Yea, I know: he’s rude, uncivil, abrasive, inflexible, and all that. But he will never, ever, bullshit you or lie to you. Never. Not even a little bit. Not for any reason. I’ve known the man for 12 years and this is the one thing I know about him with absolute clarity and certainty. He doesn’t equivocate.

Anyway, he had an entry about liars a couple of days ago that I’d marked and was just waiting for an appropriate segue to present itself. Then, last night I was driving over to Home Depot on an important mission: to get one of these awesome ladders that you may have seen on TV. They have them, but under a different label (Gorilla Ladders). Same ladders, 1/2 the price. Paid $200 instead of $400 for the one that extends up to 19′. I can get it in the front door of our loft, store it completely out of sight in the furnace room, yet replace a light bulb in the tract lighting 18′ up on the ceiling (or hang antique Chinese scrolls 15′ up, which is what I did last night). After watching the electricians haul up their conventional 20′ extension ladders over the railing of the outside balcony (can’t get them through the front door), I feel so superior and pleased. But I digress.

So I’m going over to Home Depot and I hear this ridiculous news report about how the Gorillas of the TSA are going to start chatting people up. First thing I wonder is how all those English-as-distant-second-language folks are going to handle that one, and what happens if I don’t speak Tagalog when I next fly out of SFO? Bless the hearts of immigrants, really, but curse the bureaubot functionaries in our government, who specifically target immigrants for lifetime, valueless–and often value-destroying–"jobs."

The next thing I wonder is if Billy will have an entry on this. Sure enough, and you’re a ‘goddamned dope’ if you don’t go immediately and read the whole thing. I was particularly fond of this paragraph, which I think is pure art:

Let me tell you something: you haven’t plumbed the depths of these
peoples’ puffery until you’ve watched some dumpy broad with a gun and a
uniform shooing-away a van unloading passengers and baggage at the airport at Dayton, Ohio on the premise that…well, it’s such
a juicy target for exploding-van terrorism that it needs a single
dumpy-ass broad with a gun glaring her resentments over a shitty job to
save the country from a family trying to get grandma and grandpop on
the plane to Memphis.

Hah! If only it was funny in reality.

So, Ok, the one I was going to blog the other day can be found and read right here. It’s of far more serious implications than the other; far more important.

"No enemies on the Left." That was the deal.  And there was no price too high for others
to pay while these moral monsters were held out as courageous crusaders
for the noble experiment of socialism. Robeson held his awful secrets
for nearly thirty years as his "friend" mouldered in the grave.

Indeed.