Gerald Ford and other thoughts

Gerald Ford goes the way of James Brown. There is an old saw that “they come in threes” which isn’t really true except that if you wait long enough after a famous person dies – two more will pop off.

Gerald’s major act as president was to pardon Richard Nixon. An act that I remember totally and completely pissed me off when I heard about it and didn’t sit any better in my craw as Nixon wormed his way back to being “an elder statesman” instead of the “convicted and imprisoned national disgrace”. Now while I think it is a dead solid cert that there was a deal cut it was still a bad idea. The total purging of Richard Nixon’s brand of “what the president does is right” thinking from the body politic of America would at the very least prevented Nixon from re-emerging from the sewer (tell us how you really feel bob) and could have at least given a bit of a brake to the current occupant’s rush towards government by presidential decree and signing statement.

Oddly enough Ford was also on the Warren commission – which closed the book on the JFK murder as quickly as they could. I have grave doubts that the official story is true – however I’m not of a mind to proscribe an active cover up to the Warren commission, I thnk there was this “we got a shooter, he's dead, we have a traumatized country, let’s get this over with quickly” mindset. An example of the rush thinking that I remember off the top of my head– in the bio of Oswald the Warren Report mentions that he served in the Marines and “may have had access” to secret information about our radars.

May have had access. Incredible. They don’t know? This is a commission investigating the crime of the century – and they don’t know. Guys, that’s a phone call. You don’t need to know what the secrets are you just want to confirm that he did or did not have access to classified information while Oswald was based at X. The call is 10 minutes tops.

Which does place Gerry Ford in a very strange position of being at the clean up of the two major events in the post war era – the Kennedy assassination and Nixon’s resignation.

He also give Chevy Chase (remember him) his ten minutes of fame as Chase would open the first seasons of Saturday Nite Live by pretending to be Ford and tripping all over things before saying “live from New York! It’s Saturday Night!”

But he wasn’t evil or crazy or both. Which I guess is something.

Speaking of bugf-k crazy, our leader has gone to the ranch to cut brush and pretend he hasn’t already decided to put 20,000+ more troops in Iraq for 18 months.

18 months. That is not a temporary surge – that is the gestation period of a humpback whale. Which is a long long time.

Does he have to drool on himself before they start to suggest that perhaps maybe just maybe the president is completely batshit and something needs to be done to prevent him from wasting more blood and treasure? Maybe if he starts clicking ball bearings during a press conference like Captain Queeg in the Cane Mutiny. Maybe then. But probably not.

Plan on going to the open Mike at Waltz tonight – probably not many folks about but we need exposure and to hump the 169 bar gig.

By the way the details on the 169 Bar gig are as follows:
Where: 169 Bar – 169 East Broadway
Feb 4th At 10 pm.
Cover - $8.00

We need at least 6 people to play – 10 to get a share of the proceeds. So bring friends and if you don’t have friends make some for god’s sake. I have friends it's not that hard.

Picture is taken from http://www.superdickery.com – if you haven’t visited it please do – it’s a wonderful site that has hundreds of bizarre and weird comic book covers and pages– one theme being “Superman is a Dick”. There is one whole set of covers showing Superman crushing his friends dreams and hopes or just acting like dick.