Saturday Night Live dings Obama's halo.

As the weather gets chilly, the folks at SNL did too. They opened up last Saturday night with a long monologue by the guy who does Obama. It was low key but devastating. SNL presented him as a sort of President but President Lite. Well, President Obama, didn't have a good week. Lula da Silva Samba'd right over him, Oprah, Mayor Daly, Rahm Emanuel plus the Spaniards and the Japanese. Rio was the pick for the 2016 Olympics. Rio has the biggest stadium in the world already and knows how to throw a party. Lula is real hero when he and Brazil beat the Nips, the Yankees and the Spaniards in one big show. Hurray for Brazil, as it is called in the National Anthem, Terra Amada (beloved land).

Right now Lula is the senior President in this hemisphere, not that the Chicago Crew at the White House has noticed. I bet he had a lot of bruja's working and it cost him plenty to buy enough chickens and rum to lay the bad kharma spells on the other counties.

The White House no doubted didn't even realize that after the video taping of the brutal murder of the sixteen year old high school kid by a mob at a Chicago High School, the Windy City had about as much chance of getting the Olympic site as Baghdad or Detroit. He should have seen that one coming. Amazing. Dumb, mean really dumb.

Hey, but what do I know.

Johnny Cabral

PS: It is not that I am not a patriotic American, it's just that I'm Portuguese on my Mom's side of the family and I have a DNA bias toward Brazil where their presidents have last names like da Silva, Mello, Cardoza and Vargas and they look like me.

Live in New York, every dictator & villain

Well, this has been a great week for reality Television. Turns out the United Nations in New York has been running the best and zaniest show of all. What a cast! -- Can you believe it -- First of all we have President Barack Obama reprising his favorite role, the messiah spouting pious platitudes and feel good m really good intentions just dripping with high grade kumbaya and making apology after apology for all the evils his bastard of a country has committed again and again. Spare me Dude, like a Cook County Democratic office holder really is a saint. The worse thing for me is that he apparently believes this gushing load of good intentions and feel good aspirations. At the peak of his messianic pitch Obama talked about abolishing all atomic weapons. You’ve got to wonder if Barack looked around the UN at the parade of tyrants, criminals, crooks and patently crazy “world leaders.”

What a big wishful bit of dreaming and willful blindness. Right now the tragedy of our times is not a delay in getting rid of existing atomic bombs, it is keeping every piss ant little banana republic from getting its very own nuclear arsenal. It is clear Iran and North Korea have done it already and at least a dozen other nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Egypt and Dubai are serious about it. This week a Brazilian cabinet member seriously suggested Brazil nuke up. So far only two nation who have had nuclear weapons have given them up: South Africa and the Ukraine. Three others have stopped their progress to nukes, Iraq and Syria because Israel bombed the hell out their facilities and Libya which threw in the towel before it’s facilities were bombed. We are facing a world where it is ever more likely that Egypt and Bolivia, Nigeria and Burma, Brazil and Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Honduras could be nuclear powers. Like Jackie Gleason used to say on his TV show fifty years ago, “You can be the first on your block to RULE THE WORLD.”

But it turns out President Obama was just the show’s up beat opening act. Follow the Bamster was a nearly two hour performance by Libya's ever popular dictator for life, Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi. Peace be upon him. Now this guy was socko, I mean he was everything you could want in a dictator from from a fly blown hot dusty Islmanic third world country. He talked, then he shuffled his notes and hitched up his flowing cloak and then he talked and talked then talked some more. He tossed around booklets of the UN charter and the Security Council rule book.

Gaddafi has rambling episodic style, his performance was not classical oratory building slowly to a grand summation. Naw, Muammar rambled and wandered, he returned to the topic and segued away to something new then segued to an unexpected insult or demand. He went on and on, causing at least one of the UN’s staff translators to have a total breakdown -- normally at the UN the translators have a printed text of the speech to prep for translation ahead of time. No such luck, the guy talked and talked and not in the formal rolling cadences of cultivated classical Arabic, but in his unique Sahara dialect mixing in back county idioms and obscenities and sometimes utterly incomprehensible talk. What a show and just think beside his Earol Flynn costume picture outfit and glazed eyes, he also came to New York with his own tent. Sound track, “I am the Sheik of Araby.”

Now of course we had other mad dog horror film freaks at the United Nations high marble rostrum, leading the pack of villains was Iran’s ever popular President and election fixer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or AJ as they call him in New York tabloid headlines. While Gaddafi is an old style Arab strongman complete with flowing robes, AJ from Tehran is a modern urban rat face tool of Satan. He dresses like somebody in an almost cool ‘80’s working class dance hall kind of way. His rodent shaped face is always insincere and his eyes glow in the dark like the flaming eyes of a heathen idol in an Indiana Jones movie. You just know in the words of Randy Newman’s great song, AJ can not wait to “drop the big one.”

Then of course we have supporting characters including the Cholo in a red beret, the great hombre himself Hugo Chavez. He is the clown version of the traditional “my people love me” Latino strong man. For some unfathomable reason all the hip Hollywood “progressives” are now hobnobbing with Hugo. I will grant Fidel Castro some gravitas and a real histrionic swagger. But Hugo Chavez is a garden variety caudillo in the long and sleazy tradition of Latin American tyranny and megalomania. What in hell has got into Sean Penn and Oliver Stone among many others to get taken in by a central casting Latino Dictator? I just don’t see how he looks good in their eyes. Even serious left-wingers in Latin America are repulsed by Chavez and his macho postures and barely literate drivel and constant vulgarity.

In a recent interview, Chavez talked about how that world class gavacho intellectual Noam Chomsky had visited Venezuela and proclaimed it great and true democracy. Well, dude, if Noam Chomsky says you are the cat’s whiskers, you must be. Good old Noam is a guy who has spent his life telling us that day is night, black is white, lies are true, and down is really up. Only Noam could look at Hugo Chavez and see a great democratic leader, a banana republic Jefferson or Mandella. The rest of the world sees him as a cochino faced clown doing a world class job as the lord of misrule. At least we know sooner or later the oil money will run out and Hugo will end up hanged by his heels when his long suffering peons rise up and end the comedy. By the way Hugo announced he is opening a “peace base” in Cuba to help the poor Cubanos in case the gringos invade. And just think I didn't make any of this up.

It is only once a year that heads of government beeline it to Manhattan for the United Nation’s annual “open mike” week. What a great show. The only favorite world figure missing was North Korea’s beloved leader Kim.

Noriega's Basque Cafe in Bakersfield

Saturday night five of us drove up to Bakersfield for dinner at Noriega’s Hotel. It has been there, near the Union Pacific (formerly Southern Pacific) Station, since 1893. A time warp, it is pretty much like it was and has an authentic feel few places have.

You walk into an old simple brick building into a large bar with the dining room behind it. Unlike the three or four other Basque places in Bakersfield, Noriega’s is very much a traditional place. There are three very long tables with stout “jury room” chairs for about 200 people. Dinner is served in one sitting at seven or a little after with one meal for all hands. Parties are seated up and down the tables more or less in the order they checked in. On this Saturday night, the patrons included half a dozen birthday groups and a dozen of middle aged middle class motorcycle weekend warriors who had rolled up from Ventura County.

The food is basque style home cooking, cooking as it was in my grandmother’s day. It is good, but not serious four star basque cooking. If you want to eat that I recommend the Orozko Dinning Room at the Nugget Hotel Casino in Sparks Nevada. The family that owns the hotel serves beef, lamb and chickens from their ranch and a fine selection of wines from Navarra.

At Noriega’s it is a homey but very good and authentic meal. When you enter the room and are seated the smell is like a country farm house kitchen fifty years ago. It smelled like my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon with a mix of American and Portuguese dishes cooking. The Basques are generally recognized as the best cooks in Iberia and while not the same, their cooking is close to Portuguese and regional Spanish styles. But it has its unique qualities and a heavy influence from the French side of the Pyrenees.

Waiting on the table is a large salad bowl dressed with a blue cheese based variation on Caesar dressing. A large steaming tureen of cabbage and vegetable soup is seasoned to the point and very much homemade. Around it are a large platter of tongue slices in a clean white wine vinaigrette, a bowl of stewed pinto beans, a large basket of sliced french bread, butter, a bowl of herbed seasoned cottage cheese, a plate of homemade American potato salad and a bowl of red tomato and pepper basque salsa picante. It is just this side of very hot. The salsa is added to the soup or pinto beans to bring them to whatever level you prefer. Cuidado, it is muy picante.

The meal went on after the soup and first course were cleared away with a platter of spaghetti marinara that was as good as any I’ve ever had, heavily dusted with Parmesan cheese but with a clean fresh tomato taste. Then Broccoli florets in a white hollandaise and finally the oxtail stew. This was again very tasty like our grandmothers or great grandmothers would have made. It was in unthickened cooking juices and not heavy. Finally we go platters of very crispy fried chicken heavily sprinkled with sautéed garlic cloves and a platter of home style french fries. “We don’t have to worry about vampires,” was Mara’s comment. Oddly the pungent sweetness of the sautéed garlic on the chicken cut through any greasiness and made an interesting dish.

At dinner coffee is not put on the table, you have to ask for it. The bar has some interesting basque liqueurs if you want to try one. Les Fleurs des Pyrenees is very good as are some others. The cost was remarkable in this day and age. Dinner is $20 per person including bottles of a fruity "dago red." Children are charge one dollar per year up through age twelve. Reservations are recommended but not necessary if you arrive before six thirty. It is a wonderful simple and authentic meal if you are in Bakersfield or want to make a day trip. The main courses change each day in a regular sequence.

There are other Basque restaurants and the locals are very seriously split between Noriega's or the Woolgrowers Café as the best. Both have been around for a hundred years. Woolgrowers has a set piece dinner too, but offers a variety of main courses. The two times I've been there I would say the steaks and the lamb chops are first rate. A round of five Picon Punches, the traditional Basque aperitif at Noriega's bar was twenty bucks.

The Adventures of the Bamster and 9 fingered Rahm, #3.

The Snow Queen & The Dragon Lady

haunt his every sleeping and waking moment.

At the regular afternoon meeting, the Bamster and 9 Fingered Rahm fell into a somber mood, things had not been going as well as hoped and the press office was down to feeding the Bamster clips from ever loyal and adoring commentators like Rachel Maddow and Chris (my leg tingles) Matthews. Rahm had yelled at Press Secretary this morning over some very snippy remarks by Jon Stewart on the previous night’s Daily Show. “Find out what got into him, the rat, how come he’s turning on us.” “But Rahm, if the Bamster floats one his off the talking points non sequitur’s, Stewart can’t help himself.” “Yeah, I know it’s his shtik, but I still don’t like him making us look bad. I should have known he’d be trouble ever since that chop about Herself last Fall when he showed the old Miami pentioner looking at Michelle and saying ‘“Vat a touches.”’ She is still pissed about it.”

The Bamster sat forward in his great chair, head in his hands on the Presidential desk, “Rahm, did you hear, the Snow Queen, Sarah Palin herself, she was on Rachel Ray’s show this morning.”

“Don’t worry about it, just two air head broads what can they do?”

“But Rahm, they cooked, they made this Alaskan stuff.”

“Get a grip, man, so Caribou Barbie can make some kind of goyish Lox, big F****ing deal!!” Rahm said in firm voice.

“But the audience applauded like they loved her.” The Bamster was spooked.

“Chill, man, so she can cook . . . she probably can since she has to feed her kids and that big ox of husband of hers. I don’t think many people are going to be eating her favorite Moose Goulash or whatever she makes.” Rahm explained.

“You’re right, I don’t think I’d like to eat a moose. Nobody would like to eat a moose would they?”

“Sure, Canadians might like Moose, but not our voters. It’s not bad, you know, I had some at a great little deli in Montreal one time, smoked moose on rye.”

“But Rahm, she still scares me,” the Bamster looked at him pleading for reassurance. “She is a killer, I’ve seen the pictures. She’s some kind of wild cracker Princess Xena or something.”

“F*** her, shake it off, big guy, be a mensch. Do I got to call the kitchen have them send up Spam Fry Rice or Ahi Poke or some thing?,” Rahm knew that the Hawaiian snacks of his boyhood always perked up the Bamster.

“That would help, it would,” the Bamster raised his head.

“At least Hillary Clinton will not be on Rachel Ray’s show, I don’t think she can boil a f***ing pot of water.” Rahm laughed. Then he realized his mistake. The only person the Bamster hated and feared more Sarah the Snow Queen was his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, or as he and Rahm called her, Dragon Lady.

“I have this nightmare, Rahm, it’s horrible. There I am trying to run for reelection and the Republicans and the back stabbing Blue Dog Democrats run a special fusion ticket of Hillary for President and Sarah for VP. I can see them together in a VFW Hall in some awful little town in Pennsylvania drinking’ beer and doing shots with the peasants, talking about guns and all that other blue collar white folks stuff.” The Bamster was beginning to sweat as he recounted his recurring frightful vision.

“Cool it, can’t happen, we got Hillary right where we f***ing want her. She can’t go nowhere. I got my guys keeping my eye on her and her little shlep Blumenthal. She can’t make a bleeping move without us knowing first.” Rahm assured his heroic leader.

“Are you sure?” Bamster pleaded.

“F***ing absolutely certain, them mother f***ing mothers can’t lay a glove on us!” Rahm almost shouted. “We're holding our friends close and our enemies even closer,” Rahm quote the Godfather epic, it always bucked up the Bamster’s spirit.

At this point Press Secretary Gibbs burst in, “Sorry, but you guys got to see this, it’s unbelievable.” On the huge plasma TV we see the tarmac at Anchorage International Airport and through a light snow fall we see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a fur coat and hat on a stop over on her return flight from Moscow. Next to her in a bright red parka is a smiling Sarah Palin handing her a slab of smoked salmon in bright foil and red ribbons. Hillary beams, “Why thank you, Sarah, this is so sweet and you know how I love smoked Alaskan salmon.” She gave a little peck on the cheek to Sarah and Todd.

Sarah smiles back, “You bet’cha, I made it my self and my husband Todd, he caught it right here in Alaska.”

“Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.” Hillary purred.

“I’m so glad we had a chance to get together Madam Secretary, you know how I’ve always admired you, one American woman to another.”

As the camera pulled back, a radiant Hillary climbed back up the steps into her sky blue and white Air Force plane, Sarah and Todd waved and Hillary clutched the smoked salmon to her breast and smiled warmly.

Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!

Gibbs and Rahm patted the stricken Bamster on his back and got him to take a drink of water.

Rahm shouted, “The bitches.”

- xxx -

The adventures of the Bamster and nine fingered Rahm. #2

Fat & Ugly and the obese no more campaign.

It was time for the morning meeting and Rahm bounded into the Oval Office. The Bamster knew it was his trusty 9 Fingered Rahm when the background music ceased and up came the booming bouncing entrance music from the Second Act of Minkus’s Le Corsair. The door opened and with three leaps Rahm came to a halt in front of the big desk, then tossing his clip board to an aide. Rahm did a Fouetté rond de jambe en tournant and a sault de Basque and then bowed Bolshoi Ballet style right hand over his chest and left arm expended low.

“Felling perky this morning, are we?” The Bamster said after he took a deep breath. He could just tell Rahm was especially full of new brilliant out of the box ideas, hopefully none of them involved invading a small and unsuspecting nation, launching a major new program or putting a tax on Botox. (Boy, did Speaker Nancy Pazzi unload on him when she heard about that. She treatened a ten dollar a pill tax on viagra and other male enhancement drugs and supplements and then made a nasty comment about his own virility, the bitch, Vaca, strega!!!)

“Mr. President, I couldn’t wait to see you this morning, have I got a new plan that will save tons of money and make you ever more popular.” The Bamster groaned silently, he was nervious already. Only Newt Gingrich could come up with as many out of the box and great and out of the box and off the wall ideas as quickly as Rahm the nine fingered.

“Our obesity Czarina, Annabelle Trimm just sent me an action plan that is so blank-it-t-blank good you are going to love it. She calls for taxes on all junk food, unhealthy food and candy. Additionally she has plans of action for schools and colleges, reforms of the fast food industry, special fat taxes for transportation and services. It’s so mo***f***ing great it’s self financing. She and her guys have these great charts for age height and weight, its sure fire.”

“You think so?” The Bamster looked interested.

“Oh yeah, like it’ll guilt trip all the fat ass folks into getting skinny. and you know when they are skinny, they’ll thank us bit time.” Rahm gushed.

“Ok give it too me, I’ll add it to my reading pile.” The Bamster nodded.

“The one really great thing about this is that we have all the school kids in the country drilled in how to taunt and tease the lazy ass fat kids. The lard ass kids will always go to the back of every line and be docked one grade until they get skinny. They will not be able to go to school dances or be in school plays and stuff. And then their parents will have to go to reeducation classes and swear statements that they will keep their blubber bod brats on a vegan diet until they get skinny. There will be songs and posters and all the kids tv shows will bad mouth fat kids.” Rahm the nine fingured glowed with enthusiasm.

“Don’t you think that is sort of laying it on thick?” the Bamster cautioned.

“F*** no, no f***ing way, everybody already hates fat people.” Rahm blurted right out, then he continued, “Also, potato chips, candy bars, doughnuts, french fries and onion rings, burgers, dogs and all that other fat people food gets banned.”

“Ahhh, you know I like a good burger now and then.” Bamster objected.

“Look Boss, don’t sweat it, there will still be soy and vegiburgers just no meat hamburgers.” Rham reassured him.

The next morning Rahm the nine fingered came in for his morning ten minutes with the POTUS. (President of the United States)

“Give me five, Bamster,” Rahm beamed. “Loved that blast the fat project, eh?” Rahm asked.

“Ahhh, you know . . .” the POTUS said softly.

“Hey, Boss what happened to you ears, they look swollen.” Rahm asked.

“Er, you know that age height and weight charts Czarina Trimm cooked up, well,Michelle didn’t like it. She really didn’t like it.”

“Well, you know facts are facts, Bamster.” Rahm countered.

“She seemed to think it somehow said I was calling her fat.” The Bamster explained.

“You were not, well not exactly.” Rahm shurgged, getting the picture.

“Easy for you to say, you didn’t have to sleep on the sofa last night.”

“Tell her she’s too touchy.” Rahm suggested weakly.

“Rahm, no, no I’m not and you are not either. She said this program dies right now or she is going to go Nancy Reagan and fire you and everybody in the West Wing except the Marines and the gardeners.” The Bamster was not kidding.

“She wouldn’t, she couldn’t.”

“Look Rahm, I’m only the POTUS, she’s the First Lady. This morning she had an old time usher and chambermaid tell us about Nancy Reagan and how she locked the Gipper up in the family quarters and she and Mike Deaver and fired everybody.”

“She wouldn’t have dared, and it couldn’t happen now.”

The Bamster put the ice pack back on his ear and using his best James Earl Jones baritone voice, “Rahm, I don’t think you want to see if she could. The project dies, poof, never heard from again.”

“OK boss I guess I see where you are on this.”

“And another thing, the girls went bananas when I told them no more happy meals or cheetos or snickers bars. They got really mean.”

“All right, the idea needs a little f***ing polish.” Rahm said.

“No, Rahm, the idea is dead, it never happened and will not happen.”

“OK man, I capish.’ It is bye bye, poof, never heard of it.”Rahm said.

“Also, Czarina Trimm, call ESPN and get her a job, you know on the quiet. With her cleavage it shouldn’t be hard for them to add her to the staff.”

“OK Boss, consider it done.” With this Rahm went back to his office. There were at least thirty other untested action plans the various Czars had cooked up. A few were bound to good, maybe.

Future episodes:

The Bamster encounters the Gipper's Ghost. They talk about marrying girls from Chicago.

Also, the care and feeding of wingnuts.

The Bamster goes one on one with the Snow Queen. A secret basketball game of President Obama and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. At midnight in the gym at the Washington Marine Barracks, he takes on Sarah the Barracuda. Rahm assures him, "Hey boss, don't sweat it, she's only a girl."

The day all the teleprompters died.

Rahm expains how the Democratic Party Meshpucha really works. Also he tries to teach the Bamster the difference between a Macher and a Shlemiel. The Bamster tries to teach Rahm Hawaiian wisdom.

The Adventures of the Bamster & 9 fingered Rahm, #1

Not all beer & skittles at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It was one of those morning when the Bamster was getting numb, it was barely eleven o’clock and he was feeling a bit green around the edges. From his arrival in the Oval Office at 7:30 until now it had been slow boring drudgery. The day had begun fine and clear, sunny and not a single middle of the night phone call to tell him of natural disaster, an assassination, a riot or other outrage, or an unexpected bad day on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Then he had breakfast with his girls, they were chatty and a ate their scrambled eggs with winks and giggles and good cheer. HIs breakfast was just what he liked, half a papaya he had squeezed a lime over and dusted with fresh black pepper, a poached egg and two pieces of dry toast with a tart and yet slightly sweet orange marmalade sent over by the Danish Ambassador. He liked Denmark, nice little country that didn’t make trouble or demands for money. He had a list of the nice little countries: Coasta Rica, Chile, New Zealand, Portugal, and Bulgaria. They didn’t invade their neighbors, make political or economic demands, lock up and torture political prisoners or put up posters of him looking like the Joker in the last Batman movie. Unfortunately, it was a short list.

After breakfast with a spring in his step the Bamster our super hero and President walked to the Oval Office dressed in one of his favorite gray suits, he liked gray suits. He went downstairs and then out on the colonnade for a walk to the Oval office. The Marine Guards open the doors and gave him a sharp salute, he like the Marines, friendly athletic young men who never asked for anything and were always happy when he visited their gym to shoot a few hoops and loosen up. They watched ESPN and didn’t make trouble. He made a few calls from the list Rahm had sent over then went into his National Security Briefing. His stomach always gave a growl and often got worse as the half hour tour of the world went on. Russia was making trouble, the Russians were always like the big guy at the end of the bar who was just drunk enough to threaten trouble and just waiting to be dis’d. Then their were the Chinese, always amiable and helpful and looking out for number one with their world wide deals and counter deals. They were the perfect “fren’emies” and you had to keep your eye on them. Of course there were various thug dictators up to no good on every continent, African despots who fed their opponents to the crocodiles, Hugo Chavez who was always mouthing off like a school yard bully, and then there was the Middle East. Over there it never ended or got better without getting worse at the same time. In Iran the Revolutionary Guards were now raping coeds arrested brought in for Treason before they were hanged or shot. It seems Islamic law forbid the execution of virgins, so these savages raped them before they killed them. They also said awful things about him. Still he made nice nice and had low level talks with them that never went anywhere.

Thoroughly depressed he said good by to the National Security team and stretched before his Economics guys came in. While these guys didn’t tighten his stomach or give him much heartburn, they confused the Hell out him. Everyday the nerdy and the suave economists painted a picture that was hopeless but not serious, some days serious but not hopeless. They had numbers for everything and he tried to look alert and knowing. It wasn’t easy, some mornings they could have been talking Lithuanian for all the sense it made. He always felt he knew less after half an hour of numbers and more numbers than he had when he walked into the room.

Feeling mildly numbed by an hour of depressing news, he would walk back to the oval office and his ten minutes with his trusty Chief of Staff. This always revved him up, Rahm the nine fingered was full of news, moves and counter moves, great up beat ideas. He would also toss in some salacious gossip about this or that Senator or Congressman and a lobbyist or staffer. He also shared bad things, lots of bad things about the guys he disliked.

So, perked up, the Bamster gamely was ready for his pre lunch chores. He signed a pile of proclamations for National Flower Day, National Camp Fire Day, the centennials of the first this that and the other thing. Then he signed letters congratulating people for living a long time, winning the national slow pitch championship and a flowery note to be read at the Gala final appearance of an older opera diva.

The Vice President’s Office called and he invited himself to the special luncheon today for all his Czars. That’s all he needed, the Bamster thought. He buzzed Rahm’s office and told him to find a funeral or festival or something to get the VP out of town next week.

At 12:15 he walked into the State Dinning Room and there we all the Czars he had appointed. There were tall ones and short ones, Czars in their white Jackets and Czarinas in their tiaras. Old and young, fat and thin, cheerful Czars and gloomy Czars. His eye caught sight of the Czarina for women’s sports -- she looked tanned and fit and she showed a lot of cleavage. Most of the other Czarina’s looked like nerdy tenured professors of English Lit and organic Chemistry from good but not great universities.

At the podium was the Vice President, “Lets give him a big hand folks,” he said in that expansive cheerful way he had. Then he returned to the awful joke he had started, “You see folks, the three Congressmen walk into a bar and the Republican says to the two Democrats . . .” The Bamster sat and put on his best political fake smile. It was that kind of day.

- xxx -

So hip that he doesn't need a Sinatra hat.

Over the past year I have become addicted to Anthony Bourdain’s show on the Travel Channel. In case you are not familiar with it, Bourdain is a chef from New York of French heritage who travels the world and the USA. He is the ultimate hipster chef, so hip and so cool he doesn’t need to wear the narrow brimmed Sinatra hat lesser hipsters wear all the time to let you know they are hip. He was the long time head chef at New York’s Les Halles, about as authentic a French Bistro as exists this side of the Atlantic.

Bourdain is always quirky, often cranky, more so since he quit smoking. He has many sudden violent prejudices that surface at the oddest times. Right now his bete noirs are Gwenith Paltrow, a lovely actress who says she morally cannot eat anything with four legs and Rachel Ray who Bourdain savages for not being a real chef -- something that the perky charming one time cheerleader from up state New York takes pains to point out on almost every interview. Like many pretty actresses Paltrow can be stupied when babbling without a script. Her vapid views on the barbarous unhip reality of the USA are a favorite spiel of hers. Bourdain had a long feud with Emeril Lagasse, but he has made peace with the restauranteur. A good thing since Emeril is one of the few really famous Portuguese Americans, right behind march king John Philip Souza and ahead of Teresa Heinz Kerry.

On most of his travel adventures Bourdain appears jet lagged and when not mildly hung over. What is fascinating is his admiration and praise for truly exalted haut cuisine of almost every major school while also loving and recommending authentic highly ethnic and local street food and late night and early morning items that are usually eat with your hands standing up or sitting on a stool with a cold beer in the other paw. Bourdain is worshipful at the French Laundry in the Napa Valley and the great temples of high skill creative gastronomy -- French places with a lot of Michelin stars and great very serious Basque and Spanish restaurants that shoot for the stars.

Yet he also loves straight forward authentic local places that know what they are and make no apologies for it. These include unexpected establishments like San Francisco’s House of Prime Rib which continues to serve traditional American birthday and aniversary dishes from the the 1940’s with no apologies. He liked it because it is what it is and what is always was. Huge slabs of blood rare prime rib are served with creamed spinach, yorkshire pudding, au jus, creamed horse radish and a reliable cabernet and classic gin martinis. The same goes for really wierd joints in Chicago, the venerable Katz’s deli in New York, the Polonia Cafe in Detroit, big spartan rural Texas steakhouses and family run Mexican cafes in small southwestern towns.

OK, what doesn’t Bourdain like. First of all, he hates all chain and mega corporation restaurants and fast food outlets. He particularly find Chili’s odious because they seem to be debasing honest American, Tex Mex and Mexican dishes into cute not too spicy or salty platters for suburbanites. I am sure he hates plenty of other chains, but that is given to the point he doesn’t even have to sneer at Denny’s or Home Town Buffet among many many others.

He champions the off the wall eccentric even weird local joints when they are serious about what they cook and serve. Clam shacks in New England, Chicago hot dog stands, gumbo cafes and oyster houses in Louisiana, the plain diners where locals eat in Hawaii, and a grubby looking working class hamburger joint in San Francisco that serves a real American burger on sliced sour down bread. He also likes diners in the South that serve up the traditional regional dishes breakfast lunch and dinner, dishes with names like Hoppin’ John, Country Captain, Burnswick Stew and ham bisquits. Same for BBQ stands that serve up the regional styles -- pulled pork in the Carolinas, ribs in Memphis and St Louis and slow cooked dry rubbed brisket that never is touched with any BBQ sauce in Texas.

Bourdain also enjoys the lesser cuts of meat and innards that were the food of the poor for so long that they learned to make them wonderful. This would include beef tripe soups, ox tail braises, tongue sandwiches or tacos, kidneys fried in bacon, brains scrambled quickly, head cheese and Philadelphia scrapple, pigs feet in a dozen different ways and even more exotic items.

In another ways, while he very open and tolerant to almost every cuisine round the world, Bourdain’s slamming Gwenith Paltrow is actually a social and political not a gastronomic tantrum. Bourdain has few or no reservations about eating vegan and lacto vegetarian cooking, so long as it is authentic and local. He has often praised what Hindu and Buddhist cooks have set before him from street stalls or in homes or formal restaurants. What fried him about Ms. Paltrow was how she could travel around Spain with Mario Batali and friends and never ever let Jamon Serrano pass her lips. I suspect he classifies her eccentric semi-vegetarianism as a willful sort of secular fundamentalism, not as a real authentic local and traditional inheritance. While I don’t know for sure, I assume Bourdain is Franco American “Jack Catholic.” He seems to think like one and have little or no patience for lesser religious and secular sects.

My favorite Bourdain episode is his hour touring the Açores, where the meals he was eating literally brought me to tears. I could smell and recall the taste of the dishes on the table that my Grandmother and her sisters cooked when I was young. Other singular and enduring episodes are his hour touring Rajistran, where some Indian friends have assured me he “Caught the spirit and feel of the place” and his visits to Texas and to Mexico.

The same for his drive across the southwest from LA to Texas and his bombing around San Francisco in a brand new Ford recreation of the Black Mustang hatch back that Steve McQueen drove in Bullett. Another wonderful hour was his tour of the surviving old time places in New York City. This was a wonderful salute to those institutions strong and authentic and full of life enough to survive over the decades. Things that he especially liked were late night street food in Mexico and from the street stalls in Singapore, in Berlin a huge and vast delicatessen that seemed to offer the whole world for lunch and a Basque restaurant that was meticulous in every detail and yet full of authentic local live.

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Clunkers come in and new cars fly off the lot.

Today got off to an increasingly common start as I read the news and saw another one of Obama whiz kid Ivy League Frat Boys brilliant ideas misfire. This is becoming a hallmark of this administration. The Clunker program worked like a charm, but not how it was planned. The White House Whiz kids are great on high concepts but often as not they muck up the mere details.

The $4,500 Federal voucher for your old gas guzzling clunker program was wildly successful, but not exactly in the way it was intended. The money is going whoosh into the car dealers as people nationwide line up to take a $4,500 gift from Obama’s evergreen federal munificence for their old clunker and apply it toward a new car. This is actually his first program that gives working, middle and upper income folks a nice slice of boodle. Think about it, can you imagine the outrage and shouting if Dub’ya had proposed such a profligate give away of public money to the same people. Of course the Obama idea was to leverage middle class money as a way of subsidizing UAW workers without seeming to just hand over the bucks.

The purpose of this program was three fold: First, it would allow people to clear away the inventory of new cars collecting dust on dealer’s lots. And it has done that amazingly well. Second, it would replace cars with lousy milage with new and higher milage cars. That has worked too. The new cars and trucks average ten more miles per gallon than the clunkers they replace. Finally, it would give the long suffering American car manufacturers a shot in the arm, reopening shuttered plants and putting thousands of American back to work and speeding delivery of the spiffy new models out to the dealers. That didn’t really happen. As we are coming to expect, when the Obama Administration comes up with the brilliant idea, it never works quite the way they expected. In fact the huge surge in buying new cars flowed right around the American manufacturers, except for Ford.

Sign of trouble # 1. After the early numbers came in, the famously transparent and open Obama Administration unexpectedly clamped down and is refusing to release the data on who the program is working. Wonder why?

Sign of trouble #2, smelling something was amiss, the press began asking questions about the project and how it was going. With the White House suddenly clamming up, the news people got data from the manufacturers themselves. Guess what, of the top five models people are buying only the Ford Focus had an American brand name. Ironically, it is actually assembled in in Mexico while the next top four cars are from Japanese companies but all of them are made in the USA. Go figure. But the Japanese see American workers who are very productive and relatively cheap. Nice that somebody does.

Sign of trouble #3. The White House has yet to admit this project went off in unintended ways and has yet to figure out how to pin the blame on Dub’ya or Rush Limbaugh or whoever is the villain for the day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Obama spin machine should come up with something. They are masters of their favorite game: pin the tail on the elephant.

So what happened?

The Bamster and his guys are going to score big time “Domo Arigato” and “Muchas Gracias amigos” for coming up with this package. Even a “thanks a lot man” from non union American autoworkers. That was not the plan.

This was thought to be a bonanza for the United Auto Workers and the salvation of the State of Michigan, the three billion dollar clunker project missed its pet targets big time. The big winners are overseas firms who are now big time US manufacturers and Ford who makes cars and trucks here in Canada and Latin America and ship them into the USA. Ford has built and has the most modern auto factory in the world. It has its own docks for shipping in parts and shipping out cars plus its major sub contractors have their plants clustered alongside the Ford assembly lines. It is an awesome facility. Brazil is a major industrial power now, and very proud of the huge facility.

Whoops. I am going to love it as the White House fumbles and bumbles an explanation on how this happen. International trade agreements forbid a subsidy that is not equally available for domestic and imported products. However, that was a given. The preferences of the public were seriously misread. After all the billions that the Fed’s have poured into the wreckage of GM and Chrysler it appears the American public has no desire to lay its money or the free government money on the line for their products. Obama promised to personally stand behind the new GM and Chrysler products. The public was not impressed and largely ignored these Presidentially approved vehicles.

In the end Ford, Toyota and Honda have done very very well out of this deal. Car makers that employ UAW members didn’t sell many cars, so like a lot of Obama’s over hyped and under thought out projects this one rewarded the firms that didn’t need help and delivered very very little to the folks the Obama whiz kids figured would scarf up.

It’s only money and like all Obama projects, this one was brilliant in concept even if it misfired. Hey, I could be wrong but this program like the others that always seem to go off the tracks is becoming a Obama hallmark. We understand that the whiz kids at the White House don’t have a lot of street smarts, but they have long been taught to leave the trivial details to middle management types. So the half baked crusade and the program gone wrong is their stock in trade. We are getting used to it just as we got used to the interesting but small and cheap programs Bill Clinton launched monthly and the bland acceptance of ear mark pork by Dub’ya when Congress sent bloated spending bills over for his signature. Every Administration falls into its comfortable rut. We know now what we can expect from Obama.

Food Blog: On Hamburgers

To kick off my food blog, let me begin with the hamburger. It is one of the most important icons of American cooking. It is a sandwich consisting of a beef patty cooked and served in some form of bread. Let me set a series of terms to make this discussion move along clearly.

The principal species of hamburger:

Simple hamburger: Ground beef on a bun of some kind with a minimum of condiments. Examples include the century old original White Castle burger, the basic McDonalds hamburger. While it may be seasoned with onions --raw or grilled -- and with pickle slices it will have no more additions than mustard and/or catsup.

Dressed hamburger: Taking the term “dressed” from the local jargon in New Orleans for presenting Po’Boy and other sandwiches, this means a hamburger “dressed” with the basic seasonings plus leaf or shredded lettuce, fresh tomato slices, raw onions and mayonnaise or a mayonnaise based dressing like 1000 island and other condiments that fit local taste: in LA a medium heat bean less chili is usual, in the southwest sliced jalapeños or other chili peppers, in Chicago a ferocious “hot gardenera" olive & chili relish, in California and Arizona sliced avocado is common, and in up market establishments various “gourmet” items are sometimes put on burgers -- pate de fois gras, truffles, sauté mushrooms, caviar and so on. In general I disapprove of these costly and esteemed ingredients as clear cut lily gilding.

Double grilled burgers: Here the cooked meat patty is placed between slices of bread and then the sandwich is grilled again to brown the bread and melt the cheese. The Patty melt is the most common example of this. Here the patty is put between slices of rye bread with onions and cheese and then the resulting sandwich is grilled. It combines the classic burger with the grilled ham and cheese or grilled cheese sandwich. Other common examples of the double grilled variety are the common “Sour Dough” or “Frisco” burgers. In this variation on the Patty Melt, sour dough replaces the rye bread and provolone replaces the swiss cheese. The are many other variations on this hybrid sandwich.

Double decker burgers: Two patties are used and the bun is sliced into three layers: top, middle and bottom. The classic example of this is Bob’s “Big Boy.” The “Big Mac” is ubiquitous and is the one example of a hamburger gone very very wrong. (I have always thought it was a gooey mess and a disgrace to the hamburger family. The Tartar Sauce based glob it wallows in has no business in a real burger.)

Exotic Burgers: In this case elements of another cuisine recast the standard hamburger. The textbook classic example is the Hawaiian Burger where the patty is topped with a grilled pineapple slice and the principal condiment is a savory teriyaki sauce. It is interesting, but like its cousin Hawaiian Pizza which uses canadian bacon nd pineapple as an Asian riff on pizza that would horrify even the most hard case pizza eater in Napoli or New York.

The essence of this exotic category is clothing an otherwise standard burger in the style of another cuisine. For example, using lamb or a mix of ground lamb and beef is the basis for a “Greek” or “Armenian” burger. It could be served in Pita bread of lavash or between two Lamtmajune or small Armenian pizza’s. An English spin would serve a patty between english muffin slices with sharp mustard and a cheddar based “Welsh Rabbit.” A French variation would be served with mushrooms in a Madeira Sauce with or without Roquefort cheese.

Other exotic burgers substitute the beef patty with another meat or even a meatless patty such as a breaded fish, pork or chicken or turkey cutlet. Also a Hawaiian “Moko Loko” which is two patties on buns smothered in a brown beef gravy or a “Chili Size” where two patties are served on a open faced bun with chili poured over every thing and seasoned with grated cheese and onions.

Having established the various types of Burgers I will offer a set of categories.

Fast Food Burgers meaning those served by large regional national or international chains such as McDonalds, Burger King, Carl’s Junior/Hardee’s, In’n Out, Sonic, etc., etc.

Local or diner burgers are those adapted to local taste. Here in California this would be burgers from places like The Apple Pan, Tommy’s, Pie ‘n Burger, Oinkster, Astro Burgers and so on and so forth to include local establishments or small chains like Farm Brothers, Hoff’s Hut and you can fill in the blanks.

Up Scale or Yuppie Burgers are relatively new and served by a new breed of “haute” burger joints like The Counter, The Office and many others. These are heavy burgers of half to a full pound of beef and usually range from the ten to twenty dollar in cost with or without fries. Often the extra fuss and pretense of these currently faddish joints misses the mark and delivers something not as good as the best local or diner places at double to triple the price. The deadly serious pretentiousness of these is actually part of their charm.

Restaurant or Steak House Burgers. These are available at middle and up market steak houses, always at lunch and on the Bar menu although rarely on the dinner card. What is important about these very high grade burgers is that they are made from prime and choice meat trimmed from the restaurants showcase steaks. They are usually half a pound or heavier and when cooked medium are very appealing. Most of these places serve them very unadorned with a steak house sauce and usually grilled onions. In the San Francisco Bay area the many “Joe’s” restaurants serve their burgers in a long length of hollowed out sour dough battard loaf, with grilled onion or with the onions embedded in the oblong beef patties.

Regional oddities: In Sacramento there is a well known local joint that more or less drowns its large burgers in cheese that melts over then browns around the burger. In the Twin Cities many local places embed cheese inside the middle of the patty before they cook it resulting in a molten core to the patty.

Cooking methods: Most hamburgers are cooked directly on the steel flat top grill. This results in characteristic greasy taste that most people seem to like. The second most common method it to broil the patty under a gas flame broiler or to actually cook it over live coals. This give you a seared juicy but not greasy burger when done correctly. When don badly you get a very dry and leather burger. When live coals are used a slightly smoky flavor comes with the meat that I personally prefer to flat grilled burgers. Some places in New England cook their patties in special high pressure steam lockers that melt away all the fat. Odd but popular with the locals.

Finally here are some personal biases and prejudices on hamburgers.

1. Even the best flagship burgers of national chains stall out at a C+ and a few make it to a B-.

2. Piling on patty after patty to create the currently faddish gross pig out burgers is decadent if not disgusting. If you want a big burger, then cook one.

3. Fancy breads detract or get in the way of the burger taste. While Kings Hawaiian Sweet Bread buns and little brioche work fine for sliders, they don’t cut it for a real full size burger.

4. At home, I believe the best bun is an onion roll. Second best is a sour dough roll with a crispy crust.

5. The ideal patty size is one third of a pound and no more than one inch thick. Anytime the patty is more than one half pound you are talking about a Hamburg Steak and you should ditch the bun or bread all together. In the anti-German hysteria of 1917 sauerkraut was renamed Liberty Cabbage and Hamburger Steak transformed to Salisbury Steak. Salisbury was chosen for some unknown reason. In the 1920’s Americans returned to the original German names for most food items except for Salisbury Steak. By then Hamburger had come to mean the beef sandwich and the pseudo English name stuck to what had been Hamburger Steak in order to clearly differentiate it from the now ubiquitous burger.

6. As a consumer I urge you to patronize local independent burger joints and local mini chains. For example there is great joint called Burger Central in Glendale that char broils a wonderful one third pound burger. On 6th Street in what is now Korea Town Cassell’s still serves the standard one third of pound flame broiled by which all other burgers are judged. In every neighborhood there are good quirky burger stands and joints like the Guacamole Burger in Culver City and so on around Los Angeles including but not limited to the ancient pool hall in North Long Beach that has long been a favorite with local cops, firemen and CHP’s. If you do not support your worthy local burger joint you’ll be stuck with Mickey D’s or nothing.

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The New York prototype for California

I've been kicking this around for a few days, I think it has some merit
even if it is political poison.

Surfing the web has one major draw back to reading newspapers, magazines and
books, it is not easy go back and find the item that set off your train of
thought. Last week I read a thoughtful article on how New York City dug
itself out a fiscal abyss in the late seventies and early eighties. The
State of New York with assistance from the Fed's and major financial firms
cooked up a temporary board that had total control of the City's finances --
taxes and other cash inflows, expenditures, budgets and it also had the
power to float bonds and otherwise control all the fiscal elements of New
York City's vast municipal operations. It fired and early retired tens of
thousands of city employees and severely limited new hires. It also closed
offices and parts of agencies it felt were obsolete or not vital. It's
most famous victim was the venerable Dept. Of Sanitation Marching Band which was a
favorite attraction at the City's many parades and festivals. This project
took the control board about six years to get the City back on the fiscal
rails and to return most of the control to the elected officials. The board
continue a shadowy half life for another ten years overseeing the
liquidation of its bonds and then dissolved once and for all.

The study pointed out the good and bad sides of the board with an eye for
adapting this concept to take control of California and dig it out of our
current financial abyss. One drawback to this way of doing things is that
it is wildly unpopular if not openly detested by a lot of people, most
especially by public employee unions and elected officials. The Unions
hated it because it falls heavily on their membership's more excessive
perks and by private sector standards their lavish pension packages. Since
they are not allowed to raise or lower taxes without the boards permission
the legislature hated it on a bipartisan basis. Since they would have
little discretion in spending and staffing, executive officeholders hated it
almost as much as the Senators and Assemblymen.

The great advantage of a control board is that can do what politicians find
impossible because it is isolated from normal and constant political
pressures. Even more importantly, it can do it's fiscal reorganization
without putting the State through formal bankruptcy. Also, using it's
ability to float bonds it can "ease" the current crisis at a far lower
interest cost than the State could with normal bonds which are now
considered below investment grade "junk" by the financial markets.

Second, by enforcing "tough love" budget controls the Fiscal Board can get
the State out of trouble more quickly than a bankruptcy court custodian.
Finally, by taking money questions off the political agenda for a number of
years a fiscal control board creates a situation like the late nineties
where Bill Clinton would not let the Republicans cut taxes at the same time
the congressional Republicans would not let him start new programs or
increase spending. After four years of this gridlock Federal revenues were
surging in while spending stayed relatively flat. The unintended Federal
surplus began reducing the National Debt by amazing amounts. Of course
along came 9/11 and the White House and Congress knocked it all into a
cocked hat with Bush's tax cuts and medicare prescription program and all
the huge sums congress authorize for post 9/11 security. The Wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq actually were not that big. If there had been a
fifteen or twenty cent a gallon tax on gasoline to pay for the wars, the
Federal Budget could still have produced a surplus and by now the National
Debt would have been all but wiped out. (It then could have raised money to cover
the serious "off budget" Social Security short falls and even taken a major bite out of
the wildly out of control Medicare budget.)

To my knowledge a fiscal control board for California is not now under
serious consideration, not that it isn't needed and not that would not work.
We don't hear about it because it is so frightening and demeaning to our
legislators and senior office holders. However, as a practical matter the
sooner the State of California, the Federal Treasury and the financial
industry come to terms and insist on it, the better it will be for
everybody. The irresponsibility of the Legislature over the years is the
best argument for this form of receivership. The legislators simply can not be
trusted to face the music without their usual denial of reality and annual
creation of a fiscal Potemkin village out of rhetorical prevarication and
statistical smoke and mirrors.

I see no alternative, but hey what do I know.

Three kinds of Democrats

Looking across the political spectrum you have Democrats, you have Liberal Democrats and then you have the Moonbats. Regular plain no hyphens Democrats have feet that touch the ground, a strong grip on common sense and usually a sharp if somewhat cynical sense of humor. They usually drive American cars, some even drive pick up trucks. They often talk with a regional accent and even hint at blue collar or country heritage, they don’t blush or feel queasy when they say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag or observe common and accepted patriotic rites and gestures. Real Democrats think Republicans are tight wads who begrudge the poor a minimal level of social services but are not hopeless, just inhibited by their party’s terminal stuffiness. Real Democrats love a good fight, in fact feel uncomfortable if things get too lovie dovie, because they know in their hearts the Liberals and Republicans are cunning upper middle class smoothies who are always willing to go bipartisan if it screws the working class.

Liberal Democrats read the New Republic and other slick paper up scale publications Vanity Fair and hip life style and how to magazines, they like you to think they can speak at least one foreign language, dress with a touch of old money style or what they think is old money style combined with a bit of hipster chic and they are never at a loss for fluent cocktail party chat. They never own an American car but they are up on current food fads, food no-no’s and know when certain things are hot and when they are not. While they can always come up with politically correct reasons to look down on blue collar, Southern and rural folks, they are helpless before minority ethnic firebrands and almost always get rolled even when they know better.

A Liberal Democrat will do everything possible to push up Black and Latino college enrollment percentages while at the same time be coldly ruthless in squashing the percentage of Asian heritage students. Only a liberal could tell Asians they have been demoted to White and do so with a straight face. A Liberal Democrat will also ignore bad news, like the very high drop out rate of minority kids who are enrolled without the academic background to keep them enrolled. The single worst moral flaw common to Liberals is their willingness to let good intentions trump good results. The other thing Liberals do is run the word “unconscionable” into the ground. Nobody to their right or left ever uses the word. It is their word and theirs alone.

When push comes to shove in foreign policy Liberals will spot dictators and terrorists one chance to roll them. That is how they demonstrate their diplomatic skills. The next time the bad guys try to roll them, they will bomb the bastards, even send in the Marines. Bill Clinton actually bombed more countries in his eight years than George W. Bush. Liberals will always come up with a “multilateral” strategy that will leave the the heavy lifting to the American Military with token assistance from a small number of nations and the advice of those who are unable to do anything but talk. The deepest and darkest fear of older Liberal Democrats is that somebody will look back and discover the Vietnam War actually was their idea.

What makes me real nervous today is that President Obama has rediscovered and brought us the old liberal dream of government by our “Best and brightest.” He can be forgiven because he was an infant during the Kennedy and Johnson years. That time, the best and brightest fucked up big time and then denied they had anything to do with it. Right now the Harvard and Goldman Sachs alumni in his government seem to be doing the same thing to the American economy and maybe militarily in Afghanistan too. I’ve seen this movie before, it ends in tears.

Now we come to the Moonbats. These are people whose feet don’t touch the ground. Their Burkenstocks, Ugh’s and sandals might, but they don’t. Facts, reality, common sense and rationality have no measurable effect on them, ever. Where real Democrats view Republicans as tight wads and Rotary Club stalwarts while Liberal Democrats look on them as tiresome but energetic “C” students, even if they attended a prestigious college or didn’t sit in the back row snickering, mocking or peppering the good students with catcalls and spitballs. Moonbats see Republicans as criminals at best, by definition both ignorant and stupid, if not demented. In the worst case they view Republicans as a species of hateful and dangerous sub human primates that should be exterminated.

To be fair it should be added that Moonbats consider ordinary Democrats as little better than Republicans. If you doubt this, just try to imagine a Berkeley Moonbat trying to talk with a Teamsters Business Agent. Liberals Democrats are almost the very worst possible thing to Moonbats since they could and did vote for Bill Clinton and then compound it by voting for Hillary. The Moonbats not only want to jail George W. Bush for the Iraq War and not singing Kumbaiya with Osama Bin Lauden, they would put every single so called liberal Democrat that voted for the war in the cell next to him.

The pure and ardent Moonbats fit the bemused description George Orwell wrote in the 1940’s about the far left fringes of Britain’s Labour Party -- they burn with odd enthusiasms, they dress in awkward and often impractical clothes, they advocate a wide range of distinctly minority opinions, they are often eccentric in their dietary preferences and frequently have highly unorthodox religious views. They combine a highly demanding set of ethics on almost everything except sexual behavior with the aggressive moral imperatives and heresy suppressing zeal of a Counter Reformation Dominican Friar freshly arrived in town with a wagonful of seasoned firewood and a list of suspects.

Real Democrats sit down to a steak at Peter Luger’s without the slightest moral scruple. They also gobble up bratwursts at a NFL tailgate party and drink name brand beer without shame. A Liberal Democrat can eat sushi and allowing for a few moral hiccups, a Liberal Democrat could even go so far as to eat veal. Goose liver or Fois Gas, in its common French name, would never ever pass their lips unless Anthony Bourdaine was present and ready to denounce them as philistine idiots if they didn’t eat it. While a few might eat free range organic meat and get away with it, most true Moonbats pose as or claim to be vegans or vegetarians. Many of them go far beyond those two diets. adding to them every sort of marginal food fetish. They attribute many good things to various rare fruits or vegetables, they believe in the near miraculous power of rare and exotic tinctures and extracts, they of course have not a shred of scientific proof for any of this, but Moonbats still passionately believe it anyway, especially if it rooted in the most distant third world folklore. The one trouble with these bean, grain and greens diets is the unfortunate side effect of considerable if not heroic flatulence. In the human gastrointestinal system the typical vegan diet produces enough methane gas to power a small car. Raw grains, organic heirloom beans and Brussels Sprouts as a steady diet could create enough natural methane gas inflate a Goodyear blimp.

The Las Vegas Mob Mo.

Buried deep in the fine print of the current Economic Recovery act are a cruelly wonderful collection of absolutely necessary life enrichment projects that will goose the economy back to life and enrich the cultural and recreational life of hundreds of cities and communities. There are bike and walking paths on old railway right of way’s, there are beaches where citizens can take their dogs and allow them to run free, there are restored landmark homes and commercial buildings, railroad stations restored to gaudy three color Victorian glory, 19th century churches converted into hipster friendly restaurants, wine bars and hang outs.

Of all the life enriching projects one stands out. The City of Las Vegas Nevada proposes a national museum of organized crime. This project jumps off the page at you, it’s not just another city beautification dream. This museum grabs you by the lapels and says in soft but ominous voice, “You got a problem with that?”

Please join me in my time travel speedster and let me give you the highlights from a long review of the newly complete National Museum of Organized Crime, or as it is called by everyone in Las Vegas, MOB MO.

You approach the domed three story monument on a long fountain lined arcade. The large building is in tasteful classic forms inspired by the 16th century Italian architect and author Antonio Paladio’s Venetian country villas. Three balanced wings extending from the central rotunda but the finish and feel is very elegant Ocean Liner Arte Deco, reflecting the 1930's golden age of organized crime.

On entering the building you proceed to the soaring rotunda. In niches in the four piers that support the dome are bronze busts of Alfonse “Scarface” Capone, Meyer Lansky, Giuseppe “Joe Bananas” Bonanno and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. A pair of marble staircase fall gracefully into the rotunda. Each of the wings is dedicated to one branch of organized crime. To the right is the Cosa Nostra wing honoring the titans of Italoamerican crime, to the left is a wing dedicated to the great Jewish criminals while passing through the rotunda is the Gangsters All wing honoring a wide variety of historic American felons, thieves, murders and criminal giants. In the basement is the Garage, which has a collection of thirty important automobiles. Additionally, there are a bookstore on one side of the entrance vestibule and On the other side, a delightful New York style trattoria, “Mama Gambino’s.” The New York Chopped Salad and the hand made veal and spinach ravioli are amazing as are the authentic scungilli fritters. (Italian for meat of the spiral shellfish Conch. Pronounced: Skun'GEE'lee.)

In the cosa nostra wing are some fascinating displays and life size portraits of leading mobsters. In the center of the grand gallery is the barber chair where Albert Anastasia got whacked. At the far end of gallery is a fresco of Joey’s Clam House the night Crazy Joe Gallo was machined gunned. On the second floor on the right side of the gallery is a large hands on display of Bootlegging and Speakeasies. On the right side is a definitive display of weapons of the Mafia, s superb collection of pistols, sub machine guns, sawed off shotguns, knives of every sort including beautifully made Parthenopian (The region around Naples, Italy) stellettos, switchblades, and "butterfly knives. Also are other things like car bombs, garote's and special piano wire implements and last but not least baseball bats and other clubs. On the third floor is a dazzling 1930’s night club based on the elegant main dinning room of the French Line flagship, Le Normandie. The rest of the floor is dedicated to fashion displays of famous mistress, or as they were called at the time, “Gun Molls.” Strippers and whores, moonlighting librarians, society girls out for trills and of course leading Strippers and torch singers.

Across the rotunda in the wing of Jewish Gangsters is a large display honoring Las Vegas promoter, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. This display shows the great compelling vision of the New York born and bred mobster. On the other side of the hall is a large display dedicated to the long fruitful career of Meyer Lansky (born Majer Suchowliski in Poland), the J. P. Morgan of crime. It includes his 1960 Plymouth sedan and a reproduction of the modest home he lived in Miami in his sunset years. At the far end of wing is a café, actually a reproduction of small deli in the Bronx where all the favorite delicatessen comfort food is available, soups, sandwiches, desserts and other Gotham City favorites. Additionally, the Jewish wing includes a display noting that the last big time Capo of New York crime, John “The Teflon Don” Gotti was in fact half Jewish by virtue of his mother who was the daughter of a minor Jewish gangster.

In the central wing, "A Diversity of Gangsters Hall" are two displays: On the right hand side, Irish gangsters are remembered. The Hell’s Kitchen gangs, the Five Points gang and the O’Bannions of Chicago and their cohort "Machine Gun" Kelly. Included is a tableau of Valentine Day’s Massacre where Capone’s guys settle score once and for all with the Northside O’Bannions. Across the way, on the left hand side, the outlaws of the old west are honored: The James Brothers, the Dalton Gang, John Wesley Harden, Butch Casady and the Sundance Kid, additionally their enemies are also noted: Judge Roy Bean, Judge Parker, the Texas Rangers and the Earp Brothers.

Upstairs there are displays on other ethnic gangs: the Chinese Triads, the Japanese Yukusa, the Filipino “White Flower" Gang, Chicano gangsters, the African American Crips and the Bloods, American Indian and French Canadians bootleggers and smugglers, red neck moonshiners from the South and river pirates from the great Mississippi.

On the top floor are various financial crooks: Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, Mr. Ponzi and Mr. Madoff his greatest successor. Then there is a fascinating display of the great bookies and gamblers, centering on Arnie Arnstein and how he fixed the 1919 World Series and led to the conviction of seven players on the Chicago White Sox.

The final display is in honor of little known felons, the Midwest’s unique and entprising criminal figures, the German American and Scandinavian American Margarine runners. These bold Lutheran mobsters in their hot Studebakers and Hudson Hornets would smuggle colored margarine from Des Moines and Chicago into Wisconsin and Minnesota where state laws made it a felony to possess or traffic in margarine. The Supreme Court threw out the anti margarine laws in the early 1960's.

All in all, the tasteful museum provides a look at a colorful if lethal slice of American life.

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Riding the wave like a pro.

This is how I see things.

1. The Bush Administration in international affaris has been following a new policy for the past two or three years, but it has not been noticed by the media, so President Obama will both get high marks and good results for the same thing when he takes over. The main stream media seem to think Mr. Obama walks on water, something he has never claimed or even hinted at doing. Just the fact he is COOL appears to be more than enough to feed the media’s adoration, adoration so abject and worshipful that rarely seen after high school.

2. Barack Obama has had a run of good luck and the cautioius temperment and brains to profit from it. He currently has the good fortune to have a number of very important things going his way. With the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq, the Bush people have donethe heavy lifting in preparation of our withdrawal. Obama will be able to remove the bulk of our military in the next year an a half. What is lucky for him is that his campaign promise of more or less sixteen months to withdraw and what Bush has prepared are all but identical, except for the fact that the media see Bush as a drooling Texas moron, war criminal, village idiot, want to be dictator and dope. The same media see Obama as Prince Charming, FDR, Kobe Bryant, King Henry V, Nelson Mandella and Will Smith all in rolled into one. OBAMA IS SMART ENOUGH TO LET THEM THINK SO.

3. The fall of crude oil from almost $150/ barrel to the $35. to $45. is a very luck break for President Obama. It has put most of the worlds big time thugs and bullies on short rations and left them scrambling to shore up their domestic economies and make sure their people have an adequate food supply instead of making trouble for the USA and their neighbors. Iran and the others are in tight place right now and who knows what may happen. If Obama is really lucky the Iranian people may demand and get a regime change and maybe even get something roughly like a democratic government. The current regime and its cabal of prelates and fundamentalist thugs have a great deal to answer for to the citizens of Iran and they very well might have to do so this year.

The the collapse of the oil and gas bubble undercuts the delusions of world grandeur of Russia’s Putin and Venezuela’s ever popular Hugo Chavez. Chavez is a real piece of work, sort of the Banana Republic Road Company star in a revival of Benito Mussolini's role as Il Duce. But this time no spats or wife beater shirts.

4. The relationship of the USA and China right now is a perfect example of Mark Twain’s definition of allies: Two nations whose hands are so deep in each others pockets that they could not separate even if they wanted to. We agree to buy everything they want to export and they agree to keep their profits in US Treasury bonds. Crazy, but both sides are absolutely entangled and there is not way out.

5. One thing Obama and his White House and Justice Department should be ready for about two years down the road is a huge wave of petty and not so petty corruption scandals stemming from the ripping off and gross misappropriation of billions in economic recovery funds. Since Obama and the US Attorneys can not stop or even hinder the inevitable skimming and spreading the boodle around, they should make it clear from the beginning that they have their cold hard eyes on the locals pol’s who will actually be spreading big bucks around. The Congressmen are incapable of not turning the stimulus package into the greatest fattest pork feast of all time. It is hard wired into them, liberals and conservatives, saints and sinners, Republicans and Democrats, thoughtful statesmen and sleazy political hacks, they all will make sure their home towns score big time pork. Vast amounts of the money will be wasted or squandered or go into sweetheart contracts for their supporters and pals. Hundreds of silly ass projects ranging from Parks and playgrounds named after Congressmen to museums for folk art, barbecue festivals and grants to spiffy up this or that long neglected park or historic building. The Mayor of Las Vegas Nevada has proposed a grand museum celebrating the role of organized crime in building Aemrica. Can you imagine it, halls devoted to the career accomplishments of Joe Bananas, Buggsy Segal, Louie the Waiter, Lucky Luciano and all the rest of the great wise guys. (I didn’t just make this up.) Perhaps they will even have displays honoring political figures like Mayor Hague of Jersey City, Mayor Curley of Boston, Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, Mayor Jimmy “Gentleman Jim” Walker of New York and the ever popular Boss Twead of Tammany Hall.