Lest We Forget

Here's a great little history lesson from BOB HERBERT in THE NEW YORK TIMES
For those of you who may have forgotten:

The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.

Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.

Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.

Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.

Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.

Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”

It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.

So class is not a Clinton forte.

THANKS BOB!

"What Color is Your Parachute, Hillary?

I’m thinking a lot about broken promises tonight. So indulge me, while I break a promise to you & talk about the campaign for the Presidency.

Tomorrow is the Pennsylvania Primary. Also known as “Hillary’s last stand” (Until the next stand comes along…Indiana anyone?) I am shocked that this whole thing is still going on. Any other candidate who lost 11? 12? Primaries in a row would have already endorsed their opponent & moved on, but not Hillary. And I think she was right to stay in. Tomorrow evening will be her crowning achievement. Already predicted to win by as little as 5 points & as much as 20, Sen. Clinton knows the people of Pennsylvania & so do I.

I was born in a suburb of Philadelphia called Roslyn. But I have always had delusions of grandeur & so said I was from a neighboring town called, Willow Grove. Largely because it sounded better to me & had more swimming pools! There were even a few “Jews” living there; which I thought the ultimate in exotic glamour. After all, as everyone knew, the “Jews” were in Show Business!! But I digress.

My father said “colored people” til the day he died. He died in 1997. Less polite people than my Dad said “the N word” I remember my Grandmother proudly stating that she was voting for (famously racist) Mayor Frank Rizzo, because he would “keep the blacks in line” I didn’t really appreciate that because I didn’t know any “blacks” And actually wouldn’t go to school with any African Americans until the late 80s when I was in college. And I preferred to focus on the fact that Philadelphia was the HOMETOWN of PRINCESS GRACE!!!

James Carville is famously quoted as saying that
“Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh & Philadelphia with Alabama in between” It’s a famous quote because it’s true. But it’s not just the “tween” part. My little hamlet lays just 20 minutes outside Philadelphia, but it may as well be a world away!

I would like to think that in the last 20 years, things, even in the suburbs of Philly, have changed. I would be wrong to think that. In conversations with my Mother, who to this day thinks “Sadam Hussein & “Osama Bin Ladin” are the same person because “THE PRESIDENT told her that” I know the deal. She says she’s voting for Hillary because she just “doesn’t know who this Obama person is, I mean he came out of nowhere!” Nor is she interested in my instruction to go to Obama’s website or to ask me any question on any position & I’ll explain Sen Obama’s thoughts. Nope her mind is made up. As it has been since 1968!

I wish she was alone. But I know women like her are legion in the state & the country. And they all look distressingly like GERALDINE FERARRO if not Hillary herself. These are women who are now widows because their husbands drank too much & died too young. And by God, are they “bitter” But not at Hillary! They would like to reward Clinton for “putting up with it!” Just like they did.

This is not to say that there are not intelligent, thoughtful people of both sexes who simply feel that Hillary Clinton is the best person for the job. There are still way too many gay people, for my liking, who are rabid fans (I guess they don’t recall “Don’t Ask, don’t tell” or worse yet, The Defense of Marriage Act) I mean
LOOK!!! CHELSEA CLINTON GOES TO GAY BARS!!! I think there is still a little something too “Judy Garlandesque” about folks like me identifying with the Clinton Victimology.

So I can delude myself that PA Has changed. Then I read this in The New York Observer:

Gonna Fly Now! Clinton Runs as Rocky In Philly
Pennsylvania Crowd Says It Doesn’t Trust Obama: ‘President Named Barack?’


PHILADELPHIA—“We need her,” Barbara Vizzini, a 46-year-old equipment operator from Middletown, said before Hillary Clinton took the stage at a rally in Fairless Hills Monday night. “If we don’t get her, we’re going to end up with John McCain.”

What about Barack Obama? Why couldn’t he beat the Republican nominee?
“The race thing,” interjected her colleague Daniel Kirner, 52, from Tullytown.
“I mean, a president named Barack?” agreed Ms. Vizzini.

Oh, it gets worse….

“She’s got this one locked,” said Mary Yates, a 67-year-old retired worker in a chemical factory. “No Muslim is going to be president. No drug addict. If Hillary isn’t the one, everyone I know will vote for John McCain.”

And this:

“I don’t like the superdelegate system,” said Mara Volpe, a 54-year-old aide to special-education students, who watched Mrs. Clinton in Fairless Hills. “Would I be really happy if that’s how she won? No. But I would be able to live with that.”
“It’s like our votes don’t count,” said Ms. Vizzini, the equipment operator. “I’m not for it.”

(When told that the superdelegates constituted Mrs. Clinton’s best chance of becoming the nominee, she amended her statement: “Then I’m for it.”)

OR HOW ABOUT THIS?

And consider this little nugget from Monday’s Washington Post, in a story by Kevin Merida and Jose Antonio Vargas datelined Scranton, Pa.:

“Barack Obama’s campaign opened a downtown office here on March 15, just in time for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. It was not a glorious day for Team Obama. Some of the green signs the campaign had trucked in by the thousands were burned during the parade, and campaign volunteers — white volunteers — were greeted with racial slurs.”

And this, my friends, is the Pennsylvania I know. They can look any fact in the eye & quickly deny it. And though they’re smart enough now to deny it or play coy, there is no way they’re going to vote for “the colored guy”

So, I’m praying that Barack can keep her to within 10 points. And of course I’m praying to ST.JUDE Because he’s the patron of the IMPOSSIBLE.

Either way it doesn’t much matter. Short of stealing this election, its simply too late for her to be the nominee. So I say let her have this little triumph gained by appealing to people’s “baser instincts” This son of the City of Brotherly Love is supporting the “Muslim Drug Addict”

Snips & Snails

Check out the above YouTube Video. An hilarious TAB Commercial from the '70s. "You've come a long way baby!" oops that was "Virginia Slims" Cigarettes

Ugh! Just came in from my garden. I plucked 27 snails out of my front flower beds! I hate these little fuc**** What purpose do they serve?
Sure some puff pastry delicacy only a Frenchman could eat. But they are so damn destructive. You all remember my trick for killing them where you lure them into a container placed in the ground & filled with beer (they love it!) And they drown in it. But you have to keep refilling the beer & plucking out their bloated shells-disgusting! I'm trying one of those pet friendly "snail bait" pellets now. I'l let you know if it works.

Christ I almost had a heart attack when I read the tonight's headline: "STRONG CA. QUAKE PREDICTED" Yep they're predicting another "big one" (not the good kind!) for....wait for it....2037! You got it. Nearly 30 years from now. Should we start stock-piling canned goods & non-perishables now?? I still have batteries left over from Y2K (remember that? of course you don't) USC is predicting a quake larger than the Northridge quake in 1994 which was a 6.7 on the Richter Scale. How much did this study cost? Any Angeleno could have told you that "yea the odds of another big quake are pretty high over the next three DECADES!"

This Press Release just sent out over the wire to all Bloggers & Journalists from the CLINTON CAMPAIGN:
*****FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE******
FROM: HILLARY '08


Hillary's Fond Pennsylvania Memories


You know, shortly after I helped my Dad build that log cabin in Scranton, PA with my own, bare, 12 year-old hands; I had a life altering experience! We had just finished a delicious lunch of TYSON Prepared Chicken (which I had created the recipe for & for which Tyson in their gratitude, made me a member of their Corporate Board!) when my Dad decided to teach me how to shoot the new rifle I had just purchased at WAL-MART (for which, in gratitude, THEY appointed me to their Corporate Board!)

Fueled by our traditional meal ender of a "shot & a beer" I picked up the gun & shot myself in the foot!!
My Dad then rushed me to the corner hospital. Being my practical 12 year old self, I was anxious about how we would pay for the medical treatment. My Dad told me not to worry because as a regular "working man" he had something called HEALTH INSURANCE (you bitter, younger listeners won't recall what that was) I was so happy to hear this, that I then vowed to help all the big Health Insurance companies in any way I could! (and for which, in gratitude, can you believe THEY appointed me to their Corporate Boards?!) I then converted to CATHOLICISM so that I could go to Church EVERY Sunday & because I thought it would help me if I ever returned to PA! And here I am!

*****I'm Hillary Clinton & that's my story & I'm Sticking to it!******

Love that Hitch!

Because Christopher Hitchens always manages to say what I'm thinking, only in a smarter more precise way...

I hope all my friends in LAS VEGAS are listening (that is if the lawsuit that wants to disenfranchise voters, supported by Hill&Bill, fails.)

The Case Against Hillary Clinton
Why on earth would we choose to put the Clinton family drama at the center of our politics again?
By Christopher Hitchens
.
Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy "experience"—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim "worked" well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.

Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add."

Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy. Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?


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What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter "Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?" in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton "rapid response" team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues."

One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred "experience" on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main "experience" involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency. But there was another "experience," this time a collaborative one, that is even more significant.

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.

Hello! My Name is NOAH!

I would have blogged sooner but I’ve been looking for a pair of walruses…because that is the last animal I need before I set sail on the ARK I’ve been forced to build. It’s been raining for 3 solid days in L.A. This is the amazing thing about living here. It doesn’t rain for 5 years…& then we get 5 years worth of rain in 3 days!

Do you love the above photo of GIORGIO ARMANI?? The dude is 72 years old & looks great I think! The original pic appeared on a great website called JUST JARED
Then the whole blogosphere picked it up including The HUFFINGTON POST which ran a headless photo so we could guess the 7O yr old body it depicted. Gio is shown wearing an “Armani Speedo” naturally! And one thing it truly demonstrates is something my mother (Mrs. Trainer) always said: “TAN fat looks better than WHITE fat!” She really was a woman ahead of her time.

And you know I love THE HUFFINGTON POST(or HUFFPO as we say)
The brilliant ALEC BALDWIN (truly) is a blogger there. His piece this weekend refers to a writer named ROBERT ELISBERG. Mr. Elisberg also has a Huffpo piece about the SAG boycott of The Golden Globes. Mr. Elisberg’s general opinion of actors is not that high & he tells a funny story about a famous actress.

There's a famous story about a movie written by a legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy writer. After ridiculing the script during filming, one of the stars finally called out, "Whoever wrote this doesn't know how to write comedy!" -- with the author present. He left, wouldn't do rewrites, and the movie bombed.

Alec, in his piece, outs his former wife, KIM BASINGER, as the above critic. The former Mrs. Baldwin is referring to NEIL SIMON who wrote among other classics, THE ODD COUPLE, BILOXI BLUES, THE OUT OF TOWNERS and a hundred other comedy classics; plays & screenplays, that are hallmarks of comedy genius & that have collectively made millions & millions of dollars with the almost sole exception of THE MARRYING MAN starring…you guessed it, ALEC BALDWIN & KIM BASINGER which bombed big time. You could not make this stuff up.

I really do not want this to turn into some kind of political blog. I will just state for the record, that I am a big supporter of SEN. BARACK OBAMA. And I hope that he rides this incredible wave of CHANGE all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Having said that, I am aware of the difficult road ahead. I was made more aware of it when I attended a really fabulous post-holiday (but pre-Iowa) party last week.
I encountered a beautiful woman of “a certain age” (which is the old fashioned way of saying past 50!) We were stranded at the bar. I learned she built her own very successful business from the ground up. She was interesting so I wanted to keep talking to her…”And whom will you be supporting for President this year?” I asked. “HILLARY, of course!” “Because she’s a woman” I asked. “Yes! But I also happen to think she’s the best candidate!” “How about you?” she inquired. “Barack Obama” I volunteered. “Reallllllly?” “You do KNOW that he is a MUSLIM & that if he takes the Oath of Office, he’ll be swearing on a KORAN?” said Lydia (NOT her Real name) “Lydia!” “THAT is a LIE” “Obama is a Christian and would swear on a Bible!” I said. Lydia wasn’t having it. And our brief but volatile friendship came to a quick end. But there you have it! A beautiful, intelligent, successful, white, woman repeating some heinous canard that she read online somewhere as if it were fact! Yea. We’re in for a long, ugly haul! But God willing…truth & justice & change will prevail

TheGayGardener’s Slogan of “SWEET PEAS & PEACE” has never seemed more meaningful…at least to me!

"Taking Mama to School"

I don't want to piss off or alienate anyone of you, my faithful friends, but if you don't think that this country is in a heap of trouble & that we need a seismic change, then you haven't been paying attention! And, please God, tonight in Iowa that change has begun. I give you the words of our poet laureate, PEGGY NOONAN, in the Wall Street Journal:

And so it begins.

We wanted exciting, we got exciting.

As this is written, late on the night of the caucuses, the outlines of the decisions seem clear: Barack Obama won.

Hillary Clinton, the inevitable, the avatar of the machine, lost.

It's huge. Even though people have been talking about this possibility for six weeks now, it's still huge. She had the money, she had the organization, the party's stars, she had Elvis behind her, and the Clinton name in a base that loved Bill. And she lost. There are always a lot of reasons for a loss, but the Ur reason in this case, the thing it all comes down to? There's something about her that makes you look, watch, think, look again, weigh and say: No.

She started out way ahead, met everyone, and lost.

As for Sen. Obama, his victory is similarly huge. He won the five biggest counties in Iowa, from the center of the state to the South Dakota border. He carried the young in a tidal wave. He outpolled Mrs. Clinton among women.

He did it with a classy campaign, an unruffled manner, and an appeal on the stump that said every day, through the lines: Look at who I am and see me, the change that you desire is right here, move on with me and we will bring it forward together.

He had a harder row to hoe than Mrs. Clinton did. He was lesser known, too young, lacked an establishment. He had to knock her down while building himself up. (She only had to build herself up until the end, when she went after his grade-school essays.) His takedown of Mrs. Clinton was the softest demolition in the history of falling buildings. I think we were there when it happened, in the debate in which he was questioned on why so many of Bill Clinton's aides were advising him. She laughed, and he said he was looking forward to her advising him, too. He took mama to school.

And so something new begins on the Democratic side.

BREAKING NEWS:

Something sadly not so new is the continued downward spiral of BRITNEY SPEARS. As this is written, police, fire & emergency personnel have been called to B.S. Studio City home where she apparently is refusing to obey the court ordered visitation agreement & hand over the kids to K-FED. Oh & her latest team of lawyers fired her yesterday. sad.

TMZ

Dancing With The "Men In Trees"

Ok, I am still bitter than ALBERT REED had to be unjustly sacrificed to give WAYNE NEWTON another week; but at least justice was served this evening when Newton was sent packing. Dancing With The Stars is soo addicting, isn’t it? I love that JENNY GARTH redeemed herself with that tango. And grieving JANE SEYMOUR looked fabulous in her short wig. But My God! All that makeup on all those women…they looked like hookers at a MARY KAY Convention.
One Big Question” What the hell was ANNE HECHE doing there?
I know DWTS is an ABC show as is Anne’s MEN IN TREES, but still…can you spell VELVEETA?

ROB REINER used to direct Feature Films. But apparently his phone has not rung that much lately so now he’s shilling for HILLARY CLINTON. You can click on the link below & se R.R.’s latest effort (if you must) Now if only PENNY MARSHALL would direct an OBAMA video this could possibly be semi-interesting.

Meathead Loves Hillary

It won’t be too long till we’ll be hearing Christmas Carols in the stores.
Since I’ve already seen Christmas trees on September 14th in KMART, as I mentioned. Please don’t forget that TheGayGardener can be your little elf for the whole season. Need a scary tableau for Halloween? A sumptuous Harvest Table for Thanksgiving? Or even a properly lit & hung (!) Christmas Tree? Please contact me & ask about our TheGayGardener’s Tabletops & Bottoms Services.
You’ll be glad you did!