"That Son of a Bitch!"

After the 3 radio stations I managed in LA were sold…that made a total of 6 sold in 11 years. I’d had it with the radio business….

Of course, I decided to take one more shot.

I bundled together the money, made an offer on a station in Boston, the guy accepted the offer, we shook hands on the deal. My lawyer sent him a purchase agreement. 

This was Thursday, I was excited as hell. I flew home to LA on Friday morning, I was a little hung over from the celebration with Sharp in Boston on Thursday night, but I was good.

My wife picked me up at LAX, we stopped at Pann’s for lunch. I had chicken and waffles, she had a salad. We laughed, we made plans and decided we’d move to either Beverley or Marblehead. I voted  for living in the Back Bay again, but somehow in a democracy of two, she has more votes than I do.

I waited the entire weekend for the purchase agreement to show up, I was supposed to get the document via email and then a signed hard copy to sign and send back with a 10% deposit. I didn’t get it Friday or Saturday. I didn’t get it on Sunday. I called him at noon pacific time on Monday.

He answered his phone on the 8^th ring.

“Oh hi, I was just going to call you.” He said.

“Hey man I haven’t got the purchase agreement yet.”

“Well, I ah…ahh.”

“Do we have a problem?”

“Well, uh huh, yes.” he says. I could smell the sweat from all the way across the country.

“If you tell me what the hang up is, let’s get it fixed.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve sold the station already.”

“What? You already sold it to me last Thursday. We had a god damned deal, you and Sharpie and I pounded it over breakfast, we agreed on everything. For Christ’s sake, you sat there and made a deal with me and you were working another deal at the same time?”

“Not really.” He sounded nervous.

“What do you mean not really, what did you do, use our agreement to leverage more money from another buyer? I’ve known you for 15 fucking years, you’ve eaten at my house, you’ve been over at Christmas. My wife thinks you walk on water. We’ve hung out together, I sat by your hospital bed when everybody thought you were going to die from a god damn stroke…and this how you fuck with your friend?”

“It isn’t like that, not at all, I uh, kind of had this going on before we talked and uh…”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“It kind of came up after we talked last week.”

“We didn’t just talk, we made a deal, we forged an agreement and we shook hands on it. It was done.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry enough to complete our deal?”

“I can’t, the other deal is done.” He said.

“How much more money did you get?”

“Way less money.”

“What, you sold it for less money?”

“I sold it to the Archdiocese, for 250 grand cash and a 1.9 million dollar tax credit, plus they are going to rent the tower site from me and pay a monthly fee for program production and studio rental. They signed a ten year deal on the studio and a 25 year deal on the tower site.”

“I hope you and Jesus get along….and I hope his checks are good.”

I hung up the phone. I was pissed. The minute I set it down, Sharpe the broker called from New York.

“Did you get the agreement back yet?”

“No. He fucked me and you at the same time.”

I told Sharp the entire story, when I finished he said, “That son of a bitch.”

I hadn’t hung up from Sharpe for more than a couple of minutes when the phone rang again. It was a guy I’d worked for early in my career, he called to congratulate me on becoming a station owner, I told him the story, when I finished, he said, “That son of a bitch.”

I took the dog to the park and threw the ball for him until my arm damn near fell off, I got back, checked my phone, two messages. I called back, told them what happened and guess what? The son of a bitch thing. Both times.

When my wife got home, I told her the story of my day. She didn’t say anything, she got up poured herself a glass of wine, came back into my office. She looked at me and said, “That son of a bitch.”

Former GOP Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert...what a guy!

From the "Sick, Twisted, Bastards" files...from Lawyers, Guns and Money's Shakezula:

I’m not sure Dennis Hastert’s supporters are doing him any favors.

Federal prosecutors portray former House Speaker Dennis Hastert as a serial child molester who agreed to pay millions to cover up his shameful secrets — but former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay describes him as a man of “strong faith” and “great integrity.

(The notorious crook says you’re A-OK? You’re free to go.)

"We all have our flaws, but Dennis Hastert has very few,” DeLay wrote to Hastert’s sentencing judge.

(And such small portions! Or something.)

"He is a good man that loves the Lord. He gets his integrity and values from Him. He doesn’t deserve what he is going through.”

(And after the Lord drove out the moneylenders, he did pocket all of the shekels he could grab, for some of the younger disciples were threatening to tell.)

Apparently Hastert’s one-man crusade against Title IX is also a good thing?

Leo Kocher, the head wrestling coach at the University of Chicago and an associate professor there, wrote that Hastert helped when the U.S. Department of Education created a strong incentive to eliminate intercollegiate athletic opportunities through Title IX.

“He never said no when it came to his being able to help in any way to stem the senseless devastation of non-scholarship sports opportunities,” Kocher wrote, adding Hastert “was driven in this by pure concern for, and loyalty to, the youth — boys and girls — whose development was at stake.”

(Yeah, probably don’t want to mention his concern for the youth.)

And from Mrs. Hastert.

“If one of his students or wrestlers ever needed anything of him, he would be there for them, and he was never happier than when he could watch someone he helped succeed,” Jean Hastert wrote.

(OK, she’s just trying to get him killed.)

FYI, If Hastert has slipped your mind, when he was a high school wrestling coach, he like to “play” with his wrestlers.

Don't Get Fooled Again.

The other night when Chris Matthews pushed Trump on Choice, The Donald got lost. The other two Republicans waffled, Ted Cruz said of course a woman wouldn't be punished, so did John Kasich. Never the less they both want to ban abortion, using the word "ban" is a softer way of saying illegal.

If abortion is illegal, there would have to be a law against it. How would you write a law that has no penalties? None of the Republican candidates have an answer for that question, because the issue, until the other night, hasn't come up. The Pro-Life people have been used as a useful voting bloc. Republicans get them all riled up with promises about getting rid of Roe v Wade and the Pro Life people vote for them. Useful tools.

If abortion is against the law, every pregnancy would have to be monitored from conception to birth. Who would do the monitoring of every pregnant woman in America? The cops? Would there be a Federal department created to do the monitoring or would it be left to the states?

In 2015 there were 3,999,386 children born in the US. Think about that number because it's obvious the Republican Presidential candidates haven't.

All three talk about education, of the three only Kasich, as the governor of Ohio,  has had to deal with education directly. When Kasich took office Ohio had the 5th best schools in America, He initiated his "reforms" and now Ohio schools are ranked 23rd. Good job. Kasich wants to get rid of the US Department of Education, probably to duck the monitoring and ranking of student success. Trump and Cruz agree, the Department of Education has to go along with those nasty, unhappy, overpaid teachers..

Ted Cruz wants to abolish the IRS, make the tax codes simpler and easy to use, of course he also wants to lower rates on the highest incomes. Somebody needs to ask the "Tailgunner Ted" who is going to collect the new, lower, simpler and easier taxes if we have no IRS. Is he going to create a new department? From scratch?

The pundits all say Trump is a "New Kind" of candidate, he is not. All three are peddling the same old Republican orthodoxy the party has been selling since Reagan.

If you want to know what the US would look like and be like with Republicans controlling all three branches of government take a peek at Kansas and Louisiana... .

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/kansas_state_budget_situation.html

Those two states aren't alone.

These fcking people drive me crazy!

Go Frack Yourself

 

It was recently announced that California has shale oil reserves that are larger than the Bakken Field. Cali has been producing oil since the 1860’s. Drive on 101 or the 5 and you can see the pumps, the tanks and the pipe lines. Oil has been part of the California economy for a long, long time. Because of that we don’t buy the oil company bullshit like the rubes in other parts of the country do.

 

That's a photo of Long Beach's Signal Hill rigs, Beverley Hills high school has an active rig on the campus, drive from north of Santa Barbara to Ventura on the Pacific Coast Highway and you'll see off shore rigs. We have plenty of experience with oil company behavior.

 

To get the shale oil out of the ground, fracking is required. Our legislature wants the oil companies to let the people of California know just exactly what is in the fracking fluid used to extract the oil. The oilmen shit their drawers and scream, “It’s a trade secret! If other companies know what’s in our fracking fluid we’ll lose our competitive edge.” Ahh, bullshit.

 

In addition to being an oil producer, California is the number one ag state in the nation. Growing food requires water. There is a good case to made that fracking fluid just might screw up our already limited supplies of water. Hey, you don’t want fresh fruit in the winter, how about lettuce and tomatoes, you can do without salads in the winter, can’t you? You don’t like asparagus anyway. The problem is oil and gas producers are exempt from EPA regulations as far as water testing is concerned. Gee, i wonder how they got that done?

Big Oil’s position is easily explained by this quote from Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon-Mobil addressing the companies’ shareholders

                                     "What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?"

Hey, Rex! Go fuck yourself, you entitled prick. You don’t think humanity, what’s left of it, won’t suffer when the average temp notches up a few more degrees and most of the SW US is unable to support life? Of course your future dependents will be living in air conditioned domes or underground while the average shithead will baking in the unrelenting heat and all of those mansions in Miami will be artificial reefs. Of course the entire eco-system of the ocean will be so fucked up we’ll be lucky if the many 6500 sq foot artificial reefs have any fish swimming the god damned home theaters, 9 bathrooms or 5 car garages.

This is what happens when big oil operates without rules, this is a spill in the Niger Delta:

 

The United Nations figures this will take 30 years to clean up. If you think that wouldn't happen here without oversight, your either as crooked as the Nigerian oligarchs or as naive as a North Dakota state legislator!

There's good reason that so many science fiction villains are corporate pricks like Rex!

Keep your Religion to Yourself, Dammit!

When I was a kid in the 50's (the mythical time, that didn't exist) if a person wore their religion on their sleeve or talked about it all the time, they were considered a nut case.

Once when I was in grade school, a friend's mom put a whacky religious tract in my jacket pocket. My mother found it and was really pissed, so pissed she called the kid's mom and reamed her. At the time my mom was a Sunday School teacher. The kid's mom was nuts. By the way, Mom stopped going to church in her 50's. She remained by all standards a good woman. My last good act for her was to stop the hired minister at the graveyard from playing Amy Grant tunes on a god damned boom box as she was lowered in the ground.

My grandmother was a church musician, she played at as many as three church services on Sunday mornings. When I stayed at the farm with she and grandpa, I'd get dragged along to the services with her. Grandpa would stay home and read the paper. I was exposed to the old Missouri Synod Lutheran theology which consisted of "you are all sinners, you're going to hell as sure as I'm standing at this pulpit and there is nothing that is going to save you from burning for eternity". I would sit and watch the farm families flinch and duck at the minister's words. When it was over, you always knew when it was over because the minister shouted "God is Love!" The farmers, their wives and children would slink out the door of the church and head home apparently filled with peace and wonderment. Not a smile in sight. On the way home or to another church, my gram would never say a word about the sermon, she'd just stare straight ahead and keep the Oldsmobile pointed down the road. I asked her one Sunday why the minister was so mean to the people all she said was, "I don't think he really spends much time reading the New Testament." and she continued to drive.

When I was in high school my girlfriend would go to church every Sunday and to Luther League every week. I know because I'd pick her up after LL and we'd go park. I can't recall ever having a conversation about religion with her or if she ever brought it up, she just went to church because that's what she was supposed to do. I told her mother I'd dropped out of confirmation class in the 7th grade and never went to church anymore, she didn't mind, nor did anyone in my family.

I got married too young to a nice catholic girl, we were married by a judge. A baby and just over a year past and she 'needed" to get our marriage sanctified by the church. The boss priest said we needed to go to marriage instructions, so we did. Our priest instructor was slightly older than we were and knew nothing about relationships, sex or marriage at all. He had a real problem keeping his eyes off my wife's legs during our sessions and she obviously made him very nervous. In retrospect his interest in my wife was a good thing because he probably kept his hands off the altar boys as his career progressed in the Holy Roman Church. Years later when the sex abuse scandal broke in the Boston Archdiocese. A priest who had a 25 year relationship with a woman and produced two daughters was considered one of the good guys. (Of course, Cardinal Law is still not in jail. the dirty bastid.)

At my Dad's funeral, once again with a hired gun minister, who didn't know the old man at all said during the ceremony, "And now our soloist will sing one of Robert's favorite hymns" as the organist intro'ed the Old Rugged Cross. My sisters and I broke out laughing. Duke Ellington's Take the A Train, anything by the Dorsey Brothers or Glen Miller would have been more appropriate for dear old Dad.

When I was a kid, nobody in their right mind took Oral Roberts seriously, much less the other men of god on the tee vee or radio. My friends and I would listen to Dr. Michelson's Hebrew Christian Hour on the radio and try to imitate his accent and make the spittle fly like he did when he got wound up towards the end of his daily 15 minute semi-anti-Semitic rants. His show was on a Top 40 station and a Roy Orbison tune would segue right into his show and he'd finish and some other early rock ditty would would start up after the 'Channel 7-90" jingle would play.

Today it seems to perfectly all right to shove religion up in other's faces, to condemn folks who don't have the same belief system as you do. For churches to back political candidates openly from the pulpit and over the air or in print, for Churches to provide funds for anti gay marriage legislation or to  promote the overturn of Roe v. Wade and even promote anti-contraception legislation.

Today we have the Republican Party backing candidates who attempt to define rape into hair splitting categories or saying things like if a woman gets pregnant from a rape it's god's will that she should carry that little "gift from god"....they are all hypocrites, all of them.Their God must really be a dick.

Remember what Barry Goldwater said about Jerry Falwell? I'll tell ya, Barry said "Falwell needs a swift kick in the ass." So does Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson,Tony Perkins, James Dobson, the entire hierarchy of the Catholic Church, all of the old white guys ensconced in the Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City, the Southern Baptists and all the rest who use the old and new testaments as a personal fucking menu.

George Carlin once said "the ten commandments are bullshit, you only need one, don't lie"

Think about it.

The Saint and the Sociopath

Paterno, along with other high university officials, spent at least thirteen years carefully      covering up and enabling Jerry Sandusky’s ongoing serial rape

I'll leave today's post to Paul Campos of Lawyers, Guns & Money, its worth the read!

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/

After the Louis Freeh Report on Penn State can we have him move on to the Catholic  Church? Have him start in Boston! Please!