1994. It alienated the very people who would normally vote Democratic except for the gun issue. He was dead on. Democrats have always stereotyped gun owners as being ignorant hayseeds who are too dumb to know what is best for them.

Big mistake. The people at gun shows are racially diverse. But they share a common cultural trait: they have a right to defend themselves and their property free from government harassment. Here is a cheat sheet on the cultural tastes of an average gun show attendee: Dunkin Donuts over Starbucks, Walmart over Bloomingdales, Ford F150 over a Lexus. You get the drift. So if you want to take a peek inside a real slice of Americana, visit a gun show. Chat with the vendors. It is fun.

Donald Draper For President?

2011-12-11T05:42:00.000-08:00

I am a big fan of Mad Men. A great antidote to our sterilized culture of political correctness. I was watching the initial episode early this morning for probably the 10th time as I am studying the historical accuracy of the design sets and mannerisms of the characters. It is eery how they get it right. Then, with the imaginary smell of cigarette smoke in my face, I clicked on Drudge and it hit me. Is Donald Draper running for president? Take a look at these pictures.

My advice to Romney? Put a Lucky Strike in your left hand and a Scotch in your right, and, voila, you have my vote and that of another 10 million men in America. And as a finishing touch to the makeover, pursue an affair with Sarah Palin in some swanky hotel. Screw the media. It will be a huge plus. It will add a hard edge to your image. Hey, who would you rather have dealing with the dictators of the world: a guy who looks like the figurine on a wedding cake or an incarnation of a 1960's real man? I rest my case.

Peter Falk/A Woman Under The Influence

2011-07-31T05:59:00.000-07:00

Peter Falk died two weeks ago. A great actor who performed superbly in many different roles.

My first and lasting memory of him was as a cab driver in the 1963 slapstick "It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World."

Most people remember him as Colombo, the disheveled TV detective that aired on alternate Sunday nights in the early to mid 70's.

I read many of his obituaries. There was the obligatory Colombo citing. But one columnist wrote of his best performance: A Woman Under The Influence.

I heard of the movie but never watched it. The name alone would have made me turn away. Too much 1970's New Age psycho babble about middle class/feminine dysfunction caused by who else, men. But I checked out some reviews on Netflix and put it on the top of my queue. I watched it last night with my dog and a bottle of wine. In a word, devastating. I cannot get it out of my head. The story is about a working class family whose mother, Gene Rowlands, suffers from some sort of mental illness that affects her family to the point that she must be institutionalized. She has three young children. Her husband, Falk, is a blue collar worker who, from what one gathers, works for a utility repairing broken power lines and the like. It is dangerous work. He is a moral, decent, man, who does his best to deal with something he was never really intellectually equipped to understand.

But he moves on. Like a good father and husband so typical of millions of average men of the era, he did not complain but did what he had to do and asked for nothing in exchange. The movie is made in docudrama mode. Think Curb Your Enthusiasm without the laughs. The cultural backdrop reminded me of The Deer Hunter. The rest is just one depressing thing after another.

But some scenes stand out. At the beginning of the movie, Falk desperately wants to return home from work to be with his wife. He arranges for his children to go to his mother's for the weekend. But he gets called back to work and must deal with another utility emergency. His wife goes out for a drink and meets a bar hanger on and goes back to her house and sleeps with him. Falk returns home later oblivious to the transgression. Almost makes you cry. Later on, Rowlands is watching a friend's children who are playing with her own. The father picks them up and finds the children have created a huge mess in the house. He tries to get his children out of the house and ends up in the bedroom. Falk returns home and discovers the chaos. He sees another man in his house and assumes something that is not true. He slaps his wife across her face. It is all very sad. An honest family man has had his zone of sanctity invaded. And lastly, the children. They will be forever scarred by their mother's illness. I wondered how I would have felt if in the early 60's my mother went off the deep end and my father, a man strikingly similar to Falk's character, had to deal with it. People back then laughed at such things: nut house, funny farm, loony bin. My friends would have ridiculed it and I too if the shoe were on the other foot. But thankfully for me, it was not to be.

So if you want to see another side of Falk, rent this movie. It is worth the two and half hours.

Dead Or Alive?

2011-07-09T03:56:00.001-07:00

Did you ever find out someone you thought was dead is alive? I did this morning. Came across this. I honestly thought Larry Hagman died ten years ago. I am still not convinced he is alive.

Kelly's, RIP

2011-06-12T04:35:00.000-07:00

I was walking around downtown Hollywood last night after dinner and was shocked that Kelly's has closed. The place was a throwback to a time when a bar did what bars do best: serve drinks. One of those places that was serving beer and a shot at 7 am. Nothing fancy. No pretensions. Sure, 99% of the patrons had a monkey on their back and more personal problems than most of us can imagine. But, hey, who ever said life was supposed to be easy.

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T04:01:00.000-07:00

As I approach the gates of heaven;
St. Peter I will tell;
One more soldier reporting sir;
I've served my time in hell.
Mark Anthony Gresswell.

Old Time Rock and Roll and Politically Correct Speech

2011-05-29T03:27:00.000-07:00

President Obama caught some flak recently for inviting a pop singer to the White House who had either written or sang a song sympathetic to a cop killer. Elites in this country have always scorned the music or movie industry for peddling lyrics that are not in tune with mainstream thinking. Call it a form of censorship but it is a strain in the American experience that will never go away. I recall sometime in 1969 or 70, Spiro Agnew gave a speech that ripped into Easy Rider for its promotion of illicit drug use. That seems rather comical today in that its major protagonist, Jack Nicholson, spends most of his public time sitting with his long time friend Lou Adler courtside at Lakers' games looking a lot more weather beaten than Agnew ever did.

You can fast forward this narrative to Tipper Gore in the late 80's testifying before Congress on the dangers of rap music and then Bill Clinton tearing into Sister Souljah for her lyrics. My daughters, when they were teenagers, had all sorts of racist songs on their Ipods. The infamous "N" word was thrown around like pennies in an arcade. That most of these songs were sung by black performers seemed to make it all acceptable. I have very little knowledge of any of these songs because, thanks to Apple and Itunes, my universe of music begins circa 1900 with Scott Joplin and ends with Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love around 1985. About a week ago, I was listening to my collection of Rolling Stones music and when Brown Sugar was played, it got me to thinking. Even though I have listened to this song at least 500 times, I never did understand the lyrics. As with most songs of the era, that does not matter. You simply interpose your own fantasies into the beat and then enjoy the ride. So I Googled the lyrics and here they are:

Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in new orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he's doin alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should
A-huh.

Drums beating, cold english blood runs hot,
Lady of the house wondrin where it's gonna stop.
House boy knows that he's doin alright.
You should a heard him just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a black girl should
A-huh.

I bet your mama was a tent show queen, and all her boy
Friends were sweet sixteen.
Im no schoolboy but I know what I like,
You should have heard me just around midnight.

Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should.

I said yeah, I said yeah, I said yeah, I said
Oh just like a, just like a black girl should.

I said yeah, I said yeah, I said yeah, I said
Oh just like, just like a black girl should.
What we have here is a song about a slave trader bringing in a shipment of black women to New Orleans, literally whipping them into shape and then raping them at night in a whorehouse. And this is all supposed to be "just like a black girl should." If that is not enough, fasten your seat belt and check this out:

Gotta love Jagger. It amazes me that this song never was controversial. I guess the Stones could get away with it. Imagine Pat Boone or Loretta Lynn singing this ode. I doubt they would have pulled it off. Looking back at it, I have to congratulate myself. I always thought the self appointed morality police were full of themselves. Their warnings of moral decay were all hot air used to pump up their own political careers. Like the French say, plus ca la change, plus ca la meme chose. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

IRONY

2011-05-14T04:31:00.000-07:00

Irony is the source of humor. It is also provides a lense through which events can be judged in proper perspective. I was reading the Wall Street Journal yesterday (yes, the print version) and could not help but be amazed at this picture and caption.

We have the following:
1. "Accounting for Evil."
2. "28,060 deaths."
3. "helping murder nearly 30,000.00 people."
To which add:
4. "a 5 year sentence" and
5. "He was freed, pending an appeal."
There were more pictures of him in a wheelchair leaving the courthouse which only adds to the spectacle.

I wonder how many people showed up at his "camp" (another grotesque literary misnomer) crippled, maimed, or sick and were shot on sight and then discarded like yesterday's garbage. In any event, if you are going to account for evil, account for evil.

Commander Cody

2011-04-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

I was driving home last night on I95 and some kid rocketed past me in a small car that sounded like it was carrying 12 cylinders. Had to have been going at least 110. It felt like a 747 missed its landing on the runway nearby. Kind of thing you see almost every day now on a motorcycle. Made me wonder about the youth of today. Of course, now that I am in my mid 50's such a display of depravity got me to using language and expressing feelings that my father did in the early 70's when I was letting my hair grow and doing everything I could to piss him off. As that car blasted away with no cop in sight, inexplicably the following words crossed my mind: "son, you're going to drive me to drinking if you don't stop driving that HOT ROD LINCOLN." I was so fixated on this that I logged onto Itunes via my Iphone with the other hand on the wheel and bought the song (only 69 cents). And here it is:

Good old Commander Cody. Sort of a Chuck Berry on Steroids. Listening to the lyrics, I now have a much better appreciation for adults of that era who swore that my generation was destined for a permanent place in hell. At least for me, my place in Satan's home will be earned not for anything I did as a kid but for what I did and thought of doing when I was old enough to know better. In my jaded mind, I juxtaposed the lyrics against the rantings of many in gentile society in the past 20 years about the dangers of hip hop and rap music. My knowledge of the former is restricted to the damage they do on South Beach every Memorial Day weekend and the latter to the constant use of the "N" word that would shout from both my daughters' Ipods when they were younger. But the rap lyrics are nothing compared to the Commander. I guess there was a time when there was nothing more American than driving down the road at 100 mph while knocking down your neighbors' mailboxes tossing empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon out the window onto their lawns.

Houston Person And The Joys Of The Saxophone

2011-01-29T04:47:00.000-08:00

I love listening to saxophone jazz music. Two months ago I read Nat Hentoff's review of the life of Houston Person. Fifteen years ago, I would have read it and made a mental note to myself that if I ever came upon the music in a record store I would buy it. In other words, it would never happen. But thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I went right to my Itunes account and voila, in 90 seconds 30 of his songs were in my Ipod. I listen to his collection at least once a week, usually on Saturday or Sunday morning. If you like the sax, his music is highly recommended. Read Hentoff's review. It reinforces my conviction that African American music(as well as every other kind of music) reached its peak in this country in the late 1950's. Life was tough and that unfortunate fact was reflected in some very good music.

Bob Hayes and Thanksgiving Memories

2010-11-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

I was reading the Wall Street Journal or The Sun Sentinel yesterday and there was a post of four sportswriters who opined about their favorite Thanksgiving football memories. Most were recent (last 25 years). It got me to thinking. I have vivid memories of being at my grandparents' house at Thanksgiving circa 1966/67 and watching Bob Hayes return a punt against St. Louis without ever being touched. So I did some quick internet research, and voila, my memory did not let me down. Here is the link: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/196711230dal.htm. He in fact returned a punt for 69 yards. There is no youtube tape. I remember Hayes well. The called him Bullet Bob. He was a track star before becoming a standout wide receiver for the Cowboy teams of the late 60's. He was in the twilight of his career when the Cowboys beat the Dolphins in the 71 SB. Hayes later did time for narcotics violations and then became a born again Christian and motivational speaker. In case anyone thinks football was better and cleaner without the likes of Randy Moss and others who gain notoriety for actions off the field as well as on, Hayes' fellow wide receiver, Lance Rentzel, was arrested for exposing himself to a minor. Add to this collection the Raiders' then standout wide receiver, Warren Wells, who did time for stabbing his wife, and former Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Rodger (armed robbery), and you can see that the old adage, the more things change the more they remain the same, has not lost its luster.

Congratulations New York!

2010-11-02T04:03:00.000-07:00

A big congratulations to the New York Giants for beating the expansion Washington Senators. I watched the series and while the Giants' move to SF predated my addiction to baseball, the Senators move to Texas was in the prime of my career when I was free basing Strat O Matic on an hourly basis. Every time I watch them play, I cannot erase the thought that they are really the expansion Washington Senators. The "real" Senators left DC in 1961 for Minnesota and four years later took Koufax and the Dodgers to game 7 before succumbing to the best pitcher God ever assembled (at least from 1963 through 1966). And speaking of images permanently embedded in one's mind, every time I hear "Dallas" I think not of JR Ewing, the Cowboys, but of JFK. Don't know why but as soon as the city is mentioned, I think Parkland Hospital, Grassy Knoll, Manlicher Carcano rifle, and Texas school book depository.

Thumbing It

2010-10-11T05:25:00.000-07:00

I was reminiscing yesterday with an old friend about how our society has become preoccupied with risk avoidance at the expense of taking a walk on the wild side. And it hit me. I am over 50 and grew up in a normal middle class household on the East Coast. As anyone of that era can attest, there was a widely accepted way of getting around: hitchhiking. That's right. Need to travel five or six miles and didn't have a car? Stand on the side of the road, put your thumb out, and hope for the best. I started doing it in 6th grade and didn't stop until I graduated high school. And the funny thing was, my parents knew about it and never thought anything of it. My friends and I "thumbed a ride" at least once a week. Things were different back then. People were more trusting. Very rarely will you see a hitchhiker these days and rarer is the person who would pick one up for fear of being robbed or raped. A reflection of our society and not a good one I guess. Here are some of my favorite hitchhiking stories, in no particular order:
1. 1974. I had to stay late at school. Don't remember why. I hitched a ride home. A couple picked me up. Told me to sit in the front with them. Girl was gorgeous. She had a very loose fitting dress and no bra. The ride was 3 miles. I spent 99% of it staring down her blouse and for the first time in my life saw a perfectly shaped breast live and in color. Got out of the car and thanked them. They probably spent the next 20 minutes laughing at how I was ogling her.
2. 1971. I was in junior high. The Red Sox were playing an afternoon game. They called it the "Businessman's Special." Sort of a day when Don Draper would sit in the stands. My two friends and I, on pure whim, decided to leave school, thumb it to Fenway, and watch the game. For me, school was a waste of time. I never learned anything worthwhile anyway. So I left. Just up and hit the road. We made it to the Wellesley train station and took the trolley to Fenway. Sox played Cleveland. Had a great time. We hitched a ride home. A businessman picked us up and for the next 30 minutes lectured us on the dangers of hitchhiking in the city. I got home around 8 at night and my parents were worried sick. My brother told them I was in school and then noboby saw me, My father wanted to kill me. I don't remember how many detentions I got but it doesn't matter. It was worth it.
3. 1972. Early evening. Got picked up in a VW van. Bunch of hippie types were smoking pot. Ride was about 5 miles. Don't know why but I was scared to death. They were not your friendly peace loving types. More like the Charles Manson cult figures. When I got out, I swore I would never hitchhike again. Ten minutes later, I thumbed it home alive.
Well, that's today's salute to yesterday and the lost art of hitchhiking. Now it's off to work where I hopefully can once again accomplish 25% of what I set out to do.

Can't Say No To A Soldier?

2010-09-28T03:26:00.000-07:00

I was on my way to the office on Sunday and made my monthly stop at CD Trader in Hollywood. For music aficionados post Pearl Harbor and pre Sputnik, it is a gold mine of otherwise unavailable jazz and crooner music for less than $3.00 a cd. I always buy 4 or 5 cd's a month, download them to my Itunes and Ipod and listen to them the next week while walking my dog and wish I were somewhere else (permanently). I picked up a collection called Wartime Anthems. The song "You Can't Say No To A Soldier" was part of the set. The lyrics astounded me. I listened two more times. Here is a reconstructed audio/video of the tune:

Amazing. This is 1942. Can you imagine someone singing this today about the troops in Iraq or Afghanistan? Never. The message is clear: it is patriotic to succumb to the prurient desires of some soon to be GI who will be putting his life on the line for his country. And this was no bar room melody sang in brothel parlors in the seedier parts of town. It was mainstream stuff. It makes me laugh when I listen to this song and think back to 1974. I always thought I invented sex and then perfected the art form with my first girlfriend in the back of my father's Bonneville station wagon. What a conceit.

Bleeding Dodger Blue

2010-07-11T04:48:00.001-07:00

One of the greatest myths in sports history is that the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn in 1958 and headed out west in an act of betrayal and selfishness while leaving behind many blue collar fans who suffered for years like a jilted lover watching his sweetheart dump him for the captain of the football team. The narrative has a lot of appeal as it romanticizes the small town qualities of civic pride and neighborhood solidarity that are ingrained in the American ethos. Call it a sport version of Billy Joel's Allentown. Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin added to the lore when asked who would they kill if they were in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O'Malley and had a gun with two bullets. The answer, no doubt uttered after one too many shots of Jameson Irish Whiskey, was that they would shoot O'Malley twice to make sure he is dead. Thus was born another variation of the Cold Hearted Capitalist that would make Ebenezer Scrooge smile: This time the scoundrel is O'Malley, a slave to the bottom line, who stole the soul from hard working Brooklynites who toiled by day in the factory and longed for those long summer nights when they could listen to their beloved Dodgers on the radio or go to fabled Ebbets field and watch the game live.

It is all very heart rendering. It has everything going for it except the truth. I just finished reading Forever Blue by Michael D'Antonio. The book offers a very balanced account of the personalities and political and economic dynamics that made the Dodgers leave Brooklyn for the riches of California. In hindsight the move is a no brainer, whether motivated by sheer greed or not. But D'Antonio belies the notion that O'Malley just picked up and left town to enrich himself. That version is simply not true. The other side was never told over the years. Think of a divorce among two once respectable people. You hear one side and accept it but you know deep inside, that life is more complicated than that. The rest of the story comes out and you realize the truth lies somewhere in the middle of a complicated tale indeed. The gist of the book is that O'Malley did everything he could to keep the franchise in Brooklyn while still being able to make money. O'Malley was up against some very strong economic, demographic, and technological developments: Brooklyn's population was declining as its residents left for Nassau and Suffolk counties, Ebbets Field had little parking making a trip to the ball park for a modern suburban family difficult, and television just gave many people another reason to either stay home or watch the game at the corner bar. Contrast this with the landscape of southern California: massive population and economic growth, a culture that worshiped the automobile, and a willingness to build a stadium with 17,000 parking spaces. Despite what seemed like a very easy decision to make on economic grounds, O'Malley clug to his native Brooklyn and negotiated with Robert Moses to build a new park in Brooklyn. It was not to be. Moses, probably the most powerful man in the history of New York politics never elected to an office, put him off seemingly wanting O'Malley to leave town. D'Antonio offers some insights into the era that are humorous and contrary to popular perceptions. Here are a few gems:
1. In 1949-50, Branch Rickey was trying to sell his shares in the team. And who should pop up as a potential suitor?

That's right. None other than Joseph Kennedy, Prohibition financier and scion of the Kennedy clan. And here is an exact quote on page 123: "Kennedy had even talked about his son Jack becoming president of the team if Rickey remained as general manager." Gotta love that one.
2. Jackie Robinson watched Willie Mays play for the Birmingham Barons, a Negro league team. Robinson advised Branch Rickey to sign Mays to a contract. Rickey refused because he had been told by a scout that Mays "could not hit a curve ball."
3. 1951. This was the year of Bobby Thompson's "shot heard 'round the world." The myth is of a city enthralled by baseball. The 1950's are often referred to as "The Golden Era of Baseball." But here is a little cold water to throw in the face of that myth: the Dodgers and Giants played a best of three playoff at the end of the '51 season. The first game at Ebbets Field was not a sellout. There were 2000 empty seats. The next day was worse. 38,609 people showed up at the Polo Grounds. It had a capacity of 55,000.
4. 1952. Game six of the World Series. Dodgers and Yankees. The Dodgers could have won the series with a win. How enthusiastic were the Brooklyn faithful? Five thousand empty seats! Amazing!
5. 1954. The Dodgers won the pennant in 1953 and finished second to the Giants in '54. However, their attendance dropped by 140,000.00. They were ninth in attendance among sixteen major league clubs.
6. After the 1956 Dodger World Series victory, O'Malley who was being lobbied very hard by a consortium of Los Angeles business and civic interests, refused to meet with them, convinced he would be able to build a new stadium in Brooklyn.
7. Walter O'Malley was prescient. Even in the 1950's, he saw the potential of what was then know as "pay per view." He envisioned a system where a small electronic box would be placed atop a TV set and fans would pay a per game fee to watch the game.
8. The Giants moved to San Francisco at the same time the Dodgers went to LA. But that move was not controversial. What was it about Brooklyn that caused such a long term resentment towards O'Malley while the Manhattanites who routed for the Giants didn't really give a hoot what Horace Stoneham did with his team.
It is fascinating reading, especially in hindsight. So if you are a history buff and baseball fan and want a straight up account about an era in New York sports history, read it. Forever Blue by Michael D'Antonio (Riverhead Books, 2009)

The Greatest Movie Scene Ever

2010-07-04T06:34:00.000-07:00

I watched The Pope Of Greenwich Village last night for the umpteenth time and it never disappoints. The above scene with Geraldine Page is probably the greatest movie scene ever. In a few minutes, the essence of working class culture circa New York City in the mid 70's hits one in the face like a shot of stale whiskey. Why she never got an Oscar for this is beyond me. Watch it and watch it again.

"On The Cover Of The Rolling Stone"

2010-06-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

So Barack Obama cashiers his top general in Afghanistan for mouthing off to the press. That is a big yawn for me. But what really piqued my interest was the medium through which the general chose to voice his opinions: Rolling Stone Magazine. Like many old actors and singers you see pop up on Larry King, I assumed the magazine died a natural death years ago. The last time I read it was 1979 while buying some drug paraphernalia in the back room of a head shop in Philadelphia. But I remember it very well as a quintessential reflection of a slice of a part of the American landscape post Woodstock and pre Reagain. I first stumbled upon the magazine while making a pit stop in an upper end Jewish neighborhood circa 1974 to cop some quality Colombian Gold from some kid named Horowitz. Rolling Stone readers smoked good pot or hash, had liberal/left political views, owned the latest and greatest stereo equipment, watched Saturday Night Live went it was still an underground pilot, and listened to the trendy progressive rock stations that dotted the FM landscape back then. And oh yeah, they wore painter's pants (without real paint stains of course) and earth shoes. In other words, they excelled at one of the great art forms of the 1970's and 1960's: pretending to be a member of the proletariate while living the life of a bourgeoisie. Rolling Stone was a great window to watch the spectacle. While it felt good to feel ideological solidarity with some oppressed farm worker in some third world country (right wing of course), it felt even better to have the most expensive Pioneer receiver on the market sitting on your bedroom dresser or front row seats when David Bowie was in town. Because let's face it: the goal of every pseudo revolutionary was the same as every conservative firebrand: using every means at your disposal to get that damn bra off of that girl who was dumb enough to go out with you. The symbolism, though, was more a function of the readers as opposed to the editors. If you looked beyond the fancy cover page, the magazine contained some quality writing. Hunter Thompson was a great writer who cut his teeth there. Ditto William Greider. As much as I disagreed with the magazine's political perspective, the writing was top notch, especially during an era when the mainstream media did not give much credence to the music tastes of the younger generation. But then, like its readers, it moved into the mainstream and thus, complacency. I guess most of its readers when on to Vanity Fair and The New York Times as irreverent hipness lost its panache. Irony is what makes life funny and I have to laugh that Rolling Stone Magazine is the forum that a four star wartime general used to voice his opposition to his commander in chief's policies.

All That Jazz

2010-06-19T05:21:00.000-07:00

I like jazz and blues music. The lyrics, cadence, and artists capture a certain slice of Americana much the same way that film noir did in the 40's and 50's. And what is that slice: a recognition that life ain't always easy and is just as likely to be filled with tragedy and disappointment as with happiness and success. But the human spirit trudges along against overwhelming odds. The music is a window into the soul of those people who through their own transgressions or just plain bad luck have swung and missed at life's opportunities but realize that there can be redemption at the end of the line. Listen to Billie Holiday or Dinah Washington or any of about 20 African American crooners from yesteryear. The theme is unmistakable: life is very tough at the bottom of the food chain whether it be spiritual or material. Which brings me to a wonderful website I discovered thanks to Eugene Volokh. It is called It is Ejazz News New Music Weekly Sampler. Every week the site publishes a group of songs that you can download for free. And the music is not the cheap stuff you get at Starbucks every week on some card they hand out with your coffee. It is quality stuff. So download it, put it in your Ipod, go on a bike ride or walk, and appreciate the little things in life. Happy Father's Day.

The Witness Protection Program

2010-06-13T17:58:00.001-07:00

I followed the Rothstein sentencing with a grain of salt and a heavy dollop of skepticism. What really caught my attention (and cynical nature) was not the number of years that he will eventually serve but his potential initiation into a very exclusive club: the federal Witness Protection Program. This program was initiated in the early 80's. Its purpose was laudable: to get Mafia members and their hangers on to cooperate and provide them and their families with a new identity after their sentence was finished so that the omnipresent Mob would not be able to find out where they are and exact retribution. It all sounded nice in theory but I have to believe has been a disaster in practice. Think about it. You are asking a sociopath who has known nothing but crime and violence to renounce his nature and instead of living it up at the Copa every Friday night with some hot looking $750 a night arm piece, to work at a donut shop in Billings, Montana for $6.25 an hour and hope that that your old buddies from Brooklyn don't happen to drop by and say hello. The program assumes two facts; a moral convert and and almost maniacally unified and determined adversary. The former was dependent on the latter and the latter, if it ever did exist, does not now. Two famous enrollees, if that is the proper term, were Henry Hill of Goodfellas fame and Sammy Gravano of John Gotti fame. Hill is walking the streets and Gravano was until he was indicted for dealing dope after he dropped out of the club. Let's face it. The traditional Italian mafia ain't what it used to be. Most organized crime figures have game plans that are very short. Which brings me to Rothstein. His participation, if it ever comes to that, is comical. He rolls over on some heretofore unknown pretenders from South Beach and gets them indicted. I am sure they would love to feed him to the alligators. But 30 years from now? If they do, say, ten years, will they spend the next twenty plotting revenge on Rothstein? Highly unlikely. They will get on with their lives. If I were them, and assuming they are part of a well organized criminal enterprise, I would be more afraid of getting whacked for screwing up and/or for possibly buying their own way out of trouble by cooperating against their supposed lieutenants. So what is Rothstein afraid of? That when he is 82, and in a homeless shelter in Phoenix, someone will slip a knife through his stomach a la Robert Deniro as a young Vito Corleone? I don't think so.

In 30 years, most of Rothstein's enemies, imagined and real, will be dead or not even remember who he is. The whole witness protection story is a bluff, leaked by the government to build up Rothstein's bonafides as a witness to make potential defendants believe he knows more than he actually does. And how is the government going to help Rothstein in 30, 40, or 50 years from now? Get him a new identity so the other 90 somethings who are pissing and shitting in diapers every day in the convalescent home don't recognize him? I can see it now.
"Hey! Isn't that guy Hymie Schwartz really Scott Rothstein?
"Yeah. Oh my God. It's him!!!!!!"
"Hey Mr. Rothstein, Mr. Rothstein. Tell us. How did you do it? How did you fix the 1919 World Series? Tell us!"

John Wooden, RIP

2010-06-05T04:38:00.001-07:00

John Wooden was the most successful college basketball coach ever. No one else came close. I remember him well. His era, the 1960's, was a turbulent one in America, especially the cultural circles where he made his mark: college, black athletes, youth, and all that it implied. Wooden seemed like an island of tranquility in a turbulent sea. I do not know what Wooden's political views were and it really does not matter. He was a symbol of wisdom, stability, and patience. In all the years I watched him coach, from Walt Hazzard to Lew Alcindor to Sydney Wicks to Bill Walton, I cannot remember ever seeing him raise his voice to a player or referee. His expression was the same in 1968 when Elvin Hayes slayed his Goliath like team in the Astrodome as when, a few months later, Alcindor proved that it was all a fluke. I guess you could call him the anti Bobby Knight. I cannot imagine Wooden signing a deal with Nike or Men's Wearhouse. Perhaps his UCLA teams complemented the dynastic nature of the era when it was common for one team to dominate a sport, be it the Canadiens, Celtics, Yankees, or, to a lesser extent, Green Bay. And perhaps his old school approach to basketball would never make in today's hyped up sports world. But here is the real mark of the man: the 1960's and early 70's were characterized as one of rebellion. Young people, at least the affluent and well educated ones, had contempt for people like Wooden and the values they reflected. But Wooden never changed his style to fit the perceived fashion of the times. His black players may have sported wild Afros and changed their names while others advocated a back to nature enviro/chic radicalism, but it never affected Wooden. More important, as different as he was from the players he coached, you never heard them utter a negative word about him. John Wooden was a class act. RIP.

Those Horrible Young People

2010-06-04T04:26:00.000-07:00

When I was young, my parents always compared me to everyone else's children. It was not a pretty picture. It seemed that every time there was a social event, family get together, school function, etc., I acted like a jerk and the other duplicitous two faced punks put their best foot forward. So on the way home, all I heard was "Why can't you be like the ___________family's kids. They are so respectful and well behaved." I heard this a thousand times to the point that I really thought when it came to being a renegade, I was the floor from which every kid in the neighborhood's behavior was measured. Of course, the truth was that my parents were wrong on two fronts: the nieghbors' kids were horrible and I did stuff that was ten times worse than what I often was punished for. But that is all history. And so is this. I was reading one of my favorite blogs this morning, The Volokh Conspiracy (www.volokh.com) and came upon this a post comment by someone named Joe:
“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint” (Hesiod, 8th century BC).
Very interesting. For all of you graying hipsters from the 60's who thought you were re-inventing the wheel every time you lit up a joint or had sex with your high school sweetheart or ridiculed your father for (gasp!) working for a living, take a look at this quote from a 1585 case, Stanhope v. Blith, 76 Eng. Rep. 891. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Again, thank you Eugene Volokh.

Memorial Day Part II

2010-05-30T03:49:00.000-07:00

It is interesting how the image of the military has changed in American popular culture and the entertainment media. Serving in the military was a common rite of passage for American youths starting in WWII and ending in 1972. It was probably the most egalitarian institution this country ever had and a positive influence on many an American kid whose life would otherwise have gone downhill fast. Universal service had another effect on our society: the average American recognized the absurdity of the military while at the same time respecting its role in our society. And how did America express its view of the military: humor. Here is a short list of TV sitcoms about the military that aired from 1955 to about 1968:
1. Sergeant Bilko
2. Hogan's Heroes
3. McHale's Navy
4. Gomer Pyle
There are probably more but the morning coffee has yet to erase the effects of last night's scotch. I guess you can give Get Smart an honorable mention in the above list and include MASH and Catch 22. The theme of each show was basically the same: a stuffed shirt and conformist bureaucracy unable to stifle the humor and spirit of the average American man. The shows were hilarious and in retrospect, irreverent in a way that is unimaginable today. Let's start with McHale's Navy. Ernest Borgnine as McHale had a rag tag group of enlisted men under the watchful eye of Captain Binghampton. McHale even secreted a Japanese stowaway as a cook. They spent their time breaking the rules and making a fool of Binghampton. Now fast forward to 2010. Can you imagine a sitcom now portraying a group of lackadaisical goofballs stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan thumbing their noses at the brass while hiding an Al Qaeda member to cook their dinner? Their would be howls of protest from every sector of polite society. Today, the military is not a subject for humor and ridicule but is looked upon as professional group of elite warriors for whom humor is not on the menu, especially if the laughs come from entertainment industry. But the humor of yesterday was never meant to denigrate the military or the men who fought. I am sure the above shows were quite popular in VFW and American Legion halls across the country. There was a recognition that the military was serious business but was, by necessity, bound by a set of rules that, to the enlisted man, was so absurd as to be comical. And what better way to expose it than by making people laugh. This was all made possible because military service effected every strata of our society. The 18 year old auto mechanic from Canarsie all of a sudden found himself sitting in boot camp with kids from Texas and Ohio whom he would otherwise never have met. And vice versa. And you can bet there were many mornings at 5 am when some idiot drill sergeant made them run laps through the mud for no other reason than that the Army manual said it was necessary. These were experiences shared by an entire generation of Americans. So when the absurdity made it to the TV screen, it struck a chord in a big way. This shared national experience has vanished. The military is a profession, which is a good thing. The American military has done a phenomenal job of reducing battlefield casualties through technology and better training. But the effect of this policy is that the military is now a cloistered society separate from the country it defends. The average person has no clue what military service is like or what the average soldier experiences. The opposite is also true. The average soldier is cut off from regular life. The GI of today probably has more in common with the Spartans of ancient times than he does with average kid who spends his spare time listening to an ipod while skateboarding down Ocean Drive. Which is why you will never see Hollywood make another sitcom about the military.

Memorial Day

2010-05-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books. -Walt Whitman

As I approach the gates of heaven; 
St. Peter I will tell; 
One more soldier reporting sir; 
I've served my time in hell.
-Mark Anthony Gresswell

Memorial Day is when the living pay homage to the dead, at least those died in war while in uniform. But what is true of funerals is equally apt for this holiday: it is all window dressing for the living and does nothing for the dead. The act of paying respects to those men and women who died while in battle is by necessity an emotion laden ritual that ignores a lot of reality that is as unpleasant as it is real. As with any notable holiday, there must be a compelling narrative. And from what I can gather, the narrative is as much fiction, historical amnesia, and selective memory as an accurate account of the heroics of the deceased soldiers who took the fall for their country. The American narrative can be summed up thusly: We are a freedom loving people and the cost of preserving freedom can be high. Many men have given up their lives so we can enjoy the liberties we have. It is to these gallant warriors that we pay tribute without whose ultimate sacrifice we would not be living the life we enjoy today. Thus, we see a causal connection between combat and liberty: the latter would not exist without the former. In other words, we can freely move about and criticize our government today because an 18 year old kid was murdered in 1942 when a Japanese madman sliced his head off during the Bataan Death March. As narrative goes, it can be very powerful. We ascribe the highest motives to our own soldiers and assign the worst motives to our enemies. To question the premise is to impugn the moral fabric of America and call into question one’s own patriotism in the eyes of one’s fellow citizens. This state of affairs is truly unfortunate for it blinds us to the reality of war and cloaks an historical inevitability, war, around a noble purpose and simplistic patriotic symbolism that serves no function other than creating a false sense of moral superiority where it does not belong. I do not mean to impugn the suffering or sacrifice of any soldier but what I believe is a grotesque farce is the attempted link between the death of any soldier and the morality of the government that sent him to do battle. More often than not, battlefield deaths are due more to the stupidity and incompetence of the government than they are to the actions of one’s enemy who is supposedly fighting to destroy American liberty. I spent last night skimming through three books by Paul Fussell, the noted English professor and WWII infantryman: The Great War and Modern Memory, The Boys’ Crusade, and Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. I had read all three two times over during the past ten years but always read over selected passages at least twice a year. Fussell highlights the tragic absurdity of war and every government’s attempt to assure that the rhetoric at home does not interfere with the reality of the battlefield as the two are almost always diametrically opposed. In fact, governments are as much complicit in the deaths of their own soldiers as are the enemies they are fighting. Fussell has no ideological ax to grind. His books do not fit into any ideological spectrum. One story stands out: an American general is killed during WWII along with hundred of his soldiers. It is reported that he died under enemy fire in a gallant effort to fight the mighty German army. The truth? He was killed by his own troops who mistakenly dropped bombs on him and his men when they failed to take into account the heavy winds they were dropping bombs into. During the first year of the Pacific war, American casualties were as likely to come from friendly fire as Japanese soldiers. I was dumbfounded at the criminal negligence of the American government as they sent countless young men to die senseless deaths in campaigns that they had to have known would fail. War brings home the old adage that history can be defined as one damn lie after another. Three thousand Americans died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Did they sacrifice their lives for democracy or did they die because the their government was too stupid to not take action to fortify the base against a foreseeable attack? And what about the GI’s sent to fight the Kaiser in WWI. How was American democracy affected there? It may have been very charming to send our young doughboys to Europe under the banner of making the world safe for democracy while singing this George M. Cohan melody:

I am sure this song provided warm comfort as many a twenty year old infantrymen sat freezing to death in a foxhole in France while watching his fellow men bleed to death in an orgy of blood and flesh. But no worry. You may be dying a horrible death for reasons that you now realize are a pack of lies but at least the folks back home will feel good remembering you as one who died so they could live the good life. And if you are not going to die, fear not. Your children will be back in twenty years when the French government for whom you are fighting screws everything up (again).
So this Memorial Day, folks, do the right thing: say a prayer for the all of our soldiers who died in battle. Theirs was a death that was most likely unnecessary. They are honorable men and women for having given service to their country. But whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of confusing the heroism of the individual soldier with the pretension that there was a noble purpose for which he was fighting. One has nothing to do with the other.

Are Three Years of Law School Necessary?

2010-05-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

I was reading the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog yesterday. There was a piece on US News & World Report's ranking of law schools. I look upon these rankings the way I look upon Page Six of the New York Post: very titillating but it does not affect me one iota. But what really got me thinking was the outrageous cost of a legal education nowadays. Regardless of what school you attend, tuition is between 30 and 40 thousand a year. Add room and board and you end up shelling out almost 60k a year. I know what I make a year and what most every day lawyers you see in the courthouse make and when you factor in the number of hours you spend pulling your hair out and paying bills, it just is not worth it. And then I started recalling my last two years in law school. Other than the naive undergrads I was able to date and the excessive drinking I did while dating them, the time spent there was by and large wasted. I learned everything I needed to know in the first year. Let's face it. Legal education is a racket that benefits one group of pompous frauds: professors. I despised all of them. In the late 70's and early 80's, you could spot them a mile away. Longish hair that was starting to gray or recede, earth shoes, and a sort of walk and attitude that was meant to advertise their pedigree: Ivy League or some equivalent degree combined with a position on law review and post graduate work with a federal or state supreme court judge and/or one year at a top notch law firm. They were all radical chic type leftists who I suspected adopted the mantra more to get laid than anything else. I also suspected that that one or two year stint in private practice was not a stepping stone to a teaching career but a disastrous attempt to cash in on their newly minted status only to be shown the exit for thinking their shit did not stink. In any event, it is these supercilious popinjays who suck on the tit of legal education. But it need not be that way. The entire law school curriculum should consist of the following courses:
1. Contracts/UCC
2. Criminal law/procedure
3. Torts
4. Civil Procedure/federal jurisdiction
5. Legal writing
6. Appellate advocacy
7. Real estate transactions
8. Corporations/Business entities.
This program could be completed in one calendar year. Once you graduate, you would have to take a state bar exam that would require a detailed knowledge of state law and procedure. Thus in Florida, you would have to know how to do a real estate closing, file a lawsuit, draft a contract, and write a brief. These courses could be taken on line so long as you demonstrated a proficiency through a written examination afterwards. Once you pass the bar, you are on your own. You can set up your own shop, work for whoever wants to hire you, or do nothing. Law schools would be one year and out institutions that trained lawyers to be, well, lawyers. The losers? The legal education establishment. There would be no such thing as Law Review. But so what and who cares? Law review articles are unreadable compilations of legal mumbo jumbo that are written to perpetuate the careers of intellectual dullards who could not tell the difference between a courtroom and the men's room. The beneficiaries would be the lawyers who could get licensed at a fraction of the cost and the public for whom prices would decline substantially. I doubt very much that the quality of lawyering would decline at all. I doubt there is one lawyer in the country who can credit his success to the fact that he learned anything worthwhile in years 2 and 3. People would be free, as they are now, to select their own lawyer. I just think we need to recognize that three years of law school is a needless expense. The cost and requirements have no relation to being a good lawyer.

Health Care And The Lost Horizon

2010-05-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

I did a post a few months ago on the constitutionality of the new health care law. The gist of the argument was that if the government can force you to buy insurance, it can force you to buy just about anything. If you expand the meaning of the commerce clause from allowing government to regulate economic activity that people choose to engage in to forcing people to participate in commercial activity that the government chooses to regulate, we are on a very slippery slope to totalitarianism or at least to emulating some 15th century religious fiefdom. Once the government assumes an obligation to pay for everyone's health care costs, it assumes a responsibility to make sure that everyone stays healthy so it can afford what it undertakes. This fact is no different from someone buying a house or car and making sure the carpet is clean or the tires are safe. So what is the most effective way for the government to control health spending? Despite having spent hundreds of millions of dollars searching for some social science style answer to this question, the solution is remarkably simple: pass a law that mandates that every American from 3 to 75 exercise every morning and evening, eat three balanced meals a day, outlaw processed sugar, alcohol, and cigarettes, and if you refuse to buckle under to this ascetic lifestyle, you go to a re-education camp and live like a Gregorian monk until you get the message. Sound far fetched? Of course. But the point is that if you accept the notion that there is no restriction on the government's power to force you to purchase a product you don't want, it can force you to do anything, including controlling your budget. In addition to laying out $500 a month to Aetna or Humana, you will make a weekly trek to some government sponsored health food vomitorium and buy your weekly allotment of bran, fruit, nuts, fresh vegetables, and tree bark. You will also purchase a government mandated membership in a neighborhood exercise cooperative where a government worker will knock on your door every morning at 7 and lead the neighborhood in an exercise routine reminiscent of your freshman gym class in high school. To those of you like me who spend a disproportionate share of your money on alcohol, tobacco, and other fleshly pleasures, your life will be forever changed. But fret not, you will be in the hands of a wise and all knowing government that knows far better than you what your best interests are. So put down that scotch and cigar, pick up a glass of skim milk and water chestnuts, and start doing those jumping jacks!

Mad Magazine

2010-04-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

Mad Magazine was my favorite periodical growing up in the 1960's. it was better than reading The Sporting News and Sport Illustrated. It represented a philosophy of humor and skepticism that was iconoclastic and politically neutral. It was the proverbial kid shooting spitballs at the pompous teacher. The magazine started in the 1950's as a cynical retort to the plethora of TV advertising/consumerism that defined the era. It then expanded into a satirical look into every form of authority of the times. The beauty of the magazine was that it was apolitical. I suspect the editors were liberal but the writing bespoke an insight into the foibles of the period that was as poignant as it was funny. The magazine never received the credit that it deserved in shaping the views and attitudes of a generation of suburban youth who would eventually develop a very healthy contempt for the larger institutions of our society that seemed to live on a diet of lies and hypocrisy, whether right or left. Last week, I purchased an anthology of offerings from the 50's through the 90's. Looking back, I was fascinated at the sophistication of the humor. Whether it was the countercultural lifestyle, military, government, business, or religion, the message was clear: the emperor has no clothes.

The 1954 American League Season

2010-04-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

I love baseball. The sport captures the spirit of America better than any other social phenomena out there. It is not political. But beyond its unifying effect on the national pscyhe, the game is a treasure trove of historical statistical oddities that keep people like me up all night. I spend about two hours a week on www.retrosheet.org. The site is to baseball addicts what a corner bar is to the neighborhood drunk: a convenient excuse to ignore your responsibilities to your family and job and indulge in what you deep down inside feel you cannot live without. I like to drink as much as the next guy, but crunching meaningless baseball numbers is nirvana. This morning, and for no apparent reason, I started to search for teams that finished in second place and yet won over one hundred games and then separate out those teams that did not even come close to winning the pennant. As I was perusing different seaons, I came across the 1954 American League final standings. The Cleveland Indians finished in first place with 111 wins, a record for wins in one season. But just as interesting were the second place Yankees. They won 103 games and finished 8 games out of first. There have been other similar second place finishes. The 1961 Detroit Tigers finished in second place with 101 wins; the 1962 Dodgers did the same with 102 wins. For football's version of this oddity, check out the 1967 Baltimore Colts who finished 12-1-1 and never made the playoffs. I remember baseball quite well in the mid to late 60's but had no reference of comparison due to my youth. Looking back, I am amazed that baseball maintained its hold on the nation despite such lopsided races. In 1954, only there American League teams had a winning record, Even if there were pennant races, for most teams, the season was over by the All Star break, And here is an interesting number. The Boston Red Sox, who have sold out every game for about ten years, were not always the hot ticket in town. In 1966, the Sox opened the season at home against Baltimore. Only 12,386 people showed up. The next day, 1,955 came to the game. And this is opening day, when hope springs eternal, or so the myth goes. Imagine that happening today!

Dressing Up And Doing The Town

2010-04-11T03:16:00.000-07:00

I spent part of last night watching old baseball footage from the 1950's, the supposed Golden Era of baseball. That is was a "golden era" is a myth but then again history has been aptly defined as nothing more than one damn lie after another. I noted with amusement the fan attire of the time. But it is more than amusement. I think the way people dress says something about the way we perceive ourselves in other people's eyes and the kind of respect we demand from others. I remember watching the Montreal Canadiens in the 1960's. It seemed that every fan at the Forum was The Man in The Grey Flannel Suit. Men wore suits to sporting events. It was almost like going to church. This social stricture started to change sometime around 1969. Maybe it was the Vietnam War and the social upheaval it wrought at home. I am not smart enough to figure that out but I am not dumb enough not to realize that there was almost a revolution in the way people related to one another and the language they chose to express it through was clothing. The way we dress conveys a very important message: act the way I dress. If someone sees you dressed in a suit, they will instinctively treat you differently than if you were wearing flip flops and shorts. And the reverse is true. People will expect you to treat them differently if you are dressed well. Dress is a very accurate barometer of the type of civil discourse we expect of ourselves and others. I am no prude but I think the old way had something to say for itself. When I was a kid in the 60's it was almost unheard of to hear people cursing in public. Now coarse language is so commonplace that it is accepted. Check out this song by Marty Robbins and I think you will get the idea.

I think it all started in 1942. The army issued standard white sleeved t shirts to all recruits. They were used to wearing the sleeveless "wifebeaters" that their fathers wore under their shirts. Wearing such a shirt in public back then was quite declasse. Remember Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. The name wifebeater did not come about by accident. After the war, these shirts became popular as a stand alone accessory thanks to James Dean, who did for the industry what Lauren Bacall did for women lighting up. And then it was all downhill from there. Call it what you will. Democracy. Egalitarianism. The end result has been a coarsening of our civil discourse. I know a strong case can be made that there have certainly been some notable and quite impressive exceptions to this trend:

But nevertheless, I say there is something to be said for getting "all dressed up and doing the town" the old fashioned way. So put on your best suit, shine your shoes, and go out and show your friends the respect they deserve and hopefully they will show you the same!

Here's To Yesterday

2010-04-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

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I remember 1972 well. Nixon crushed McGovern and then bombed North Vietnam. Watergate started. The A's won their first of three straight pennants. The decade ushered in bad music, worse fashion and the death of the American automobile industry. The cars that Detroit produced from 1950 up to today reflect American self confidence and power and our willingness to project it around the world. Face it. If you were stuck in a foxhole under enemy fire, who would you want to have engineered the equipment that will rescue your ass: the New Age conformist who invented the Chevy Vega or the wild eyed eccentric who put fins on the 1957 Cadillac El Dorado? You get the picture. When it comes down to what really mattered in my life in 1972, booze and broads, not even Viagra can light up a man's libido today like the old fashioned in your face V8 engine with all the trimmings did then. Which brings me to my own attempt to go back in time. A good client of mine was in town this week and while here bought a 1972 Cadillac.

He is shipping it out later in the week so let me use it for the weekend. And use it I will. I called a sometime girlfriend who is (barely) old enough to keep me out of the hoosegow but young enough to still believe my bullshit that her youth has nothing to do with my wanting to date her. It's off for a steak dinner, a bottle of wine, and a nice drive down I95 with the windows down and the AM radio blasting away (assuming there still is AM radio). After examining the interior of the car, I am thankful that I grew up in the 60's/70's before the worst standard feature in a car ever: the console that separates the driver from his passenger. This contraption did more to reduce teenage shenanigans than any lecture by some overly protective father or pleasure hating minister. But not tonight. My girlfriend will slide over and put her head on my shoulder and her body next to mine and I will party like it's 1972!

Can The Federal Government Force You To Buy A Gun?

2010-03-27T05:02:00.000-07:00

I am not a constitutional scholar. And that is probably a good thing for it allows me to analyze the constitutionality of the current health care legislation with a degree of clarity that is wholly lacking in the opinions of so called experts in this field. The question is simple: under the Commerce Clause, can the federal government mandate that individuals purchase a product or service from a private party. The law has developed to the point where Congress can regulate almost any activity that affects commerce. If you engage in an activity such as buying a pizza, the government can regulate the contents of the cheese and tomato sauce that goes into it. I believe the clause has been expanded beyond its original meaning but it is what it is. But it is a real stretch to expand the regulation of economic activity voluntarily entered to coercing someone to buy a service he does not want to purchase. Most of the so called experts never address this question. They dismiss the argument by citing examples that are inapposite and add in in the caveat that health care is a major problem in our society, etc. So I ask this question: if the rate of violent crime increases dramatically to the point that the government's ability to handle it is overwhelmed, can Congress pass a law that mandates that every individual purchase a handgun? I do not believe there is any difference between this example and what is happening with health insurance. If you can force people to buy health insurance against their will, the government has achieved every dictator's dream: complete control over people's lives. I have written about this before but it needs repeating. Want to know where we are headed. Here is a law of politics that is as foolproof as the law of gravity:
These eight steps were written in 1787 by Professor Alexander Tyler. The United States was in the planning process of a young and fragile Democracy. So, this Professor took a look at the past and tried to map out the evolution of a Democracy. He determined a time line for these eight steps and an estimate of how long the process would take, 200 years.

The Eight Steps

From Bondage to Spiritual Faith

Do we forget how young of a nation we are? Europe had shaped and reshaped itself so many times before we were even put on a map.

England ruled the young America, not with whips and chains, but with taxes. The people weren’t allowed to build a strong nation because all the money they made was sent back to England. In the beginning, they were cool with that.

They were running from Europe so they would have the right to serve the God of their choosing and the manner in which they would serve that God. To them, at least in the beginning, the sacrifice was worth it. But that didn’t last long because Spiritual Faith is life altering.

From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage

Now, you have spiritual people who fully believe God has their best interest at heart and that translates into the building of courage.

Not in just this case, but in every case. Once you let God into your life, you begin to feel like you can move mountains. When you trust and have faith, fear seems to melt away.

From Courage to Liberty

This may seem funny but the courage you get from God makes you want to fight. O.K. maybe I didn’t say that right. The courage you get from God makes it impossible for you to allow someone to block your blessings. There, that’s better.

Our founding fathers knew we could not prosper with England at the head of our lives. We had to be a nation that put God first, then country, then family.

So NO! We will not bow to your Queen, we will not allow you to rob our country of it’s chance to be great, and no we will not allow you to dictate the lives of our children and grandchildren. We have God on our side and will fight for what we feel is right.

And that’s what we did. We fought and won our independence, our freedom, and our Liberty.

From Liberty to Abundance

And once you put your faith in God and walk through the fire without fear, you receive your blessing. And can’t we all agree, America has been blessed. We sprouted from a young nation into a world leader in record time.

Industry flourished, businesses developed, and the Economy became the envy and standard of the world. We fought amongst ourselves, defended our friends and allies, and built the strongest military force on the planet. We adjust and change our laws, while still adhering to the basic principles of our Constitution.

But all this comes with a price.

From Abundance to Complacency

Complacency- self-satisfaction, especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers and deficiencies

I think this came around the time of the Great Depression. The New Deal. The belief started to creep in that we had the money to do anything. People were hurting and wanted immediate help, so they turned to the government and the government answered.

We’re temporarily going to give out Social Security benefits, just to get people by until things get better. We’re going to set up Medicaid and Medicare to help the underprivileged and elderly, who just can’t afford healthcare. These are just temporary steps to get us through these hard times.

When did they end Social Security? They didn’t. No politician is going to advocate taking services from the poor and the old. Plus, now government has a huge money supply from all the taxes they collect for Social Security. Great way to get money from you to borrow against for other Government projects.

As the government continued to grow, so did it’s hold on the mind of the American people.

From Complacency to Apathy

Apathy- lack of interest or concern; indifference

Now, we believe we can not fail. We pushed the Nazi’s back and crushed Russia, what could go wrong? The age of drugs spread through America and people stopped caring. It was better to protest than to put yourself into a position to run for office. It was better to make love than resist the up and coming war in our own backyard, the ever growing size of government.

Then, one morning we awoke and realized Government played a role in every aspect of our life. We pay taxes from the moment we get up in the morning to the moment we go to sleep at night. They can tell your teenage daughter it’s O.K. to get an abortion without telling a parent. They can even take away your land and cite “eminent domain”.

And we threw our hands up and said “F it”. It’s nothing we can do, the government runs everything. And we stopped listening, we stopped paying attention, and we stopped holding politicians accountable for their actions. We allowed ourselves to be scared of the Government instead of making the Government scared of us.

This is were it gets really scary.

From Apathy to Dependence

This is were we are right now. We were so indifferent and complacent, the first person to come along and promise us the pot at the end of the rainbow, we jumped. This once God loving nation is starting to worship the Government instead.

The same God that gave our forefather’s the strength and courage to fight is being contested at every turn. God teaches us to rely on him and then on ourselves and the Government doesn’t like that. The now enormous Government, needs to keep feeding itself and it needs your complacency to do it.

They need you to not care they are taking over private industry. They need you to look away while the let the printing press run. They need you to worry about Nancy Pelosi, while the Federal Reserve consolidates power. And there’s only one way that could happen, if you are dependent upon them.

If you can’t keep your house without the Government, then you don’t care how they do it. If you can’t eat without the Government, you don’t care where your food comes from. If you can’t see a doctor without the Government, you don’t care how much it will cost future generations.

We have become the nation of ME, Myself, and I and then anyone else that’s poor. They got us right were they want us, completely dependent on the Government to make the economy work, to solve our individual financial woes, and to just give us that tingly feeling.

Guess what the last step is?

From Dependence to back into Bondage

This is what I don’t understand about America today. There was a time in our history where people were given jobs, houses, food, and healthcare. It was called SLAVERY!

The Art Of Shaving

2010-03-05T03:50:00.000-08:00

I finally figured it out. How to get a good shave without paying some buxom blonde $150.00 to rub her boobs in your nose while she ran a razor across your throat. Here is the recipe. The tools: Shave Gel For Men ($1.00 at The Dollar Tree). Barbasol Shave Cream ($1.25 at Walmart). Gillette Fusion razor (the ones without the battery. Why any man would spend ten minutes a day holding something in his hand that reminded him of his wife/girlfriend's love toy and thus his own inadequacy is beyond me). First, rub the shave gel on your face. Then the shaving cream. It will stick on your face like glue. Next, shave. The gel with the cream will give you an incredibly close shave that is actually pleasant. Your face will feel like a new baby's ass. As an added accoutrement, play old Sinatra songs on your ipod. Enjoy the weekend.

LA LOGGIA

2010-02-28T06:08:00.000-08:00

I have eaten at La Loggia once (on a client's dime). The food was excellent. But I try to avoid the place at all costs. To me, it is nothing more than a place to be seen by the courthouse power elite, to rub elbows with judges and kiss their asses. In other words, a paean to fakery and insincerity, a public display of sycophancy and phoniness that proves the point that the spirit of Eddie Haskell is alive and well in the Miami legal community. I witness the glad-handing on an almost daily basis because I do my filings with the clerk at 12 30 so I do not have to wait in line in the morning. Walking down the courthouse steps on Flagler, there is a daily fixture across the street: Judge Jose Rodriguez, cigar in hand, holding court a la Swifty Lazar at Spago's in Hollywood a generation earlier. Rodriguez has a permanent table where he eats daily. His presence is very public. You cannot walk by the restaurant or go inside without seeing him and, if you are a lawyer, saying hello to him. Now I like Judge Rodriguez. He is a no BS kind of guy. Probably one of the better judges in the building. But there is something odd about a judge placing himself at the center of the lunchtime legal crowd every day. Now one might say that all of this glad-handing is harmless and probably contributes to a certain collegiality among lawyers and judges, no different from the countless bar association functions that one sees in the DBR every week where judges and lawyers are photographed together. Perhaps. But what really struck a chord in my mind was a piece in the DBR this week about Lewis Freeman. I received a call from a good friend who was shocked about Freeman's conduct. Her reaction was along the lines of "another crooked lawyer." And she was right. Freeman, by his own admission, stole $2.6 million. According to his lawyer, the reason for the conduct centered around "lifestyle" issues. That is a polite way of saying that he pilfered money for no reason other than avarice. But what I found fascinating about the article was a quote from Freeman's lawyer. Here is the exact quote from the DBR:
'Josephs said he is particularly sad that Freeman will be remembered for his crime and not the many good things he did for the community. Josephs said he went to La Loggia with Freeman after it became public that he was being investigated. “I gained a lot of respect for this town that I thought I had lost when judges, lawyers and everybody else who had the opportunity to turn their back on him came up and hugged him,” Josephs said. “Everybody else falls every once in awhile.”
Now I am as sympathetic towards people who go astray as anyone and am willing to cut someone a break, but this quote and the scenes it invokes are a little bit troubling. Think about it. You are a judge who appointed Freeman to oversee the misappropriation of very large sums of money. You trusted him to be honest. He violated that trust and did it over and over. About that there is no dispute. So you happen to run into him at La Loggia. What do you do? Tell him he is a disgrace? No. Walk away to avoid a nasty confrontation that he took you for a fool? No. You embrace him and wish him well. Am I missing something here? If I miss a discovery deadline or mis calendar a hearing, I get sanctioned and humiliated in front of my colleagues in open court. But if you are part of the "club" and steal $2.6 million, you are treated no different than if you had a moment of weakness and paid that 23 year old hottie $200 to polish your apple at 2 am in the back seat of your car after you had one too many bourbons. I just don't get it.

Alexander Haig, RIP

2010-02-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

Alexander Haig, the former Nixon chief of staff, Reagan secretary of state, 1988 presidential candidate, and dapper dresser, died yesterday. He was a four star general who never won a battle outside the corridors of Washington politics. He was to the English language what Phyllis Diller was to women's hairstyles. I remember him well. Right now, assuming his scorecard has more pluses than minuses, God is re-arranging the furniture in heaven to make room for Haig's oversized ego. Haig always fascinated me as an example that someone with average intelligence and judgment could claw his to the highest levels of power for such a long period of time. For conspiracy buffs, Haig offers a gold mine of possibilities. About 20 years ago, Len Colodny authored a book about Watergate, The Silent Coup: The Removal of Richard Nixon, that was bizarre: that Haig, acting on behalf of the Washington/New York political establishment, orchestrated a coup against Nixon so that Nixon could not usher in a new era of Southern and Western dominance of American politics that might last for a generation. In other words, the powers that be wanted to prevent in 1972 what Reagan accomplished in 1980. It is as nutty as it is interesting. The best part of the book was the claim that John Dean organized the break in of the Democratic headquarters not to spy on political opponents but to retrieve incriminating evidence there that his wife, Maureen, was high a priced call girl servicing the Capitol's power brokers. Dean sued Colodny over this claim and the matter was settled out of court. I could not bring myself to believe the main thesis of the book but I could not put it down. Sort of like reading books about the Kennedy assassination: I don't believe there was a conspiracy but it sure is fun reading about the zany characters that littered the political landscape. Haig's second re-incarnation was as Reagan's secretary of state. Here, unfortunately for him and unlike his stint with Nixon, he was always in the public eye. I never understood why Reagan, a modest man who surrounded himself with competent people, would hire an egomaniac like Haig. My first impression of him was that he had a speech problem. He was incapable of uttering a declarative sentence. I thought that his inability to speak coherently disguised an astute mind that comprehended the complexities of international politics and diplomacy. Otherwise, how could he have been Nixon's chief of staff and Reagan's head honcho at State? But I was completely wrong. His speech was a perfect reflection of his mind: cluttered, confused, and banal. He got by the way all underlings in Washington get by: kissing the right asses. Starting with Kissinger on up, he perfected the art. For some strange reason, Nixon was fascinated with Haig. Thought he was tough and Haig did exude the persona of the take no prisoners military personality that played well with a public that was growing sick and tired of watching the US get its ass kicked around the world. Nixon was always impressed with men who appeared strong willed and flamboyant on the surface. Witness his admiration of John Connally and plan to run him for president in 1976 had Watergate not intervened. Rumor has it that it was Nixon's strong recommendation to the Reagan team that got Haig the state job ("the toughest son of a bitch I ever met" was the quote from Nixon which I now take to mean that Nixon only met one son of a bitch in his life). Haig was a disaster at state. The only good thing that can be said of him there is that he dressed well. He took Reagan for a laid back fool who would allow him to single handedly run US foreign policy. That was a huge mistake. His biggest gaffe came the day Reagan was shot and he appeared in public to assure the world: "I am in control here." Caspar Weinberger, the then defense secretary wanted to strangle Haig. Haig was soon fired and replaced by George Schultz who was everything Haig was not. Haig ended his public career by running for president in 1988 or 1996. I cannot remember and it really doesn't matter. All that he did in that campaign is remind the ten people in the country who paid attention to him that Haig had a lot in common with many of the foreign types with whom he interacted: he could never learn to speak proper English.

Ethel Waters: Black History Month, Part II

2010-02-14T11:53:00.000-08:00

I was wandering around Barnes & Noble this afternoon and on my way home listened to the collection of Ethel Waters songs on my IPod. I had not listened to her music for two years. She recorded most of her music in the 1920's. But what really hit me as I was driving were the lyrics of "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue?." Here are they are:

Out in the street, shufflin' feet
Couples passin' two by two
While here am I, left high and dry
Black, and 'cause I'm black I'm blue

Browns and yellers, all have fellers
Gentlemen prefer them light
Wish I could fade, can't make the grade
Nothing but dark days in sight

Cold, empty bed, springs hard as lead
Pains in my head, feel like old Ned
What did I do to be so black and blue?

No joys for me, no company
Even the mouse ran from my house
All my life through I've been so black and blue

I'm white inside, it don't help my case
'Cause I can't hide, what is on my face, oh!

I'm so forlorn, life's just a thorn
My heart is torn, why was I born?
What did I do to be so black and blue?

'Cause you're black, folks think you lack
They laugh at you, and scorn you too
What did I do to be so black and blue?

When you are near, they laugh and sneer
Set you aside and you're denied
What did I do to be so black and blue?

How sad I am, each day I feel worse
My mark of Ham seems to be a curse, oh

How will it end? ain't got a friend
My only sin is my skin
What did I do to be so black and blue?

You can click on the video link above to get the full flavor of the song. The song is a tale of self loathing, sort of the reverse of black pride. But I think it is a perfect reflection of the pre WWII era. African Americans were expected to act like second class citizens in public and private. And I am sure her white audiences loved it as much has she probably hated herself for singing it because she needed the money. I Googled her name and came up with this brief description of her childhood: "Ethel Waters was born to a 12 year old mother, Louise Anderson, who had been raped by a white man, John Waters. Although she was raised by her maternal grandmother, she took her father's surname. Reared in poverty, she left school at the age of 13 in order to support herself through domestic housework." Not exactly a pretty picture. But she persevered as did many black entertainers of the time. And there were many: Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey, and Julie Christy. These were people who came up from the streets. At least one, Billie Holiday, was a former prostitute. And the lives of the others were probably just as difficult and tragic. But the drudgery, poverty, and overt discrimination made them what they are and caused them to produce the music they did. And great music it is. It is really too bad that the great black musicians pre-1960 do not get the recognition they deserve.

Weekend Sports Edition: Black History Month, Part 1

2010-02-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

February is Black History Month. It is time for some revisionist history in the sporting arena. More specifically, baseball. Jackie Robinson is held out by the mainstream media as the driving force to integrate baseball in the late 40’s. The hagiography is almost universal and unchallenged. However, the image is distorted and simplistic. If you scratch beneath the surface, what you find is a lot more interesting than what passes for conventional wisdom. Robinson was the first African American to play in major league baseball. Every major league club retired his number 42. I always felt he received a disproportionate amount of credit for bringing integration to baseball. It is probably unavoidable that he did so given the publicity his signing entailed and the laziness of the media in not looking for the deeper story. It is as if Robinson singlehandedly opened the door through which hordes of black baseball players walked and then treated as equals. Such was not the case. Not by a long shot. Jackie Robinson was but the tip of the iceberg. There were thousands of black minor league baseball players who suffered worse indignities than Robinson did while struggling to make it in the big time. Names like Bob Gibson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Bill White, Frank Robinson, and Vada Pinson are some of the better known players who cut their teeth in the lower echelons of baseball before making it in the majors. And equally as important were the unknown and not so talented ones who laid the foundation and never made it to the big time. The late David Halberstam, one of the most underrated American authors of all time, lays out the struggle of the black baseball player post Robinson in two books: "The Summer of 1949" and "October, 1964." The former is advertised as a history of the Red Sox/Yankee pennant race of 1949 and the latter a rendition of the 1964 World Series. But anyone familiar with Halberstam's work knows it is always much more than what the title infers. Bill White, the former Yankee first basemen, talks of going to spring training and having to stay in separate hotels in the early 60's. We hear stories about the dangers of playing minor league baseball in small Southern towns in the 1950's. As bad as getting cursed in Philadelphia in 1948, imagine playing in some crackerjack town in Georgia in 1955 and having to walk to the parking lot alone after the game. Not a pretty sight. The upshot is that Robinson may have been the first but he was not the only one who deserves credit for pushing the ball forward. Halberstam brings up another interesting point that shows the free market at work. The Yankees had the best farm system in baseball from the 1930's through the 1950's. Starting in the late 40's, they refused to recruit black players. This decision cost them dearly. Halberstam argues it was the main cause of their decline from 1965 through 1975. Ditto the Red Sox but on a smaller scale as they were never that good to begin with but they had some horrible teams from 1950 up to 1967 and not many black faces in their lineup. Not so the St. Louis Cardinals. They went after Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, and Bill White. In 1964, they added Lou Brock. Gibson, a proud man, suffered in silence. He was an angry man and bitter over the way black players were treated. This anger manifested itself in his pitching style. I remember watching him pitch in the mid-60's. He always had a look in his eye that elevated the pitcher/hitter duel to a life and death struggle. Hank Aaron once advised a young hitter on how to handle Gibson: don't crowd the plate because he will knock you down. But don't stand too far either because he will hit the outside corner. If you hit a home run off of him, don't run too fast around the bases because he will give you some chin music next time up. And don't run too slow either. He will hammer you next time because of that too. So here is a salute to the thousands of black players who played professional baseball on all levels in the 1950's and early 60's. They should not be forgotten.

Happy Birthday Mr. President(s)

2010-02-07T05:23:00.000-08:00

Monday is President's Day. What used to be two paid holidays for government employees is now one. Lincoln and Washington's birthday have been replaced by a generic President's Day. What it means I don't know and really don't care except that I do not have to go to court and there will be less traffic to curse at. Now might be the occasion to examine the most famous presidential birthday party of all time. I always admired JFK. And to a lesser extent Bill Clinton. Anyone who aspires to the most powerful office on earth not to do great things but to use the office as a resume enhancer to corral women into the bedroom gets a big plus in my book. JFK presents an interesting phenomenon in American politics and culture. Some presidents can pull off stunts that would destroy the careers of others. Ronald Reagan was accused of taking long naps every afternoon. He never denied it. In fact, in one of his farewell addresses, he basically admitted it and laughed it off. And the country laughed with him. Clinton was a philanderer and got away with it because everyone with half a brain knew it and factored that into their support of him. Bush I and II could give speeches as if they were talking backwards. Such verbal syntax would make Clinton a laughingstock. And so it goes. But JFK was different. Granted, the press was a little more circumspect back then and much more centralized. The news was filtered through a few large newspapers and three TV networks. And the doyens of journalism loved JFK. But still. Take a look at the above video. Kennedy's brother in law(and pimp to Hollywood whoredom), Peter Lawford, introduces an obviously drugged and drunk Marilyn to sing birthday kudos to the prince of Camelot. Imagine a wasted Madonna or Haile Berry seductively crooning birthday wishes to Obama in a public forum. Ain't gonna happen. But Kennedy pulled it off. And he did it with class and a sense of style that leaves me green with envy. I was not mature enough in 1962 to remember the relationship between the public perception of political leaders and the reality of many of their lives. The TV presidency still had lots of baby fat so the dark side of almost universal exposure had not caught up with the hagiography that it initially spawned with JFK. The great majority of Americans did not believe their political leaders engaged in such shenanigans. JFK led a duplicitous life in an era of noblesse oblige and got away with it. Call it hypocrisy or whatever but the sharp demarcation between the public and private was not a bad thing. Would our country have been better off if Ike had spent the Fall of 1952 deflecting rumors of himself and Kaye Summersby? Or if FDR with Lucy Mercer? I don't think so. Well, the myth of JFK lives on. Wherever you are Jack, you might want to tap God on the shoulder and thank him for the fact that you were born in 1917 and not 1950. Running for president in these times with your baggage would have been one hell of a "profile in courage."

The Virtues of Vice

2010-02-04T18:34:00.001-08:00

Ever since somewhere around 1975, when the first horde of the counterculture generation began meandering its way into positions of power and influence in American society, diversity (and I mean real diversity)has been on the decline. The result is not healthy. A free society does not prosper and continue to be free by forcing its citizens to adopt a lifestyle that is free from alcohol, tobacco, and great tasting food that happens to have negative side effects. The United States has experienced atavistic bouts of Purtianism and survived to renew its love affair with booze, broads, and well, a good cigar. But the most recent push into dull conformity will not be so benign and comical. What is it about some people that compels them to spend the better part of their adult lives trying to control the animal appetites of their fellow citizens? The paternalistic gene is not restricted to any one political ideology buts spans the spectrum of thought from the right with gays and religion, to the left with its obsessive desire to ban guns, cigarettes, and soon that 16 ounce New York strip steak that I throw on the grill every Saturday night, to the apolitical do gooders who want to turn everyone into an ascetic monk whose diet consists of skim milk, tree bark, and vegetables boiled in distilled water. Well, this way of thinking and philosophy is a crock of manure. I drink. I smoke cigars (at least two a day). I chase women. I eat steak, eggs, baked potatoes, and whatever unhealthy food I can get my hands on. I love all of it. My philosophy is simple: if it was good enough for Winston Churchill, it is good enough for me. End of discussion. A real man is not a real man unless he has at least two vices of which he can be proud. Ditto for a real woman. Life is not fun unless it is dangerous and having fun means knowing when to indulge in those little vices of life and sucking the excitement and pleasure out of them without fatally succumbing to their almost irresistible temptations.

Weekend Sports Edition: When The All Star Game Mattered

2010-01-31T16:31:00.000-08:00

Miami has the good fortune of hosting, in the span of eight days, the NFL's most meaningful and meaningless games. The latter of course is the Pro Bowl, an event that is now on par with professional wrestling in the sincerity department. I would not be surprised to see an open bar on the sidelines hosted by Hooters. Perhaps for good measure, we could throw in mulligans for plays that need to be done over for dramatic effect. That the Pro Bowl is a joke is almost universally accepted, or at least should be. All sports all star games are now rigged gimmicks used to promote the product the way commercials are used as props for whatever merchandise is being hawked. In fact, we have reached a point where the tail is now wagging the dog: all star games are no longer competitive events but commercials for the league that is sponsoring them. But, alas, it was not always so. I remember all too well the 1970 baseball all star game. Pete Rose came barreling into home plate where Ray Fosse, the Indian catcher, was waiting for him, ball in glove. Rose ran over him as if he were an 18 wheeler crushing a VW bug at 80 mph. It was not a pretty scene. Rose made no apologies nor should he have. The thinking was if you are not going to play the game to win, why bother showing up. Say what you want about Rose. I would be the first to say that he was one of the biggest jerks ever to play professional sports and that covers a lot of territory. But he had a drive that is all too rare in today's athletes. In fact, the so called all star game is symbolic of what ails all professional sports: the pampered athlete who no longer has to worry about danger. In 1967, I believe Red Auerbach was ejected from the all star game for arguing with the refs. Imagine that happening today!

Does Atheism Defy Logic?

2010-01-24T03:34:00.000-08:00

Bishop Fulton Sheen once said that the chief characteristic of an atheist is not that he believes in nothing but that he will believe in anything. Maybe. I was always intrigued by the atheist philosophy or epistemology. I felt it was more of a form of rebellion and chic irreverence than a firm system of belief. Years ago I read a book review of something called the scientific basis for the belief in God. The chances of the earth being formed by some accident of physics was one over some trillion to the trillionth power. In other words, impossible. Here is a recent link to the book (http://www.usnews.com/blogs/god-and-country/2009/05/04/francis-collins-a-scientific-basis-for-god.html). I have another approach to atheism that might shed light on its moral vacuity. An atheist does not believe that there is a supreme being. That is, human life begins and ends as we know it. Once you die, you are a mass of physical matter indistinguishable from the ground in which you are buried. Every person will end up the same: soulless. If this is a given, I have on occasion posed this question to an atheist: why should murder be illegal? If all humans are going to die anyway and their souls never resurrected, living is nothing more than the postponement of the inevitable. Sort of like sitting around waiting to pay the toll to get over a bridge. Each life is nothing more than a blink of an eye relative to time. It is insignificant. Whether you live a productive or happy life is beside the point. You and your loved ones are going to die anyway and end up in the same predicament regardless of what they did during your living years. So the big question is this: are there any moral consequences to committing a heinous act? Let us say you walked into a school and opened fire on a room full of children, killing them all. You then killed yourself. If you are an atheist, the answer must be no. You might answer that the families of these children will suffer. That may be true, but they can do themselves a big favor and commit suicide. That will end their misery. And since their is no after life or God, they will become part of the earth. They will end up no different from the person who murdered the children. Of course, people do not routinely behave this way because it is unnatural. The reason it is unnatural is because life is a gift from God and people have a God given moral compass that they struggle mightily to adhere to, often times unsuccessfully. The secular establishment has always boasted that millions of people have died because of religious persecution. This fact is true. But that does not detract from the point. People are capable of evil even if they pretend to adhere to a moral code inconsistent with their acts. Well, that is my Sunday morning sermon. Now, time to prepare to worship at the altar of a few other supreme powers: football, cigars, scantilly clad waitresses, and wine.

Weekend Sports Edition: The 1973 Miami Dolphins

2010-01-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

Every NFL fan remembers the 1972 Dolphins. They won the Super Bowl and are the only team that ever finished the season undefeated. An amazing feat that has yet to be replicated. Were they the greatest team ever? No. They were not even the greatest Dolphin team ever. That prize must to to the 1973 Dolphins, one of the most underrated and forgotten teams of all time. The 1972 Dolphins played opponents who had a combined record of 51-86-3 (ten different teams when you factor in that they played the Colts, Bills, Patriots, and Jets twice). The 1973 Dolphins' opponents had a combined record of 69-69-4. Another factor hampering the 1973 Dolphins is that they were an inviting target, no longer underrated as they were a year ago. To go undefeated one season and repeat as Super Bowl champions the next is quite an accomplishment. Unlike 1972, Griese played all year. And unlike the 1972 Super Bowl, which was more lost by the inept Redskins than won by the Dolphins, the 1974 game was dominated by the Dolphins from start to finish. So here is a salute to the forgotten but great 1973 Miami Dolphins.

Weekend Sports Edition: Bowl Me Over

2009-12-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

It is that time of year. Somewhere in the last 15 years, January 1st morphed into January 7th. I refer of course to the BCS Championship game, college football's equivalent of the Super Bowl, or at least an attempt to emulate it. The BCS game is a fraud. It is nothing more than a half hearted attempt to achieve the unattainable: a determination of the best team in college football through a combination of performance and computer precision. Writers, fans, and now politicians clamor for a so called playoff system that will leave no doubt about the ultimate winner's right to claim the title of best college football team of the season. To this perennial dream, I say PHOOEY! Devising a sure fire way to bring mathematical certitude to the collegiate gridiron is a chimera, a false dream brought about by the hallucinations of fans and writers who do not appreciate the beast they are trying to tame. The beauty of college football is that its traditions and structure are not suited to an elimination tournament. To do it properly would require a playoff system that started in early November and ended in January. Regional rivalries would be diluted. Conference championships would become meaningless. The debate about the best team would become even more raucous than it is now. I can hear it now. "Why should 10-1 Florida be dissed in place of 12-0 Boise State;" and vice versa. Great teams who have a very real chance of winning it all would never get a chance to compete in the playoff system.
Instead of moving forward, I think college football should take a look in the rear view mirror. There was something glorious about waking up on New Year's Day as a kid. First there was no school, which I hated anyway. Second, my parents would not wake up until 11. At 1, I watched the Cotton Bowl. It was always Texas against someone. I remember Notre Dame playing in that game many times. Rooting for ND was mandatory for me. Not doing so was to face eternal damnation or at least it seemed that way. At 2, it was the Sugar Bowl. Always a team from the South. If the Cotton Bowl was not interesting, I would get off the floor, and manually turn the channel from 10(CBS) to 7(ABC). New Year's dinner was served around 3:30. Around 4, I would turn on the Rose Bowl. I could never understand the pageantry until about 10 years later when we bought a color TV. The Rose Bowl seemed to always feature Ohio State against USC or Stanford. I remember OJ Simpson, Woody Hayes, Jim Plunkett, and Rex Kern. By 8, it was time for the Orange Bowl. It was always a Big Eight team against Penn State, or at least it seemed that way. What I remember is that each of these games was important. The outcome had some direct or indirect ramification for who could later claim title to a mythical national championship. I also remember a few years when there were two champions: an AP one and UPI one. The uncertainty is was made it all so much fun.
Now instead of one day full of four bowl games, we get New Year's Day full of meaningless games and then the meaningful game one week later. To this pathology of certitude, I offer a dissent and say Here's To Yesterday!

Sunset Boulevard And The Tragedy of Aging Women

2009-12-25T11:55:00.000-08:00

"There;s Nothing Wrong With Being 50, So Long As You Don't Act Like You Are 25." So said Joe Gillis to Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. So I ask: is there any group more discriminated against in our society than an aging woman? I think not. While we have progressed mightily in social and economic terms to tear down the barriers of prejudice in most all areas of American society, there remains that pitiful group of aging beauty queens, wrinkled faced former princesses whose implants and facelifts have long outgrown their warranties and against whom Hollywood and Madison Avenue have turned a cold shoulder and closed the door of opportunity with a proverbial "Old Ladies Need Not Apply." And for what reason are they ignored and put down? They are old and getting older by the day. A man ages gracefully, the specks of gray hair and leather like skin are held out as assets to which younger women are attracted. Age is equated with maturity, sophistication, and, most important, money. It is an unfortunate fact of life that the one attribute that a women has to snare a man, her beauty, depreciates once she turns 40 like an ice cube in the hot August sun. While Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, and just about any male actor continues to be hired, the same cannot be said of their female counterparts. Kathleen Turner may be the modern equivalent of Norma Desmond, except she is not dumb enough to believe otherwise.
The social ostracization will continue forever. While racial prejudice could be alleviated through economic progress and integration, the problem for older woman is that they are confronted with a force far more powerful: vanity. As long as our society treasures youth as the ultimate symbol of female beauty, the aging woman whose face is dropping to her shoulders and whose bottom resembles dried up flour, life will continue to be ever more miserable.
Of course there is a solution. Unlike Norma Desmond, refuse to play the game. I really think that a plain Jane has the advantage in the long run. South Florida is overpopulated with young twentysomethings for whom physical beauty is a measure of their self worth. And I include not only strippers and models but professionals as well. You seem them everywhere. You can also simultaneously see them twenty five years later. Go to Aventura Mall or Coral Gables on a Saturday night. The aging hotties try gamely to reach back and grab a piece of yesterday despite their made up faces and plastic filled bodies. It must be tragic indeed to look at the younger women in their midst who are competing for the affection of the same men they are and knowing, like some 20 handicapper teeing it up against Tiger Woods, they don't stand a chance. But if a woman was not born with the necessary social graces or beauty to enter the race to begin with, she is in the long run better off . She will have achieved a degree of contentment by the acquisition of a skill that will grow in value as she grows old with it. Not yielding to the temptations of vanity in one's twenties and instead pursuing a less ephemeral goal in life will yield a degree of happiness and solace in one's forties and beyond that her superficial sisters will never experience. In the long run, men get old too. They may go through their fifties popping Viagra and able to feel no different than they did in their twenties but the dark horizon is not far off. That arm candy will be replaced by a colostomy bag sooner than they think and a woman half a man's age is not going to stick around for very long when the highlight of the evening is not wetting the bed. The old geezer will forever regret dumping wife number one.
To every Norma Desmond in the world, I say do not look back but look ahead. Invest not in your body but in your mind. Make your own rules and don't play by those under which you cannot ever win.

Marty

2009-12-25T04:55:00.000-08:00

I bought the Criterion Collection's latest offering "The Golden Age of Television" this week after reading Terry Teachout's excellent review of it in the Wall Street Journal. I cannot agree more with him that Marty is the most substantive 53 minutes of television acting you will probably ever see. The show centers around Marty, a 36 year old butcher, played by Rod Steiger, who lives in New York City with his elderly mother in the early 50's. He is plain, honest, and to others, boring. His relatives and friends pester him because he is still single. But he is an extremely shy and awkward social specimen for whom approaching women is potentially destructive to his ego, or what little of it he still has. He eventually meets a woman, Nancy Marchand of Sopranos fame, who is a mirror image of him, inside and outside. Despite the hurtful insults of his friends and family, Marty is determined to make her his wife. The show ends with Marty defiantly standing up to his so called friends and proudly announcing that he will one day marry her.
What makes the show a gem is its portrayal of the psychological toll that emotional loneliness and rejection take on the lives of people who are not socially equipped to play the dating/mating game of life. Think of Janis Ian's "At Seventeen" writ large on the TV screen in grimy black and white. Not a pretty picture. Humans have a natural need for companionship. The pursuit of love and affection is a two sided coin. The rewards are as egotistically gratifying as are the pitfalls potentially ruinous. Think how it feels to date the most beautiful woman in high school or college. You feel like a million bucks and all of your friends and enemies look upon you with envy. Now imagine desperately wanting a girlfriend and then summoning up the courage to ask her out on a date only to be told "NO." And then having it repeated ad nauseum over the years. Or being a female frumpkin and sitting around a dance hall for two hours while other more seemingly glamorous people look upon you as outcast and even mock you. The effects of this conduct can cause permanent damage to even the strongest person's psyche. What makes the phenomena even worse is that men mask it by pretending it does not exist. Thus they adopt a veneer of "toughness" and cruel humor lest their friends think that they are affected by it all. The scene where Marty calls a woman he met two weeks ago and asks her for a date is like a knife going through one's heart. You can eerily sense that he is putting his manhood and ego on the line by asking her for a date. With each word, the risks are enhanced as his pride gets closer to the edge only to be denied once again. Another poignant scene: Marty takes his new friend home after a dance. He tries to kiss her and it appears that he is getting a bit physical. But it is clearly not malicious. He just has no clue how to act. He has listened to so many other men's exaggerated and made up tales of female conquest that he probably thinks that this is how men are supposed to behave. But in the end, his real self emerges. It is one of those movies that makes you feel good and might make you think twice before ever commenting about someone's else's lack of social grace.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T06:11:00.000-08:00

I remember growing up in the early 60's. Catholic and blue collar. Christmas was always the best time of the year. A lot of presents under the tree and plenty of food. Ever since I was 7 or 8, every Christmas morning a nagging feeling of guilt or curiosity overcame me. I guess it happened when I stopped believing in Santa Claus. I always wondered what it would be like to be really poor and wake up with no presents. Especially while everyone else was celebrating. Now my own kids are older. My ex wife got smart and unloaded me a long time ago. So now I spend Christmas by myself in my office and get work done. Tonight I will watch Sunset Boulevard as I do every year, drink a bottle of wine or two, and sleep on my couch. Tomorrow, I will hide in my office, try to work, and listen to Mannheim Steamroller and think back to 1962, when it was cold outside, and I got a sled under the tree and a toy machine gun and cartridge belt. For the next week I killed more Germans than Patton and Zhukov combined. We went to church and my grandparents came over. We ate a big dinner and life just seemed a lot better than it is now. Merry Christmans to all!

Are The Clerk's Filing Fees Unconstitutional?

2009-12-20T17:18:00.000-08:00

The clerk of court raised the filing fees for foreclosures based on the amount of the mortgage being sued upon. I think this action violates the Florida constitution. The only way they can be justified is as a user fee. That means there has to be some relationship between the fee charged and service provided. Thus, if you want to use a municipal golf course, you pay a fee. Ditto for the Florida Turnpike, marriage certificates, etc. Governments are given a wide latitude in setting the price for such services and court will rarely quibble with the amounts. But I find the schedule of filing fees for foreclosures to be a different matter. There is absolutely no distinction for filing purposes between a residential mortgage of $100,000.0 and one for $800,00.00. Zilch. None. The procedure is exactly the same and the cost to the clerk is the same. But the clerk charges $1900 for a foreclosure where the mortgage is greater than $200,000.00 and only $401.00 if it is less than $50,000.00. On the other hand if you file a complicated case in circuit court that will take up five files and go on for five years, you pay $401.00. A bread and butter foreclosure that will take four court appearances and a sale date will cost $1900.00. I am surprised an institutional lender has not challenged these fees as a user fee without any rational relationship between the amount charged and service provided. The clerk has simply seen an opportunity to increase revenue by capitalizing on the rise in foreclosures by hitting the banks with what is a tax aimed not to cover additional costs but to raise revenue. I also think these fees are an attempt to dissuade banks from filing foreclosures and work them out in some other way. Regardless, that is not the function of the clerk. Imagine the reaction among the bar if the clerk decided to raise fees for, say, civil rights actions or med mal cases. There would be a suit filed very quickly. But since the nefarious banks are the ones taking it on the chin, no one notices.

A (BILLY) WILD(ER) WEEKEND

2009-12-19T02:21:00.000-08:00

Billy Wilder was one of the greatest film directors ever. He had an insight into the American mind that produced some memorable movies. I spent the last three nights watching Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment (a forerunner of Mad Men), and The Fortune Cookie. I did not watch Sunset Boulevard as I save my annual viewing of that movie for Christmas Eve. What made Wilder a fascinating figure was his heritage. A German Jew who emigrated to Paris in the early 1930's from Hitler’s Germany and then to America a few years later before WWII, he arrived here not able to speak a word of English. His first big hit was Double Indemnity in 1944. But what set him apart was his uncanny sense of America as told from the dark side. The film noir genre was popular in the late 40's and into the 50's. It put a heavy emphasis on cynicism and reminded audiences that human beings are by and large not necessarily nice people. I always liked the femme fatale, whether she be Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice or Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity or Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy. The American male had to realize that beneath the veneer of domestic bliss, his lovely wife waiting at home at night was just as likely thinking about putting a dagger in his back as she was mixing him a high ball. But what set Wilder apart was his ability to mix tears and laughter. Anyone watching The Apartment or The Fortune Cookie cannot help but feel sorry for the women who end up miserable and taken advantage of. I have watched Some Like It Hot about ten times and between all the laughs always end of crying inside over the way Sugar is mistreated as a sexy bimbo. Ditto with Judi West in The Fortune Cookie. Monroe’s role was a fitting metaphor for her life. Wilder took a slice of the American psyche and weaved a tale of tragicomedy that seemed to reflect something about human nature that was larger than the lives of his characters. The focus was never grand or sweeping: it was the small stuff that made it intriguing. Whether a shyster PI lawyer in The Fortune Cookie, or philandering advertising executives in The Apartment, or a conniving wife in Double Indemnity, there were never overriding social or political issues. Human beings and their inherent moral weaknesses were the focal point of the films. What I could never understand was how a foreigner could so quickly assimilate into our society and acquire such a keen appreciation of American life. His talent was not in understanding the Hollywood hotshots he probably knew best but the mind of average Americans with whom he most likely had very little contact. So here is a salute to Billy Wilder. If you have spare time on your hands for the rest of this year and your wife/kids/girlfriend are not pestering you, go Wild(er).

The Dangers of Women

2009-12-13T05:55:00.000-08:00

I was perusing some old books yesterday and came upon this classic essay by H.L. Mencken about the most dangerous and ill fated venture that men undertake: the pursuit of women. It reminds me of an old French saying: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose or the more things change the more they remain the same. To every man who has made a complete fool of himself at the altar of love, here is the complete Mencken quote:
The Incomparable Buzzsaw
The chief (and perhaps the only genuine) charm of women is seldom mentioned by the orthodox professors of the sex. I refer to the charm that lies in the dangers they present. The allurement that they hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal and sordid drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a milch-cow. Even to the unusual man, the adventurous man, the imaginative and romantic man, they offer the adventure of adventures. Civilization tends to dilute and cheapen all other hazards. War itself, once an enterprise stupendously thrilling, has been reduced to mere caution and calculation; already, indeed, it employs as many press-agents, letter-openers, and chautauqua orators as soldiers. On some not distant to-morrow its salient personality may be Potash, and if not Potash, then Perlmutter. But the duel of sex continues to be fought in the Berserker manner. Whoso approaches women still faces the immemorial dangers. Civilization has not made them a bit more safe than they were in Solomon's time; they are still inordinately barbarous and menacing, and hence inordinately provocative, and hence inordinately charming and romantic. . . .
The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who, on grounds of decorum and morality, avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies. \ Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man. This feeling is fostered when one makes love to them. One need not be a great beau, a seductive catch, to do it effectively. Any man is better than none. No woman is ever offended by admiration. The wife of a millionaire notes the reverent glance of a head-waiter. To withhold that devotion, to shrink poltroonishly from giving so much happiness at such small expense, to evade the business on the ground that it has hazards—this is the act of a puling and tacky fellow.

Weekend Sports Edition: Tiger Woods And Double Standards

2009-12-13T03:38:00.000-08:00

Tiger Woods cheated on his wife multiple times. These affairs were not ones of the heart. Apparently, he was a serial womanizer with a rapacious appetite for casual sex. He is not the first professional athlete to be so afflicted and he certainly will not be the last. He will recover from this scandal and win more tournaments whether or not he gets divorced. But let us delve deeper into the sociological aspects of this story. We know what the public reaction is to Tiger's transgressions. But suppose Tiger's wife had engaged in the same conduct he did? In other words, imagine the reaction if Tiger had woken up at 2 30 am to discover that his wife had been carrying on an affair with some young buck while he was playing golf for the past few years. And then once the story became public, a slew of similarly situated men surfaced to tell their tale of having had casual sex with his wife, each story seemingly more salacious than the other. She would have been roundly denounced as a slut, a whore, and run out of this country, unable to show her face in public. Tiger would have been the object of everyone's sympathy. If you are a man, ask yourself this question: If you found out your wife had had sex with over 100 men in the past three years, including threesomes while you were at work, would you stay with her? Of course not. But when a man engages in that conduct, we roll our eyes, laugh, and wonder about how it will affect his ability to make money. Amazing.

Weekend Sports Edition: Tiger Woods (with big time apologies to Jimmy Soul)

2009-11-28T05:30:00.000-08:00

Ok. I am tired. I have had way too much to drink. I just read that Tiger Woods' injuries were caused by his wife. For some reason, the following song came to mind which Woods should have listened to 100 times before walking down the aisle:

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a pretty woman your wife.
So from my personal point of view,
Get an ugly girl to marry you.

[Jimmy & Backup:]
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a pretty woman your wife.
So from my personal point of view,
Get an ugly girl to marry you.

[Jimmy:]
A pretty woman makes her husband look small.
And very often causes his downfall. (Hey!)
As soon as he marries her, then she starts,
To do the things that will break his heart.

But if you make an ugly woman your wife,
You'll be happy for the rest of your life.
An ug-a-ly woman cooks your meals on time,
An she'll always give you peace of mind.

[Jimmy & Backup:]
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a pretty woman your wife.
So from my personal point of view,
Get an ugly girl to marry you.

[Instrumental break with vocalizations.]

[Jimmy:]
Don't let your friends say you have no taste,
Go ahead and marry anyway. (Hey!)
Though her face is ugly, her eyes don't match,
Take it from me, she's a better catch.

[Jimmy & Backup:]
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a pretty woman your wife.
So from my personal point of view,
[ Find more Lyrics on www.mp3lyrics.org/7fGj ]
Get an ugly girl to marry you.

[Man #1:] Say, man.
[Man #2:] Say, baby.
[Man #1:] I saw your wife the other day.
[Man #2:] Yeah?
[Man #1:] Yeah, and she's UGLEEE!
[Man #2:] Yeah, she's ugly, but she sure can cook, baby.
[Man #1:] Yeah, alright.

[Jimmy & Backup:]
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a pretty woman your wife.
So from my personal point of view,
Get an ugly girl to marry you.

[Jimmy & (Backup):]
(If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(Never make a pretty woman your wife.)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah yeah-yeah.
(So from my personal point of view,)
(Get an ugly girl to marry you.)

(If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(Never make a pretty woman your wife.)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(So from my personal point of view,)
(Get an ugly girl to marry you.)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Fade.]
(If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(Never make a pretty woman your wife.)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(So from my personal point of view...)

Ben Kuehne, The Aftermath

2009-11-27T07:05:00.001-08:00

The United States of America has dismissed all criminal charges against Ben Kuehne. The case should never have been brought. It is a farce, a disgrace, and something that should deeply concern every freedom loving person in America. In short, the government indicted Mr. Kuehne for conduct that was not criminal and which they should have known was not criminal. Mr. Kuehne spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of his money defending himself against this nonsense. He had to endure personal humiliation amongst his colleagues. He is one of the finest attorneys in Miami but his name will forever be associated with overzealous prosecutorial tactics.
But what I find ironic and almost humorous is the reaction of Mr. Kuehne and his colleagues. Some have used the Thanksgiving holiday to state that Mr. Kuehne should be especially thankful. Kuehne himself claims to be thankful. Others have offered "congratulations" to Mr. Kuehne, as if this were some sort of professional milestone. But I dissent. Why should Kuehne be grateful? Being thankful has a very definite meaning. You are thankful because you have received something you do not believe you deserve. If I am walking into a building and someone holds open a door for me, I say thank you because they had no obligation to do it. Likewise, if someone buys me a dinner as a gift, I am grateful because I am the beneficiary of someone else's largesse that was not earned. But if someone pays me back money I am owed I am not grateful for they had a duty to do so. Mr. Kuehne is thankful for the support his friends gave to him but in no way should he be generally grateful other than feeling thankful that someone has stopped beating him over the head. The government's dismissal is basically an admission that they never should have brought this case to begin with. In other words, we indicted you, almost ruined your life, put you through emotional hell, embarrassed you in front of your colleagues, but now, on second thought, we realized it was all a misunderstanding. Sorry! To which I say, bullshit! Now is not time to sit around and pat each other on the back and offer congratulatory missives and talk about what a great guy Ben is and how thankful he should be in this holiday season.
Recently, Judge Gold ordered the government to pay attorney fees to a doctor who was unjustly prosecuted. Without knowing that much about the procedural vehicle to turn the tables on the government, Kuehne owes it to himself to file a motion under the Hyde Amendment to recover his attorney fees and costs because of their pursuing this case against him. I cannot believe this was done in good faith. Citizens must have redress against the government when they are victims of prosecutorial abuse. I remember an old adage: you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride. Well, you should be able to beat the ride, especially when the government dragged you onto the train wreck against your will. It is time for Mr. Kuehne to go on the offensive. There should be a defense fund to raise money for him to fight back. I say damn the government, time to Lock and Load, at least within a legal context.

Weekend Sports Edition: The 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers

2009-11-22T17:34:00.000-08:00

There have been many powerhouse pennant winners whose roster was akin to the American military's performance in both Iraq wars, at least the military part of it. That is, shock and awe them with overwhelming power. The Yankee teams of the 20's, 50's, early 60's and late 90's come to mind as well as the Reds teams of 75 and 76. An honorable mention goes to the Oriole teams of 69 through 71. But what has fascinates me more is the teams who win pennants and amass impressive records on the back of one player while the rest of team is mediocre at best. The 1966 Dodgers are a perfect example of the latter. They scored 606 runs that year, 8th in the league. Their lineup was anemic. Their best hitter was third baseman Jim Lefebvre. He hit 24 home runs and batted .274. Tommie Davis was platooned in the outfield. He hit .313 with 3 home runs. The pitching was good but consider: Don Drysdale was 13-16. Claude Osteen was 17-14. Don Sutton was 12-12. They had one great reliever, Phil Regan, who went 14-1 with a 1.62 ERA. They won 95 games. How did they accomplish this feat with such a lackluster roster? Everyone over 50 knows the answer: Sandy Koufax. He won 27 games, lost 9, with an ERA of 1.73, struck out 317 batters and completed 27 games. The Dodgers that year finished 1.5 games ahead of the second place Giants. Although Koufax won the Cy Young that year, he was not the MVP. That went to Roberto Clemente. I can think of no modern day pennant winner that can owe its accomplishment more to one player than the 66 Dodgers can to Koufax. A caveat. The Dodgers lost the World Series that year to the Orioles in 4 games. They scored 2 runs in the series. Koufax pitched game two against Jim Palmer and lost 6-0, due mainly to three errors by Willie Davis, an otherwise great fielder. It was the last game Koufax ever pitched. His arm gave out. His run from 1963 through 1966 is still the most dominant ever by a pitcher. I will never forget a Casey Stengel quote after the 1963 series where the Dodgers beat the Yankees 4-0. Koufax went 25-5 that year. The former Yankee manager said that he had no problem understanding how Koufax won 25 games. What he could not figure out for the life of him was how he ever lost 5!

Can The Government Force You To Buy A New Car? (More Important, is America Finished?)

2009-11-22T06:19:00.000-08:00

There has been much written in the blogosphere about whether there is any constitutional authority for the federal government to force its citizens to purchase a policy of health insurance. As one who is afraid of government gaining increasing power over people's lives, I do not think it is. But let us assume that that it is constitutionally permissible. What next? If the government really wants to save the auto industry, why not pass a law that requires every American to purchase a new American made vehicle in the next 6 months? If you do not make the purchase, you will be taxed the fair market value of a standard 4 door sedan. If you don't pay that, it's off to the hoosegow for you. Ditto for the housing market. Too many unemployed carpenters and tile installers? Pass a law requiring every American to put an addition on his house. The coup de grace in this scenario might be the ultimate test of the political power of the NRA. Worried about the police not being around when you get mugged or your house gets broken into? That's right. Instead of running to your phone and dialing up 911, just put your hand in your pants and pull out that government sanctioned 357 magnum and start firing away (and hope it is not your dog just wanting to come back in the house). Now the government can force you to purchase automobile insurance as a condition of driving a car, which you are free not to do. But can they force you to purchase something as a condition of citizenship? If the answer is yes, we are well on our way to an Orwellian society. For if the government has authority over your health, they have control over your life. If the government is going to pay for your diabetes or heart attack, you can bet your bottom dollar they will soon be telling you how much wine you can drink, whether or not to smoke cigars, and what kind of vegetables you need to eat. Putting this in historical perspective, I read the following ditty every week. It is as predictable as the laws of physics. Alexander Tyler made the following observation in 1787:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
I believe the US is in stage 7. It will take about 50 years to get to stage 8. But like a rock falling from a building, nothing can stop the trajectory. That is unfortunate. Not for us, bur for many of our children and all of our grandchildren.

Don't Bank On It

2009-11-21T04:11:00.000-08:00

Bill Scherer has fired the first shot in what promises to be a protracted legal war. But like many in war who unload the opening salvo, the satisfaction may be temporary and fleeting, especially when strategies were formulated without sufficient information at hand. Initial aggression is more often a result of desperation than of likelihood of success. I have not read Scherer's complaint against TD Bank. However, and only as an observation without knowing the particulars, aren't these investors a bit brazen? It has been many years since I was in law school but I do remember being taught about contributory negligence and assumption of risk. And before law school, I remember in 1969 my father told me I was the stupidest person in town for giving a man at the country club $5.00 from my caddy earnings so he could bet it at the track. My dad told me I deserved to lose the money for being such a dumb ass. In honor of my father, I will call Scherer's clients DADS as in Dumb Ass Dudes. Bascially, the DADS invested money in a scheme that any rational person would have seen as a joke. Having now lost their money, they seek to blame the bank where Rothstein deposited their money. Without having to quote Willie Sutton, the motive for this ploy is obvious. If I were TD Bank, I would sit back and let the dust settle. Find out the names of as many investors as you can who refused Rothstein's overtures, take their depositions, and lay out for the public to see the absurdity of the propositions he made and how a prudent person acted. In fact put the DADS in the spotlight and focus on their stupidity. I have a gut feeling they will have no jury sympathy. None. And I have another gut feeling that the bank did nothing wrong. It just doesn't seem logical that a bank like TD would allow itself to get roped into this. Stay tuned.

Weekend Sports Edition: Is Don Shula Overrated?

2009-11-14T06:28:00.000-08:00

Don Shula is a famous coach. He holds the all time record for most wins by a head coach. Longevity has its rewards, especially if you can string together 30+ years of nine and ten win seasons. He won two Super Bowls with the Dolphins. But let us take a look at his other not so notable acchievements:
1. 1964. Shula's Colts finished 12-2 and played the Cleveland Browns in Cleveland for the NFL Championship. The Colts were favored. They lost 27-0.
2. 1965. The Colts and Packers ended the season tied for the Western Division lead. The Packers beat the Colts twice in the regular season. The league rules did not recognize tie breakers, etc. so a playoff was necessary. The Packers won 13-10 in overtime. The Colts led 10-0 at halftime, Tom Matte had to play quarterback in place of an injured Unitas. Zeke Bratkowski played in place of Bart Starr. Without Unitas, the Colts should have been blown out.
3. 1967. The Colts go into the final game of the season against the Rams with an 11-0-2 record. They lose 34-10 and miss the playoffs.
3. 1969. Super Bowl. Shula's Colts were an 18 point favorite against the Jets. They lost 16-7 in a game as boring as it was significant.
4. 1972. Super Bowl. The Cowboys beat the Dolphins 27-3. The Dolphins never had a chance or should they have.
5. 1983. Super Bowl. The Dolphins lose to the Redskins 27-17.
6. 1985. Super Bowl. The Dolphins lose to the 49ers 38-16.
Shula's Dolphins also lost two AFC championship games, each to the Patriots and to the Bills. Shula's championship game record is 2-5, in addition to losing some important games that could have gotten his team to the Super Bowl. He is the only coach to ever have an undefeated season. That accomplishment has immunized him from future criticism of his record. I would rank him as one of better NFL coaches but certainly not the best.

The 1967 Baltimore Colts

2009-11-14T05:02:00.000-08:00

Last year the Arizona Cardinals almost won the Super Bowl. Their regular season record was 9-7. Many thought it was a reflection of the warped playoff system that can catapult a mediocre team into the championship game. But what about the flip side? Have great teams been denied an opportunity to participate in the playoffs? The answer is yes. Forgotten in the annals of football anomalies are the 1967 Baltimore Colts. First some background. The NFL had four divisions: the Capital, Coastal, Century, and Central. Dallas (9-5) won the Capital, Cleveland (9-5) won the Century, Green Bay (9-4-1) won the Central. The real excitement was in the Coastal. The Colts amassed a record of 11-0-2 going into the final game against the Rams in Los Angeles who were 10-1-2. They played to a tie earlier in the season in Baltimore. Each had beaten the champion Packers in the regular season. The Rams had a very strong defense led by its Fearsome Foursome. Roman Gabriel was the quarterback. He had two excellent receivers: Bernie Casey (later a bit Hollywood actor) and Jack Snow. The Colts had Johnny Unitas who enjoyed his best season ever. He was the league's MVP that year. Don Shula coached the Colts. The Rams won, 34-10. They also won the division. The Colts finished 11-1-2, one of the best regular season records ever in the NFL. But they did not make the playoffs. The Packers beat the Rams in the first round of the playoffs, beat the Cowboys in one of the most memorable NFL games ever, and then trounced the Raiders in the second Super Bowl. It was Green Bay's last hurrah. The next season the Colts finished 13-1 but lost to the Jets in the Super Bowl III.
I remember the season well and always thought it was strange that a team could not make the playoffs despite only losing one game all year.
Next Up: Don Shula. Was he overrated?

Show Time

2009-11-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

Lawyers are by and large frustrated actors so let's get it out in the open. What movie best portrays the Rothstein scandal? I nominate Nightmare Alley with Tyrone Power and Nancy Walker. Rothstein is no Tyrone Power in the looks department but the movie has a certain similarity that is eerie if not on such a grand scale. Power plays a charlatan fortune teller who specializes in deceiving wealthy people into turning over their money to him.
Never having met Rothstein, I was perplexed. He reminded me of someone or something I have known for years and I could not put my finger on it until tonight only after a good cigar and one too many glasses of high quality scotch. He is the ultimate heel in the good old days of professional wrestling in the 70's and early 80's. He is a comical caricature of a stereotype. Think of him as a cross between the Grand Wizard of Wrestling, Rick Flair, and Gorgeous George. His wife is the equivalent of Miss Elizabeth, Macho Man Randy Savage's ringside paramour.
As for his wife, there was much talk on the blogs today that she has hired a lawyer. So what. If she is not the bimbo that everyone thinks, she needs to hire a PR firm, a Hollywood agent, and a good screenwriter. She has a story to tell and there are people out there who will pay big bucks to hear it all. The sooner it gets out the better for her. And admit it fellow attorneys, you will be glued to your TV sets

" A Good Lawyer Knows The Law. A Great Lawyer Knows The Judge."

2009-11-09T18:46:00.001-08:00

Of all the publicity generated in the past week on the Rothstein matter, I am surprised and disappointed that the above quotation prominently displayed in Rothstein's office (or "inner sanctum" as his one time partners call it) has not caused an outrage in the legal community. I am about as cynical as they come and have no illusions about favoritism in any courthouse. But to advertise the role of a lawyer in such a corrupt manner is, by itself, reason for discipline by the Florida Bar. Think about it. If you are a regular attorney in this town, you probably work long hours, do your work diligently, argue your case as best you can, win some, lose some, but in the end, and despite being frustrated every day by events beyond your control, including judges who seem to have it in for you, you realize that, all other things being equal, you get a fair hearing most of the time. Now comes this schmuck who tells clients that the mark of a good lawyer is his ability to corruptly influence the judge! Imagine some client coming to your office from out of the country who as an important litigation matter to retain you on, and the first thing he sees is a framed picture of the above quote. What is he to think? And how does that reflect on the judiciary? Not good. I look at the quote as akin to amending the Ten Commandments to delete "Thou Shall Not Steal" and replace it with "If Thou Shall Steal, Make Damn Sure You Don't Get Caught."

Stuart Rosenfeldt: The Beginning Of The End?

2009-11-08T04:11:00.000-08:00

I do not know Stuart Rosenfeldt. He is probably a fine attorney and I hope he survives this tsunami of a crisis in his professional life. However, I cannot help but be skeptical of his public pronouncements about his ignorance of his partner's crimes or what appears to be thievery on a monumental scale. To paraphrase Shakespeare, perhaps Mr. Rosenfeldt doth protest too much. Let us look at what is known or at least a set of facts that are highly likely to be true:
1. Rothstein and Rosenfeldt met some 8 to 10 years ago when each was an attorney no different from other attorneys in South Florida. That is, they led an American middle class lifestyle with all of the accoutrements that such a status brings with it. Life was good but you worried every night about paying bills and sending your kids to college. And if one of your kids needed braces or the a/c broke in your house, you felt the pain when you wrote the check. I read in the Herald this morning that Rothstein had modest assets when he was divorced ten years ago. They worked together at Dennis Eisenger's firm in Hollywood. That firm is known for its expertise in condominium law. Eisenger is a fine lawyer and the lawyers there work hard and represent clients well.
2. The two future partners decide to form their own firm, specializing in labor and employment law. For a fledgling firm, this practice means representing plaintiffs in federal wage and hour disputes, ADA cases, age/sex/race discrimination matters, and generic employment type disputes. I doubt they represented large companies who are often the target of such suits. These entities use the mega firms that handle their other business or have insurance companies represent them through one of the large insurance defense firms in town. Again, their situation is no different than any other small firm starting a new practice. You start small and build your way up by developing a client base and serving it well.
3. According to Rosenfeldt, he was a 50% partner in the firm. Rothstein handled all of the financial issues and he, presumably, handled the legal matters.
4. The firm grew from 7 lawyers to over 70 in about six years. The firm went from an average small shop to one where the name partner became a celebrity mover and shaker, political contributor, philanthropist, and a veritable Jay Gatsby about town almost overnight. He hired ex judges, ex cons, and posted the kind of security around his office that is normally reserved for heads of state or mafia dons. He purchased five or six properties in Florida, one in Rhode Island, and one in NY. He amassed a collection of luxury cars that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each. His lifestyle was not only ostentatious but he went out of his way to make sure everyone in town knew he was living that way. Which is fine so long as it is your money. If your name is Warren Buffett or George Soros or Rush Limbaugh or Bill Gates, you can live this way. Everyone knows you earned it the old fashioned way: hard work and luck.
5. In order for Rosenfeldt and other partners to believe that Rothstein's lifestyle was financed legitimately, they had to assume that the firm was generating sufficient revenue to support it. Accepting Rosenfeldt's statement that he was ignorant of the firm's finances, the bigger question is what was he not ignorant of? Presumably, the firm generated revenue from its legal practice. Rosenfeldt, as 50% partner, must have had intimate knowledge of all of the pending lawsuits the firm was handling and how much money each file was generating in fees. But let us delve into this a little deeper. If you are a lawyer reading this post, put yourself in Rosenfeldt's position. You are presumably drawing a salary. You work every day on client matters. You bill for your time. You know how much money you are generating for the firm. You also have a pretty good idea about what everyone else is doing. The firm must have had some type of internal review process where litigation matters and the like were settled. Rosenfeldt had to have been privy to this procedure. He cannot claim to be an associate who was called a partner, i.e., a mere employee who collected a paycheck, billed his hours, and kept to himself. He was at the firm from its inception. He knew Rothstein was no jet setter when they started the practice and he had to have known the firm's caseload and billable hours that were coming in every month. From what I have read, Rothstein was no legal genius or even a rainmaker type who had a large book of business to support a staff of 70 lawyers. With this as a backdrop, it is simply inconceivable that Rosenfeldt could look around him for the past few years and not think something was seriously amiss. If you are an attorney, how would you react if the following happened at the firm you worked? Consider:
a. Your 50/50 partner is living like a king and you are not;
b. his lifestyle is 1000 times beyond what the firm's caseload and client base could possibly support;
c. your 50/50 partner holes himself in his office in a fortress like environment; and
d. when you try to question him about the firm's finances, he brushes you off like you are a junior associate.
99% of lawyers I know would resign. It would be intriguing to know what Rosenfeldt's draw was at the firm. If he made more money than he was bringing in or even billing for, he had to have wondered why he was being rewarded so generously. Most partners at law firms know what type of business the other partners have and if they pull their weight or not. And what about his wife? You had better believe that if he was not making good money, his wife would be nagging him like white on rice. Imagine seeing the opulence thrown in your face, and knowing your husband is this man's 50/50 partner, and you "only" have one house and two cars and are wondering what you will do in retirement. I am sure she thought to herself and mentioned to him something to the effect that “hey, what is wrong here. Your partner spends a million dollars like we do dimes. Where is your share?” Rest assured, he did not tell his wife that he was ignorant of Rothstein's shenanigans. The more likely scenario was "honey, as long as the money is rolling in and we are doing way better than we would do otherwise, I am not going to say anything. If the shit hits the fan, I can claim I did not know anything. So please be quiet." And didn't the other partners talk to one another about their cases or clients? One would think they shared small talk about the giant elephant in the room: “Hey, how can it be that we have clients that justify $X amount a year in salaries and the senior partner is living as if we do 1000 times that?” Even if all of the clients went to Rothstein and he farmed the work to the other attorneys, one could easily do the math and figure out that 70 attorneys billing 100 hours a week would not put a dent in his monthly budget. This analysis is based on reasonable inferences drawn from facts that are probably true. Rothstein may very well confirm what Rosenfeldt has stated publicly but I doubt it.
The Daily Business Review and some blogs reported this week that attorney Craig Raymond at Broad & Cassel has a client who says that Rosenfeldt was present at a meeting in Rothstein's office where structured settlements were discussed. Rosenfeldt denies it. It is highly unlikely a potential investor would make this up. I wonder what Rothstein will say about this meeting? I am sure he will be asked about it. If it happened, Rosenfeldt's defense crumbles. In the next few weeks, many more witnesses will come forward with evidence. A lot is going to be learned about who knew what. Any public statements that Rosenfeldt has made that are not true and are seen as an attempt to separate him from Rothstein will only further embolden Rothstein to cooperate with the government. There is nothing that gets a suspect to rat out his friends than watching them lie about what they know and shifting the blame onto others.
I find Kendall Coffey's strategy brilliant as a short-term stopgap measure to save the firm but counter productive in the long run as far as Rosenfeldt's personal liability is concerned. Rosenfeldt's public posturing and statements will come back to haunt him. Watching Kendall on video giving a public tour of Rothstein's office made me think that it could have been a dress rehearsal for some Florida Bar attorney arguing that Rosenfeldt should be disciplined for negligently allowing himself to be part of this crime even if he did not know the details. Kendall went out of his way to separate Rothstein's office and persona from the actual practice of law that went on in the rest of the offices. Nice try and it sounded convincing for a week. But it will not withstand scrutiny. If the trappings of the office were foreign to the day-to-day operations of a normal law firm, why did the partners tolerate it? Judge Streitfeld made a comment at one of the initial court hearings where he was skeptical of Rosenfeldt's claims of ignorance. In a few weeks from now, when more information becomes known, Rosenfeldt's expensive legal strategy will come back to bite him hard.
Stay tuned.

Rothstein: The End of the Beginning

2009-11-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

It has been one week since the Scott Rothstein fiasco became public. The dust has settled only in that the daily revelations have slowed to a point where the people most affected by this travesty have finally digested the story and stopped making it the centerpiece of their interactions with their colleagues. But the case now moves from shock and awe to a serious analysis of what happened and why and, more important, who is to be held liable for it, criminally and civilly. Here are the areas to keep a close eye on:
1. Scott Rothstein. He will plead guilty and go to prison for a long time. The only question is whom is he taking down with him. Everyone assumes he is ratting out his friends. Don't bet on it. At least not yet. Before he even begins to be seriously debriefed, the FBI and US Attorney need to accumulate evidence against him. The fact that he wants to cooperate and has thrown himself into protective custody means nothing. Remember, the feds were tipped off only ten days ago. This case is the reverse of most investigations: the grunt work is completed before people start to flip; here you have a big target who comes to the government before they have any solid evidence that he has done anything wrong. They must first examine the evidence, talk to witnesses and victims, determine who is a target and who is a witness and the total amount of money stolen, and then once they have a handle on the scope of the fraud, get a proffer from Rothstein as to what he can offer the government that they do not already have. This process takes a long time. It will take the government a month to put their theory of the case together. During that time, Rothstein will spend his days and nights holed up somewhere drafting a proffer of what evidence he can give to the government that can implicate other people. Once he does, the government will take another month to verify the accuracy of what he is saying and if it is worth anything even if it is true. Then Rothstein will negotiate a plea, which will take a week. He will then go to court, plead guilty, and be sentenced. I may be wrong, but I doubt very much that the government will allow him to plead to anything unless they are certain they know exactly what he did. Otherwise, they run the terrible risk and huge embarrassment of cutting a deal with him now only to find out three months from now that he committed more crimes than he initially let on.
2. Charlie Crist. His political career is doomed. The pictures in Rothstein's office are devastating. While politicians always take photos with anyone who will pose and take money from just about anyone who will write a check, Crist took it a step further and made his friendship with Rothstein a very public fact. He faces a serious primary challenge from Marco Rubio and the moderates who would otherwise support him will not. Assuming he beats Rubio (I do not think he will), he must run in the general election. Any opponent will run those photos of him blowing out the birthday cake with Rothstein until the public can't tell the difference between them.
3. Broward Politicians. A wash. I hate to say it but the bar here is so low that it will take something much bigger than accepting tainted money and kissing a crook's ass to upset the public. Local races are almost immune to charges of cronyism. Let's face it. Broward County's political culture is so incestuous that Rothstein is just water off a duck's back.
4. The victims. Unlike Madoff's victims, they will get no sympathy. And deserve even less. Give Rothstein credit for not looting the pensions of widows and retirees. At this point, it appears he snagged the rich and famous who can afford to lose the money they did. And they were stupid to believe his pitch.
Well, that's it for tonight. Tomorrow, I will tackle a much more difficult topic. Stuart Rosenfeldt and the other attorneys who worked at the firm. I believe they all face serious civil liability and some possibly criminal liability as well as bar grievances. Stay tuned.