Many, many years ago when I worked in the UK, my employer opened a social club for employees. It had two fruit machines, known in the USA as ‘slots’. These gambling machines are the bread and butter of the Reno and Vegas hotels. At that time in the UK they were considered new and exciting, offering gambling opportunities to people who found bingo unexciting and who would never consider betting on horses, greyhounds or cards. The two fruit machines made more profit for the social club than all the other facilities combined, such were their attractions to a surprising number of club members.
One of those members was my work colleague, Doug. One night, just after the social club opened, I paid my first visit to it with Doug and his wife. After a couple of beers and some small talk, Doug went to the bar, got some change and began playing one of the machines. He told me he had been watching the machine for some time and it had not yet paid out to any of the players. He calculated that he must surely win if he stayed on it long enough. Two hours later, and after several small pay-outs, Doug was still going strong and insisting to his worried wife that he had invested a lot of money in the ‘f—–g’ machine and he was bound to get the big pay-out any moment soon. As 11pm closing time approached Doug was still glued to the slot and putting in money, not satisfied with the small pay-outs that would have left him wildly out of pocket. Doug’s wife was worried for he had invested a large part of their weekly budget and she knew that if he did not win the big pay-out by closing time, they would be short of money for the week and Doug would be difficult to live with. I could foresee a problem if he won big at the last moment. He would feel vindicated, become very cocky and would be back ‘investing’ the family’s budget on many more occasions. Doug won that night and I was right about the future.
My thoughts returned to Doug (long since dead from living recklessly with his diabetes) this week as I watched Obama pump his money into the slot of Health Care. It may be that Obama is the Leftist ideologue that I and many others have claimed but he is also a vain man who always has to win. Whether he stumbled into making the Health Care issue the first ‘big thing’ of his Presidency, or whether he was following a carefully thought out plan by his circle of doctrinaire advisors, matters little now. He has surely invested all his political and personal capital into it this first year and, like Doug, he has to win the big prize before closing time. In the process he has dragged the whole Congressional Democrat Party along with him and whilst most of them share his ideology, some of the ‘moderates’ are like Doug’s wife. If he wins by forcing through a vote at the last moment he will surely feel boosted for the next ‘big one’.
This week we had an unexpected glimpse into the behind-the-scenes bullying and blackmailing that Obama’s right hand man, Rahm Emanuel, is employing to hand his boss a Health Care success. We also had more evidence (if any was needed!) of the ability and motivation of the MSM to conceal and misreport any news that might reflect negatively on its man in the White House. The Eric Massa story has been all over Conservative Talk, the Internet and Fox News but, at the time of writing has barely surfaced in the MSM. When it has surfaced, it has been shorn of content and smothered with attacks on Massa’s character. For those outside the US and for those who foolishly rely on the MSM for news, here are the bare bones of the Massa story. Massa is an ex-Navy vet who captured a New York Congressional seat for the Democrats in 2008. This is his first year in the House and he has been a bit of a maverick in not voting for some Obama Bills. No doubt this has resulted in much bullying from the deadly poisonous House Speaker Nancy Pelosi but Massa has so far only lifted the curtain on the behavior of Obama’s Chief of Staff, Emanuel. Massa voted against a Democrat Finance Bill last November and was threatening to vote against the Obama Health Care Bill now in what is a vote that will go down to the wire.
It is against this background that events surrounding Massa must be viewed. Last week we learned via the MSM (Mainstream Media) that the House Ethics Committee was about to look into allegations that Massa had sexually harassed a male member of his staff who had now laid a formal complaint. Massa also learned of this complaint via the MSM and denied any serious wrong-doing but conceded that he often used ‘salty language’ around his staff and that this was a consequence of his naval background. The implication of this allegation is that Massa is a closet homosexual. He is married with children but that does not preclude the possibility that he is bi-sexual. Neither does it preclude the possibility that he is a sick man whose behavior is being affected by cancer. The MSM, normally very protective of Leftists and homosexuals, did not give Massa a good Press. After a few days of denial, Massa announced his retirement from the House, citing first a re-occurrence of his cancer and then an unwillingness to submit his family to the unpleasantness of an enquiry. By retiring immediately the House Ethics enquiry would cease.
Massa might have been expected to go quietly but it may be that Emanuel misjudged the man and his stabilty, for Massa has suddenly exploded with rage and accusations. Now no longer a member of the House he has claimed that all he did in the way of sexual harassment was, after a few drinks at a social occasion, tousle the hair of a man and tell him he would do something to his backside if he didn’t measure up on some task. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that amongst heterosexuals of a certain generation, it is not uncommon to make such remarks that are now considered to be very politically incorrect and ‘insensitive’ to homosexuals. Such remarks do indeed reflect the antipathy and contempt that many heterosexuals harbor about practitioners of sodomy. Massa is now claiming that he has been framed or set up by Emanuel over this incident as a punishment for being a maverick and because his vote would have been decisive on the Health Care Bill in the House.
Massa has gone much further in his accusations. He has claimed that last November, whilst showering in the House gym, a naked Emanuel came up to him, poked Massa’s chest with his finger and shouted abuse and threats at him for not supporting a Finance Bill. Massa claims that Emanuel would, in pursuit of a vote, throw his dearest relatives under a train and uses the crudest of language. This is not hard to believe about a man who has earned a reputation for this in the last year and we can assume that Obama picked his old chum as his Chief of Staff just because he possesses such ‘abilities’.
Massa’s accusations against Emanuel are by implication an attack on Obama, for it is highly unlikely that Emanuel would ‘take out’ a House Democrat without consulting his boss in the White House. Has Massa been framed, as he alleges, and is he really a heterosexual who was just using ‘salty’ language? At this stage we cannot know for sure but this is surely a big news story. Not according to the MSM for I have yet to find any mention of Massa’s detailed accusations anywhere except on the Internet, conservative Talk Radio and FOX News. Several MSM outlets (including the LA Times) have carried featured columnists attacking the character of a once-cherished Democrat. Meanwhile, Massa’s explicit attacks have been repeated and repeated on Talk Radio and are all over the Internet. If this situation had been a Republican issue in the Bush Presidency, does anyone believe that the MSM would have been coy about covering it? No need to answer! One thing is certain the Massa scandal will force itself on the MSM.
Way back on this website, I frequently commented on the Left-slanted news coverage of the Wall Street Journal, a supposedly conservative Newspaper. I often named the journalists of the WSJ and referred to particular news reports that were really clever Leftist propaganda. Many have since moved on from the WSJ (and replaced by other Leftists) to more openly Leftist MSM outlets. One of them is John Harwood who has since worked at CNBC and the New York Times. I saw last week that he is now accused of being involved in a scandalous relationship with Maria Cantwell, a Democrat Senator. One, or both are married and both are in Washington where such scandals are too common to be mentioned unless they involve an enemy of the Left. Still, I was clearly correct about his political inclinations as revealed by his sexual inclinations.
As the onslaught against anti-homosexuals continues across the world and is enveloping the Ugandan Government, I must record just a few of the words that have become part of the Leftist armory and which should warn every reader to beware. Here they are:- ‘Global Community’; ‘Inclusive’; ‘Discriminatory’; ‘Global Equality’; ‘Human Rights’; and ‘Prejudice’! Perhaps website visitors would like to email us the many more that I have missed?
In Barcelona, Spain, yesterday, 20 inches of snow fell in a reminder that the consequences of Global Warming continue to be visited upon us. Here in California we are really shivering just as Al Gore predicted.
I sometimes feel like a musical Rip Van Winkel. Last weekend I was reading in the Arts Pages about the “megasuccessful” rock groups ‘Tool’, ‘A Perfect Circle’ and also ‘Primus’. Then there was mention of the “influential” alt-rock group ‘Pavement’, their “higher-profile” contemporaries ‘Smashing Pumpkins’ and ‘Stone Temple Pilots’. Next I read that ’Aerosmith’s ’drummer was selling his house on the South Shore of Massachusetts for millions. Who were these people? Every week I read about hugely successful rock and pop bands that have made their members rich and yet I have never heard anyone mention them in conversation. I am sure they all make the same noise. The silly band names surely indicate juvenile minds and juvenile listeners but the wealth is real. Serious writers in ‘serious’ newspapers and magazines refer to these thousands of guitar strummers and vocal whiners as musical trailblazers and the word ‘genius’ is greatly employed. Now I know that there are corners of the musical world that have their devotees and I may have missed some of the corners due to age. After all, I have written on this website about Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Art Blakey, Milt Jackson, John Lewis, Wes Montgomery, Clifford Brown, Hampton Hawes and others and I know that they are unknown to most visitors. That is very sad for these musicians really were outstanding by any measure. Any one of them might have justified the use of the word ‘genius’ and for Parker that word is surely wholly inadequate. None of them earned enough to buy expensive houses and none died rich. Sadly, none would have got much exposure in this era of Media Class ascendancy for their music was too adult and mostly too joyous!