December 16, 2009 | Comments
We’ve known all along, especially in the days since the November 2008 election, that our so-called “representatives” in Washington, DC, believe themselves to be “better” than the rest of us peons. That they are above the law or any rules whatsoever (including those outlined in the United States Constitution); that they, by benefit of their inherent superiority, are deserving of royal, first-class treatment; that they are entitled to Cadillac health care for life while they saddle the rest of us with blue pills, rationing and death panels; that they have the right to rob us blind and sentence our children to a lifetime of debt…the list just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on…
None of this is what we call a best-kept secret, but this last weekend, as he sat on a plane, waiting to travel home to New York from DC, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made the arrogance of the United States Congress (and by extraction, the current Presidential administration, for which the majority of said Congress carries water), official. When a flight attendant, just doing her job, asked the Senator to turn off his phone before takeoff – as flight attendants ask every passenger – the miffed Senator failed to comply.
When the Senator finally did obey the flight attendant’s repeated instructions, he rewarded her by describing her to his seatmate, fellow Senator Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY), as a “bitch.” Nice. At least he didn’t bellow, “Do you know who I am!?” (although I wish he had).
Knowing he couldn’t try to deny his faux pas – too many witnesses – Schumer has issued the typical apologies, blah, blah, blah. Don’t know why he bothered, really. He knows full well that he’ll be re-elected by fatally blue New York. Seatmate Gillibrand has offered her own weak statements of support for Schumer, blah, blah, blah, though her days as a New York Senator, Hillary’s appointed replacement, are probably numbered anyway, especially if “America’s Mayor” Rudy decides to oppose her.
So life goes on, just as we might have predicted. Schumer admits publicly his superiority – and suffers none of the consequences or repercussions that would fall upon us inferior peons should we ever deign to defy a flight attendant’s request. I just have to wonder, though: How might the fair Senator have described the flight attendant if “she” had been a “he” – and a gay “he,” at that? Now that would have been a fallout worth watching.
Betsy Siino | Comments






I Always Knew God Had a Sense of Humor
December 19, 2009 | Comments (0)December 19, 2009 | Comments
Oh those poor climate-concerned diplomats, politicians and dictators. Here they take time out of their busy schedules to make the pilgrimage to Copenhagen to save our lives and the future of our planet from the perils of man-made global warming, and look what happens: record cold and blizzards thwart their noble mission! Our own President and Madam Pelosi had to schedule their carbon-heavy luxury flights to Europe around this pesky snow and wind, only to return stateside to more of the same. Does Mother Nature have no shame?
I sure hope she doesn’t. And God either. Indeed I like to think that God, like so many of us out here in common-sense land, has gotten fed up with the nimrods speaking for him and believing that we mere mortals are somehow more powerful than the beautiful, powerful planet He made. And because I have believed since I was a tiny child that God has a sense of humor, I can’t help but giggle and believe that He has chosen a most eloquent way of expressing his displeasure with those arrogant souls who would deign to use him in this way for their own selfish goals.
Indeed God and Mother Nature have sent you diplomats, politicians and dictators, including the President of the United States and the woman we call the Speaker of the House, an undeniable, unmistakable message. What in record snows in Copenhagen, more of it in DC, January-like temps in the rest of the country and even snow in Australia do they not understand?
Yet still you drone on about the dangers, the melting, the burning, the inequity, the income distribution, the ultimatums –and without a shred of shame in the shrill voices struggling to be heard through the howling blizzard winds that swirl around you.
So, what will it take for our own voices to break through the cones of silence they have erected around themselves? Nothing, I suppose, because they simply are not listening. But we the people are listening. And, despite the rhetoric and propaganda that we can hear with crystalline clarity though the wind and snow, we know this has nothing to do with conservation or rainforests or polar bears. This is about power and control and a dangerous transformation of the fabric and fiber of our great nation. And though their drive to destroy us is downright frightening, we find it hilarious that God has decided to give them a spanking – and such an eloquently vivid spanking, at that. So enjoy the snow and enjoy the frigid climes, oh dense and arrogant ones. I can tell you we certainly are – and without need of embarrassment or manipulation, but always with a clear sense of humor.
Betsy Siino | Comments