Chris von Keyserling Goes National

RTM member, Chris von Keyserling, on his way to full membership in the Tod Akin Club!

I knew this story had, shall we say, legs, when the details started to “evolve”. First it was a pinch on the buttocks, then it became “the groin area”, and finally, the media has settled on “genitals”. And the perpetrator, Chris von Keyserling, was quickly promoted!

His actual position as one of 225 members of Greenwich’s Representative Town Meeting, was determined to be not good enough for the media’s purposes, so he immediately became a “Republican official’, then that was improved to a “Republican politician”, and now, in addition to the last two, he’s risen to “Chair of the RTM”. Isn’t it amazing how, with a little media help, his career is improving!

Oh, and the incident occurred at our local old folks home (Nathaniel Witherell Center), but that was deemed an odd, possibly harmful detail, so now it’s become “an unnamed Town facility”.

Why all this trouble to “groom” the story? Why is it about to get the full NATIONAL MEDIA treatment? Because, unfortunately for the eccentric, often amusing Mr.von Keyserling, he has voluntarily provided all the ingredients of an irresistible story-line.

Whether you’re a recent graduate of the Howard Zynn School of Journalism, or a grizzled news veteran plugging away at your little New York Times cubical, you wake up each day with the identical agenda. It’s not actually written on parchment, framed, and hung on the wall of every newsroom in the country, but it doesn’t need to be, it’s understood by all…

Anything that embarrasses, disparages, or destroys Republicans will be immediately placed at the top of the news list.

Every day of their working lives, eager reporters sit and wait for something, anything that fulfills this mission. Whatever it is, whoever it is, they can use it.

And it doesn’t matter how obscure the political figure is.  Think Tod Akin, unknown Missouri US Representative, who made the idiotic remark that “legitimate rape doesn’t cause pregnancy”. Or remember that poor sap, Idaho Senator Larry Craig, caught nudging his foot against another chap’s in an airport men’s room? Or Congressman Mark Foley, discovered sending little love notes to a male intern? You wouldn’t know any of those names if they’d been Democrats, and their stories, if they were exposed at all, would never have travelled beyond the borders of their individual states. Sadly for them, they were Republicans, so they were elevated to national status.

So, sorry Chris, old chum, but that’s the world we live in. You have unfortunately become “useful” to the media machine, and you will now be used and used, until a better story comes along!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Trump Press Conference

Like me, you are endlessly fascinated by politics, to the point where you even go to YouTube and watch old JFK press conferences, which are really, really entertaining.

But there’s a difference between those days and the situation today. The press loved JFK and you can see and hear it in these videos. In contrast, the press has a deep, DEEP hatred and fear of Donald Trump, and in fact, it is their (latest) attempt to destroy him that prompted this press conference.

The video runs over an hour, but I think it’s the most compelling live-history I’ve ever experienced. This story about Trump and his alleged escapades at a Moscow hotel is classic political warfare, and the way he has handled it is very much worth watching.

P.S. At minute-25, Trump turns over the microphone for a few minutes as lawyer Sheri Dillon painstakingly explains the extreme measures Trump has taken to isolate himself from his businesses so as to avoid any possibility, any semblance of conflict of interest. Ms. Dillon is impressive, and her presentation is fascinating all by itself. If Bill and Hillary could have done even 1/100th of this, Hill would be the president-elect today.

 

Too busy to watch the video? Here’s Liz Peek’s excellent summation: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/11/liz-peek-most-impressive-aspect-trumps-first-press-conference-in-2017.html

 

 

Greenwich Legend, Cos Cob Hero: Dave Theis Memorial

Young Dave Theis warming up for polo practice as a wee lad in Cos Cob.

Everything you need to know about Selectman Dave Theis could be learned from taking a look around Christ Church Saturday morning. The place was packed to the rafters, people standing in the aisles and waiting outside, an absolutely amazing display of how many people’s lives were touched by him. His nick-name was “Coach” because that’s what he did, he coached you to be your best, and made you feel you were one of his special friends. How he made thousands of us feel we were one of his “special” friends, I don’t know, but he did it.

So anyway, fine memorial, maybe a bit too long, but that’s usually the case with these things. My travel agent, and Dave’s longtime companion, Kerrin Coyle, set up a slide show in the reception hall featuring her best pictures of Dave being Dave. Honestly, I think I liked the slide show better than the speeches.

One surprisingly moving moment was when the squadron of Greenwich cops in full dress uniform stood in formation outside saluting in the freezing wind as two others ceremoniously folded a Town of Greenwich flag and presented it to Kerrin and Dave’s sister.

Oh, and the “bugle salute”! Christopher Hughes played Taps spectacularly. Taps is always poignant, but Hughes elevated it to something new, with the individual notes reverberating in that cathedral, floating around so beautifully, it was particularly powerful.

If you ever happen to find yourself in charge of a Gideon Fountain memorial, you could do worse than to copy Dave Theis’s. I want the cops, the firemen, the bugle guy. Oh, and I want the entire front row to be taken up by hot looking “tootsies”, as my granny used to call ’em, all dressed in black, crying into handkerchiefs. If there are no volunteers, for goodness sake, hire actresses or real estate agents or something…think outside the casket, people!

Fire Department salute to Dave Theis.

Police Department flag presentation ceremony.

 

Greenwich’s New Police Cruiser: Creepy Uniformity?

The new Greenwich Police vehicles will look like this:

Black & white, just like everyone else’s.

The color’s fine, I guess, but have you noticed that all the towns around us have adopted the same look? Are we perhaps inching towards some sort of “National Police Force”? I’d prefer that we don’t.

Putin vs. Obama

Ol’ Vlad, takin’ charge. I don’t like this guy one bit and I wish we had someone who could face him down.

Morning talk-show host Mark Simone (WOR 710 on your AM dial) places way too much significance on appearances, in my opinion, but he made a good point this morning about the difference between the image of Vladimir Putin, seen here, exiting a helicopter yesterday with some of his military honchos, and the usual image of President Obama, seen wearing Dad jeans. One guy looks formidable, the other….not so much.

I’m not saying America needs to be led by a “strongman”, far from it. We don’t need a dictator, or anyone who desires to be one, but it’s a tad alarming to see what we’re up against, and what we’ve got.

NOT! Chrysler Pulls The Plug On Best Super Bowl Ad

UPDATE: It turns out, I may have been overly harsh with ol’ Chrysler. What happened, I think, is that they wanted their link to be the official one for re-views of this great commercial. I suppose, maybe, kinda, that is semi-reasonable of them….

Ha! Here I was thinking admiring thoughts about Chrysler, not only for having the good sense to produce such a good, effective commercial, but also because that commercial actually had changed my perception of them.  But no, I take it all back, they’re still fools, and I will continue to shun their cars and trucks.

As seen below, they’ve invoked a “copyright infringement” claim against this tiny blog, and, I am sure, all the other sites around the world that had the audacity to promote Chrysler products because…too many people were watching their commercial and having good thoughts about Chrysler?

Brilliant, just brilliant.

UPDATE:

Aww, screw ’em! Here, I’ve re-posted the %#@&-ing commercial! (Let’s see if they bother to pull it again)

Murdered For His Range Rover…Sorry, No Outrage Allowed

Patent attorney, Dustin Friedland, murdered by swine.

Had Dustin Friedland been alone, he probably would have handed over the keys to his car without a struggle, but his wife was in the car, so he likely felt he could not cooperate with the fiends pointing a gun at him. They shot him in the head, and his body fell, convulsing  on the cement floor of a parking garage.

We’ll soon learn that the assailants have been provided food, shelter, and medical care for their entire lives (paid for by tax-payers like Friedland) and their punishment, if actually caught and convicted, will be 10-12 years in jail, where they will be provided food, shelter, and medical care.

But there will be no protests in the streets, no calls for investigations of the judge or judges who, it will be revealed, let these two scum off with light or no prison sentences for multiple previous offenses.

Former Newark Mayor Corey Booker, who presided over the killers’ hometown for the last seven years, will not be criticized or questioned about this. Booker, who entered office with Newark occupying its usual place on the most-dangerous cities of America list, a position it maintains today, has instead been rewarded by being elected to the US Senate.

As is always the case with massive government failures, there are never any consequences for our government representatives. In front of microphones and cameras, they will shake their heads and declare that this sort of thing is a “tragedy”, it “could not have been prevented”, and then they’ll renew their calls for stricter gun-controls, because the last thing we would want would be armed citizens, fully capable of defending themselves against monsters.

Realtors Gone Wild

Manhattan brokers, Dianne Dunne and Barbara Stone, each raked in $1.9M for helping unload a hot painting. Meanwhile, broker Gideon Fountain handles summer rentals; where’s the justice?

Holy &%@#! A couple of Manhattan real estate agents  from The Corcoran Group got paid $1.9M each for assisting in the sale of one of Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” series for $43M. The painting was formerly owned by ousted Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos* and his wife, Imelda.

*Ol’ Ferdinand, you’ll recall, was accused of complicity in the assassination of a political opponent and looting the public treasury of billions of dollars. How was this behavior different from, say, Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro, Yassar Arafat, and the many, many other corrupt foreign leaders? Marcos was pro-Western! That, above all, was his unpardonable sin.

D.C. Massacre, Media Scrambles To Determine Story’s “Usefulness”

D.C. shooter, Aaron Alexis, wisely chose a “gun-free zone” to conduct his rampage in.

Like me, you watch with fascination and horror every day, as the dominant media, including almost every single televison network, radio station, news bureau, print magazine, and Internet news site, searches endlessly for stories that will reinforce their message of government as the source of all that is good. And because they are obsessed with race, they also look for stories that promote the idea of rampant racism among whites, sometimes to the point of comical absurdity, as in the case of Sanford, Florida shooter, George Zimmerman, being described as a “white Hispanic”.

So today’s story of the murders at a Navy facilty in Washington, D.C. must surely have represented a huge dissappointment to most of the media. Desperately hoping for a white, right-wing “tea-party type”, they instead get a black man from Texas, likely a disgruntled employee, who went insane.

That leaves only one angle for MSNBC and the rest to fall back on, the old reliable “We must disarm all Americans now” theme. As it happens, everyone in that facility was disarmed, with no possibilty of defending themselves from a madman. That’s what they want for the rest of us.