January 30, 2023

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK????

Now I’m glad we beat their asses into the ground

Turns out this is a fake meme. I’m removing the photo because although I’m an Eagle fan, I’m also moral. Well…sometimes.

I’m still glad we beat their asses….

January 30, 2023

I want to talk about the media today, in light of this weekend's NFL championship games.

I will begin by offering this disclaimer: I am a diehard, lifelong Philadelphia Eagles fan who “bleeds Eagles Green”. That being said, I am also of necessity a realist and know what is going on when I watch an individual or a team play. I have watched pro football since 1958 and have extensively studied it, read up on it, and I’m familiar with the history and complexity of the sport. I have watched it on television essentially all my life, and have watched the evolution of coverage from virtually nonexistent in the early 1960s to what it is today, possibly the biggest single thing in sports or entertainment.

For both personal and academic reasons, I watched six hours of Pregame coverage on the NFL channel and several hours on ESPN and local stations for the coverage after the Kansas City game. I did this for a reason which transcends football.

In the pregame shows, I watched the Network profile three of the four teams extensively as well as certain personnel associated with those teams . My Eagles were largely ignored while all this was going on. The profile of what was the third string quarterback for San Francisco 49ers made him out to be the second coming of Tom Brady, who was called into action himself, when the starting quarterback went down for an injury all those years ago. The quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals was said to be the best quarterback in the league presently, and in a class with Staubach, Montana, and a few other remarkable players who are by all accounts regarded to be at the pinnacle of the history of the sport. The glowing reports of these individuals’ talents were transcendental, and if my team were mentioned, it was generally in passing. if you were really paying attention, you would think that the San Francisco team happened to be playing in Philadelphia Pennsylvania against… Someone who will be unmentioned. They went to far as to have three panelists sitting in front of the stadium in Philly, all three originally born in the Delaware Valley including one Hall of Fame quarterback, and virtually no mentions made of the home team while everything else under the sun was discussed.

Now I don’t know much about much, but I do know relative talent of a football team, and for two weeks in a row I have said that the Eagles were vastly superior to both the teams which they played, and the games probably wouldn’t even be close. In fact, the Eagles set a record for being the first team to score more than 30 points, while holding both teams to fewer than 10. Now, yes, I know that the Niners were playing with their third, then fourth, then fifth string quarterbacks, I understand that, but I don’t remember anybody dissing Seattle’s team when the Eagles were playing them in the playoffs, and our quarterback was injured and the no-name gentleman filled in for the rest of the game. Every team has injuries, and it is very much a part of the game. I will say that after the Eagles destroyed their opponent, the vast number of contributors on sports networks gave them their due.

Now, why am I talking about this? Because sports are covered, teams are covered, individuals are covered, exactly the way political candidates and parties are covered. The media decides in advance who they’re going to promote, and that person is the subject of the vast amount of discussion and conversation Plus the imminent red wave, which never occurred much like the immune pounding which the Eagles were going to take from the Giants last week and the 49ers this week, who were “clearly“ better teams. Unfortunately, for these commentators, the Eagles and the Democrats forgot to lose which they were supposed to. That just messes up the whole discussion of everything. The only thing missing from Yesterdays lineup on the pregame shows was Jonathan Lemire and Chuck Todd discussing “conventional wisdom”, and what has happened before in the past and previously and before as though it were a near-certain predictor of future events.

I love watching people eat crow, and very much look forward to the game in between Kansas City and Philadelphia. Two weeks hence. They are both excellent, clutch teams and the final score may well be be close. Then again…maybe not.

January 29, 2023

Eagles gonna take care of business...

🦅

January 29, 2023

Many years ago I had dinner with Ambassador Joseph Wilson,

An event which I chronicled here in detail. This was during the height of his fame in the weapons of mass destruction scandal that should have rocked the Bush II administration.


The line I remembered from dinner was when I asked him how come Republicans lie about everything, no matter how trivial his reply was, “They lie about things like that just to keep in shape.“

Obviously, nothing has changed since those days and in fact, it’s gotten worse. This whole business with this guy who is supposedly named George Santos reminds me of one of my greatest objections in the early days to Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Their pronouncements in and of themselves were so ridiculous that the vast number of people did not pay all that much attention in the early going. However, what they did is move the line of acceptability so far to the right that you would look at somebody who was what we used to call radical right and say, “Well they’re not as bad as Limbaugh so they’re sort of OK.“

That’s what has now happened with Santos, who actually lies from a percentage standpoint more than TFG, which I didn’t believe would be possible. He has set the boundaries with such a subterranean depth that you would need a drilling rig to find them.

January 28, 2023

Another PCIntern true story!!

Please allow me to preface this by saying that I am not so creative that I could possibly make this stuff up. The only reason I have this many stories is that I have dealt with thousands and thousands of people over the years on a very intimate basis and stuff just happens.

In the mid-1980s I was practicing in my original office which was down the hall from another dentist who had purchased a practice from an older gentleman who had treated many of the theater crowd, including performers, directors, support staff and even some of the wealthy and connected producers here in Philadelphia as well as a number of politicians, both city and state. Philadelphia used to be a great center for theater, wherein major shows were tried out and refined before they opened on Broadway. The idiotic Philadelphia media at the time however nixed so many shows by giving them bad reviews that went on to become hits that they stopped doing the preliminaries here and focused more on New Haven, Connecticut before they quit the practice nearly entirely.

The men’s room on our floor was 1920s vintage, and it doubled as access to the electrical system for the floor. One morning, I walked into the bathroom for the usual reason and standing in front of me, trying the locked door knob repeatedly, was former Pennsylvania governor, Milton Shapp. Governor Shapp had been the CEO of a company called Jerrold Electronics which I believe still holds patents for cable boxes used throughout the world. He was the first Jewish governor elected in the Commonwealth and was a somewhat progressive Democrat. Anyway, so I’m standing there and governor Shapp is trying to leave the bathroom via this locked door. I immediately said, “Governor, would you like me to take you back to the dental office?” Now I knew that’s where he had come from because we were the only two practitioners on the floor of any type. So he very gently and quietly said, “If you would be so kind.“

I walked him down to the other office and opened the door, and sitting in the waiting room was a woman dressed in a nurse’s outfit sitting next to a walker. I said to her “I presume the Governor belongs to you. And she looked up from her magazine and said, “Oh, yes. Thank you.“

I rolled my eyes figuratively to myself and walked back to my office, thinking that so many Pennsylvania politicians had surrendered to one form of dementia or another, including former Republican Senator Hugh Scott, who was the minority leader in the Senate for many years, and very powerful in Pennsylvania, and was one of the three senators who informed President Nixon, that he would have to resign. I was very saddened by this turn of events, because I had no idea that this had happened to him since he had been out of the news for years.

But, as usual with my stories , this preamble to the story has nothing to do with the real narrative. This dentist who worked down the hall was born in one of the eastern bloc countries, and had immigrated to the United States as a young adult, telling some dentists whom he meant on the beach, (I believe at the Jersey shore), that he had been a member of the Czechoslovakian Olympic water polo team and had fled to the United States for political asylum. These dentists happened to be at the time extremely politically powerful and paved the way for his immigration and citizenship in the minimum amount of time required.

Now, this fellow was extremely athletic and good looking, and I’m not going to get into the other aspects of his activities, because quite frankly in this day and age, that’s nobody’s business. What I discovered working down the hall from him however was that he was an utter and complete sociopathic liar. He lied about almost everything, and the upshot to his career was that he was substituting for a dentist out on the main line, convinced a woman that she needed a dental reconstruction and that she should pay him $10,000 in cash which he would be happy to have collected at her home, did so, and then vanished into thin air. Eventually, there was a federal warrant out for his arrest, and he fled the country to Europe. I understand he is still there doing “business“.

And then, almost unbelievably it turned out that he had never ever been on any water polo team of any type, let alone an Olympic team, and he had lied about absolutely everything concerning his background. Everything. He was also one of those seducers who would literally charm the pants off women and some men, including but not limited to his own dental staff and a number of his patients. (And yes, I’m well aware of those implications)

He would tell stories and lie the way a certain congressman from New York has done so. Everything was elaborate and intriguing but believable enough that it could be true and yet somehow stretch the bounds of reality. People sensed this and knew this, but he functioned in his capacity for over 30 years, doing this repeatedly, with no retribution, until he finally crossed the line with the wrong person. it is unbelievable what the society will tolerate and just shrug its shoulders. It is, therefore no surprise to me that this asshole from New York, this narcissistic sociopathic malignantly lying son of a bitch is just propped up, and we have to basically Al Capone him by going only after the money fraud, as opposed to all the other frauds, which he has perpetrated and are fundamentally antithetical to a society founded upon reason.

They’re everywhere….you can’t get away. Between the prevaricating sociopaths and the cops who will beat you to death for absolutely no reason, and everything else that’s FUBAR’d, we are sinking fast into oblivion . Unfortunately, I believe that we, as a society, have crossed the Rubicon.

January 28, 2023

Nauseating and beyond horrifying.

And you know what else besides sadistic, atavistic human-animal hate, murderous viciousness?

Sheer incompetence.

These lame-ass out of shape bastards must have watched the film Mulholland Falls and saw themselves as a version of The Hat Squad.

Speedy trial and fifty-year sentences. No parole before 48 years.

Don’t throw away the key: Mount a facsimile above the door in each cell.

January 27, 2023

This is kind of a BFD...

https://www.inquirer.com/news/medicaid-fraud-dentists-bhaskar-savani-biranjan-savani-montco-pennsylvania-federal-indictment-20230125.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=ios&utm_campaign=app_ios_article_share&utm_content=PWGJSJA6ZJDZVGR72M6E5TVOKI



There is a ton of healthcare fraud going on, and what is interesting about this is that it involves hundreds of millions of dollars of dental fraud involving a conspiracy of individuals who own 50 offices in often underserved areas, and thus the theft of Medicaid moneys.

One of my father’s jobs was as an auditor for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 38 years, and the one thing he told me never ever ever to do w was to steal public funds. Of course, he never wanted to steal anything, but he said there is nothing so stupid and dangerous as to steal public money. The reason for this he would say, is that they will go after you with hammer and tongs, and will not stop until you are able to be found guilty and put away.

The story is actually even more complex than the article lets on, and there could be some big trouble for other people ahead, but until that happens, as far as I’m concerned, mum’s the word .

January 26, 2023

Please, Jonathan Lemire, and Willie Geist, allow me to explain to you why

you should never be shocked by anything that ever happens in this country.

We have I believe close to 340 million people living in this nation. In this era of billions and trillions the concept of a relatively “low” number like 340 million is not fully understood.It is in fact, a vast sea of people with every possible combination, genetic make up, mental capabilities and incapabilities, physical appearance, emotional disturbance, and everything and anything else that can possibly fit into the pool.

Thus, it is not shocking that a six-year-old would bring a gun to school . What might be shocking is that it doesn’t happen more often that we know of, and the fact that this Junior miscreant shot his teacher is horrifying, but in a world filled with random behaviors, almost expected at some point in the huge bell curve of behaviors. What is hard to believe is the story that no fewer than four reports of this child possessing this firearm were entertained by the administration, and a police officer was not called, the school was not locked down, the child was not searched along with his backpack and his desk, and all the other protocols which should be associated with the presence of a weapon in a school building.

It is the sheer idiocy of the administrators, and believe me, I have known many who rival this cadre of morons, who, for whatever reason did not do “the right thing“. But shock? Absolutely not… The level of utter disregard for common sense, for convention, for morality is low to nonexistent in a fair percentage of the population. The whole thing is a disgrace, and quite frankly if it were up to me, I would put some of these people in jail for disregarding a clear warning sign.

Now, let me tell you the reason why this upsets me enormously: when I was 14 I made the mistake in school of talking to this young lady who is a year ahead of me, but in my drama group , while we were getting ready to perform in a play. Her erstwhile psycho boyfriend saw me talking to her at length, and a day later, while walking on the campus was abducted, taken behind a wall, and I am not fabricating this or joking, placed the edge of a switchblade to my neck for no less than 10 minutes while screaming at me about how I was trying to steal his girlfriend and did I want to die. Of course, I was too afraid to report this, but it did get back to the faculty who did… absolutely nothing to this guy. The long and the short of it was that he and his equally insane brother eventually burned down their adoptive parents’ house, which contained countless valuable artworks, which had been collected over two or three generations. Rarely do I smile when I hear of someone’s death, but I did read that each of these boys, as older men, had died, and a wave of relief flooded through me because to tell you the truth, I was always afraid that this insane human being would think perhaps to look me up and kill me just because.

Anyone who thinks that this cannot happen is not paying attention. There is enough lunacy out there, starting with the very young and ending with the very old. I am tired of faux outrage and shock. This country, despite all the rosy pictures painted by the mass media, is filled with people who, if given a chance, would commit a capital crime if they thought they could get away with it. In this case, this kid who shot his teacher and threatened his classmate started young.

January 25, 2023

For your reading pleasure:

January 25, 2023

The Union League in Philly...Jesus.

https://nbcphiladelphia.app.link/K1w76v5rSwb

I have posted here in the past about this institution which dates back hundreds of years here. It was until very recently a bastion of white, Protestant, racist, Republican, rich men who control enormous portions of the business of the city. They worked hard to keep Jews, blacks, and other “riffraff“ out of city politics, commerce, and places of Importance. Somewhat recently however, they fell on hard times, and absorbed a center city institution , (which was known as the Jewish club) called the Locust Club and were “forced“ to take Jews in. Many members of the Locust club declined to join due to the virulent right wing political nature of the Union League.

They honored Ron DeSantis last night, and they have to my knowledge not promulgated any rationale for doing so other than the usual gibberish that you read on some certificate that the Podunk city council gives to any given individual. The leadership in the city was decidedly less than pleased with this occurrence, and it is just typical of this organization to not give a single shit what anyone else thinks.

To give you an idea of how insane this place is, and was, about 40 years ago, I was invited to an organizational formal dinner which was held there (as a +1), and when the maître d’ or whatever you wanted to call him, took one look at me he took my coat and would not let me proceed to the check room, but ushered me into the dining room and brought me my coat check. Actually, kind of tossed it to me. I was singularly chosen due to my beard, mustache, and general ethnic appearance to be “honored” in this fashion. Fuck them sideways.