Charlie's Books

Charlie's Books
Buon Giorno, Amici!

Our motto ...

Leave the (political) party. Take the cannoli.

"It always seems impossible until it's done." Nelson Mandela

Right now 6 Stella crime novels are available on Kindle for just $.99 ... Eddie's World has been reprinted and is also available from Stark House Press (Gat Books).

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

This one is for Doc (to get his blood flowing again) ...

Amici:

The Doc’s recent trip to Disney with his wife, daughter and granddaughter has left him a bit run down ... what with no booze allowed in the park and marijuana sniffing pooches every ten feet, the compassionate one was forced to mingle with the dwarfs and wait on lines (and without his ability to twice weekly insult the ugly one, his beloved New York State Buffalo Bills (who didn’t lose last week) and/or our faltering fast President). So, with Doc in mind, here we go ...

The Tea Party ... it’s a great idea and something many Americans can relate to in these terrible economic times, but the problem with the movement has to do with the apparently batshit candidates who have come to its forefront (see link below). Even if you were to give people like Sara Palin a pass (and TK doesn’t) for having zero knowledge of the world at large (home or abroad), some of the other candidates are downright scary (i.e., Paladino, Angle, O’Donnell, et al). And let’s face it, when candidates are so scary or unknowledgeable as to make Sara Palin seem “pass worthy”, your movement is in deep shit.

Deep shit or batshit?


Watching Wall Street get bailed out with our money by the bozos they own in our government (the same ones we elect over and over and over again), brought a new level of frustration to the American workforce. Nothing quite like the frustration the French are showing these days (imagine having a 4 week vacation and a 60 year retirement age?) The French are revolting over a two year hike in the retirement age and while we might find that greedy, the French have no shortage of millionaires of their own.

Labor there isn’t so quick to acquiesce and whatever happens in France regarding the proposed upward adjustment to their retirement age, here we’ve been given the shaft by a government that not only doesn’t provide national health insurance, it bends over backwards to placate corporations at the expense of its workforce.

While we have zero problem with candidates without a Harvard or Yale degree or who can’t cite Supreme Court cases or who may have a checkered past (to include, drugs, alcohol, an arrest record and/or infidelity), we do have a problem with candidates who say things that are either silly or crazy. There is no denying that those with the Ivy League degrees and high profile corporate backgrounds are the ones who’ve bailed out Wall Street, got us into wars we can’t seem to get out of and ignored and denied basic constitutional rights (i.e., gays to marry, serve in the military without denying their sexuality, etc.). The same highbrows have allowed corporations to ruin local economies and the environment (i.e., BP). Both the previous and current administrations are the ones who permitted (and continue to permit) corruption and waste and the fleecing of America.

I know of several people without Washington qualifications who have been incredibly successful ... several from little old Canarsie (Starbucks, Howard Shultz; the Cerami brothers, Tom and Joe (one an ex-marine and corporate executive, the other a West Point Graduate and professor in Texas; Frank Morogiello, an Executive with American Airlines in Dallas and Lou Montella, an executive with a freight carrier).

Common sense is a good thing, no doubt, but the Tea Party has become nothing short of scary. The fact the GOP has now become dependent on its support is even scarier. The only lesson we think liberal democrats might take from the tea party movement is that there really is a way to influence the DNC ... but that would require liberal democrats growing a pair of balls and that just doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Instead, liberal democrats here have taken to following the lead of a party that ignores them by bashing the irrelevant on the other side of the political aisle and focusing all their energy on rewarding the same people who have ignored them to the point of labeling them the “professional left.”

And, of course, they ignore the following ...



Goldman Sachs reported net revenues of $8.9 billion and net earnings of $1.90 billion for its 3Q. Goldman Sachs thanks you, President Obama ... and obviously President Obama has thanked Goldman Sachs right back.

Campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs employees to President Obama are nearly seven times as much as President Bush received from Enron workers, according to numbers on OpenSecrets.org.



And then there’s this guy ...



“They’re gonna get what they voted for.”

Tell me about it, brother.

—Knucks