* * * *
The Debt Ceiling
 |
| And Under Your Pillow, I've Put the Ability to Borrow Two Trillion More! |
Don't hold your breath but the debt ceiling will be raised. Hurrah! The Democrats will claim doing so had nothing to do with concessions made to the House Republican majority in developing the nation's budget, and that the two processes were on entirely separate tracks. I heard Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, say that. They also still believe in the tooth fairy.
JL
* * *
The Road to Democratic Success and its Obstacle, Our State LegislaturesA recent column by Robert Reich,
former Obama cabinet member, as well as Simon Rosenberg’s ‘Hopium Chronicles’
blog both looked forward to future dominance of our government by the votes of younger
people, increasingly college-educated, who lean toward progressive ideas and
will vote for Democratic candidates. To these two commentators, it appears to
be a matter of inevitable demographic change, chiefly based upon the aging
process of the present electorate. However,
neither see it happening tomorrow but look forward to it taking a decade or two
to occur.
To that I add two comments: (1)
Voting rights must be preserved so that the electorate they forsee in a few
years will actually come to be, and (2) it will take longer to happen in State
elections than in Congressional or presidential races.
Remember that it is in the fifty State
legislatures that the election laws for those States are made, and that also is
where the dilution of representation by ‘gerrymandering’ takes place!
While Democratic politicians often have their heads in the clouds, Republicans know that the late Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, hit the nail on the head when he said that ‘all politics are local.’ A vote for a State assembly member or State senator is far more important than your vote for president! (which you never really have, just a vote for some unknown 'electors.')
Think of how your vote for the
latter is significantly diluted by the make-up of the Electoral College. Contrast it to contests for State legislative
seats where quite simply, the one with most votes wins. That’s the way democracy should work, despite
some unavoidable contamination by gerrymandering of those State districts. And remember that it is in those fifty State
legislatures, as I’ve pointed out, that the election laws for those States are
made!
JL
* * *
Computer-Called Balls and Strikes Seen
Soon on the Way
The Miami Marlins eked out a victory
over the Washington Nationals in the last of the ninth inning the other evening
with a three-run homer by Jorge Soler.
Two pitches before that, he should have been struck out by a two-out,
two-strike pitch at which he didn’t swing, ending the game. It was clearly a strike according to what
most observers saw, what the TV commentators said, and what I witnessed on
television. But the umpire called it a
ball, earning him a trip to the nearest ophthalmologist.
The sooner balls and strikes (unless
they are swung at) are determined by computer-synchronized cameras, instead of
by umpires, the better it will be for baseball.
It is only a matter of time and is currently the subject of
experimentation in the minor leagues.
 |
| A Hard Way to Earn a Living |
JL
* * *
A Commencement Address
The other day when President Biden
spoke to the graduating class at Howard University, one of the nation’s leading
historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU), he made it clear that he
recognizes that ‘sinister forces trying to reverse racial progress’ in this
country.
While the President warned of this danger, his words did not seem to light a fire under his audience. Some observers seemed to feel he has not done enough and was only repeating what they already knew quite well.
The Black vote is essential to a Democratic victory in 2024. There is a lot of work to be done by Democrats before Election Day in 2024 to harness that vote! Efforts similar to those of South Carolinian Representative Jim Clyburn in 2020, whose support some claim was crucial for President Biden’s victory, are needed. Failure to do that has cost the Democrats elections in Florida, and that should not be a benchmark for future failures.
Read the New York Times article about his remarks at the Howard University commencement by CLICKING HERE or by going to https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/13/us/politics/biden-howard-commencement-black-voters.html.
JL
* * *
The Original ‘Chrissy Frost’ Stories are Back!
All eight of them, originally included on this blog back in 2017
recounting the story of a Florida entertainer, are now re-appearing on the
blog. Together they form what might be a novella, entitled ‘Time After Time –
The Crissy Frost Story.’
Here is the seventh story, chapter, or whatever you want to call it, in which Chrissy confronts a strange challenge to her sanity. The eighth and final story will appear in the next posting of Jackspotpourri.
The earlier ones appeared in recent postings, accessible from the ‘Archive.’ If you missed them, just go
back and check them out. (See the May 3, May 8, and May 14 postings, each of which contained two 'episodes.') They should be read in order, as you would read
a book. And now … as Ed McMahon used to
say on the ‘Tonight Show,’ “Here’s Chrissy!”
* *
Chapter 7: Dream Girl – A Chrissy Frost Story
Jack
Lippman
(“Chrissy
Frost” is an entirely fictitious creation.
My apologies go to anyone who might happen to share that name, and I
know there are some of you out there.)
Chrissy
Frost was dreaming. She was in an
upscale steakhouse in Boca Raton, enjoying a succulent filet mignon cooked
exactly the way she liked them done, black on the outside with a strip of red
in the middle. At least that was the way
she had liked her steaks before her doctors told her to avoid red meat. Although she was almost completely recovered
from her stroke six years ago, and was earning a good living performing on the
stages of Palm Beach County’s many retirement communities, she still had to watch
her cholesterol and beef was no longer part of her diet. But it was an enjoyable dream anyway.
She
barely noticed the tiny brownish specks she was spitting out when she brushed
her teeth and flossed the next morning.
But the following day, after having another “filet mignon” dream,
Chrissy was again flossing out bits of steak when she brushed her teeth. Very puzzling. Particularly since she had eaten mostly
salads, chicken and egg white veggie omelets over the past week or so.
And
when she went to Dr. Lopez for her regular exam the next week, he shook his
finger at her.
“Chrissy,
your lipids are up. Have you been eating
anything to increase your cholesterol?
Looks to me like you have.”
“Swear
to God, Doctor, I haven’t had a piece of beef in a couple of years. Fish, chicken and rarely, a piece of veal
maybe. No red meat at all.”
The
doctor scratched his head.
“But,
let me tell you,” Chrissy continued, “Something funny has been happening
lately. I’ve been dreaming of eating a delicious filet mignon in a fancy
restaurant and when I brush my teeth in the morning, when I floss, it seems
like I had really eaten a piece of steak during the night. I think I’m flossing out bits of meat.”
Dr.
Lopez looked at her kind of funny, peered into her mouth and set up another
appointment for more blood work two weeks later.
“Funny
things happen all the time, Chrissy.
Let’s see what it looks like in two weeks. Meanwhile, stop dreaming so much.”
During
those two weeks, Chrissy ate like a vegan, but whenever she had the “filet
mignon” dream, there still were particles of steak between her teeth when she
flossed the next morning.
And
when she went back to the doctor, the results were no better. The cholesterol was still up, the LDLs were
climbing and the HDLs were dropping.
She explained her diet over the past few weeks and then surprised Dr.
Lopez by taking out a little pill box which contained a few strands of red
meat.
“This
is what I flossed out this morning. Take
a look at it.”
“Looks
like steak to me,” he said, holding them in a tweezer up close to his eyes.
“Chrissy,
we have a problem and it’s beyond me. I
am referring you to a specialist whom I hope can help you. Here’s his name and address. I’ll call him this afternoon and his office
will call you. We’ll get to the bottom
of this. Don’t worry.”
“What’s
this guy? A cholesterol specialist? I
certainly don’t want to have another stroke.”
“No,
Chrissy, he’s a psychiatrist.”
“You
think I’m crazy?”
“No
way, but physical manifestations of what you’re dreaming about are a little
beyond me. You have bits of the meal you
dreamt of stuck in your teeth. Not a job
for an internist, Chrissy, but this guy many have some answers. Give him a chance.”
* *
The
sign on the glass door in the shabby professional building read “Tobias Fink,
D.M.A.” Chrissy went into the waiting
room, signed in and waited to be for the nurse behind a glass window, or
whatever she was, to call her. Otherwise
the room was empty. Glancing around she
saw some of the diplomas displayed, apparently to reassure patients of the
credibility of Dr. Fink. One was from
the University of the Guianas, announcing his having received his Doctor of
Medical Arts degree there in 1983 with honors and another testified to his
having completed his residency in Psychiatry at the Cayman Islands Mental
Health Center three years later. Very reassuring,
she thought.
Once
ushered into Dr. Fink’s office, she was confronted by a barefooted chubby man
in his fifties wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt and denim cargo shorts. He was smoking a pipe.
“Good
morning, Miss Frost. Dr. Lopez called me
and told me a little about your story.
Would you mind repeating it for me.
But first, would you like a drink?”
With
that, Dr. Fink opened a small refrigerator next to his desk and took out a can
of Diet Dr. Pepper, popping it open and inserting a straw.
“No
thanks, Doctor,” Chrissy replied. “But
before I start talking to you, I’d like to find out if I really want to be here
talking to you. You must admit, you
don’t look like any doctor I’ve ever seen.
Tell me why I should be even talking to you.”
“Miss
Frost, all of my patients usually say about the same thing as you’ve just said
when they first meet me, but believe me, I am legitimate. Or almost, anyway. You see, my medical and psychiatric
credentials aren’t accepted anywhere in the United States, but here in Florida,
I am able to practice because of a loophole in their licensing laws. Actually, this place is officially licensed
as a barber shop and somewhere along the line, I will snip off a half inch or
so of your hair … and that makes everything else I do okay with the State. You know, barbers are known to talk a lot
with the person in their chair, and that’s what I do in my practice, so it
works for me. Of course, I can’t take
insurance payments but that doesn’t matter much since my charges are very
low. I was left a lot, a real lot, of
money a few years back, so I don’t depend on this practice, or barber shop, to
support myself. Okay?”
“Hmm,”
Chrissy intoned. “How come Dr. Lopez
referred me to you if you’re not really a doctor?
“Good
question. Because Henry respects what I
do, as do most of the physicians in South Florida. They all know of me, and when they come
across the kind of case I handle, they don’t hesitate to refer patients to me,
even with my phony credentials, because I get results!”
Crissy
was beginning to believe, at least a little, in this guy. He slouched in his chair, popping a bit of
his gut out between the buttons on his shirt.
She almost wanted to laugh.
“Listen,
young lady … “
“Cut
it out, Doctor,” Chrissy interrupted.
“I’m older than you are, so stop with the young lady bit.”
“Okay,”
he said, “But let me tell you about some the cases I’ve handled and maybe
you’ll want to give me a chance to help you.”
Chrissy
nodded her assent.
“This
guy, I’ll change his name, came to me a year or so ago with these bloody spots
on his hand and on his lower torso.
‘Rufus,’ I asked him, ‘where did you get these things?’ ‘Doc,’ he replies to me, ‘I got them in a
dream. I was dreaming I was Jesus Christ
being crucified and when I woke up, these marks were on me from the dream of
the crucifixion.’ Well, I checked him
out and he wasn’t much of a religious guy, went to church once every couple of
years maybe and didn’t even know the Biblical details of what he was dreaming. Had him sleep over in my office one night,
right on that chaise over there, and I watched him toss and turn. He was dreaming alright, and in the morning,
damn it, he had those spots right where he told me he was getting them.”
Intrigued,
Crissy asked what happened with Rufus.
Dr. Fink continued.
“I
got this friend in the Bishop’s office in West Palm. Now I’m not a Catholic, but we grew up
together. I tell him this story … and he
writes it up and gives it to the Bishop.
Two months later a bunch of priests show up in my office with Rufus and
ask me to sign some papers. I guess the
schools I went to for my degrees, which aren’t worth much in this country, are
fully accredited by the Vatican. They
tell me that once he dies, they’ll put Rufus up for what they call
beatification, which is a step toward sainthood if they can verify any miracles
or cures connected with him. They’re
taking their time because he really must die first before this thing gets
moving. So far, he hasn’t. I told them I go to the track and the casinos
with him occasionally, and damn it, he always wins, never loses, it’s
unbelievable. Big bucks, really big
bucks … but he gives it all to charity.
They smiled when I told them that.
One of them whispered to me that he suspects that Rufus may actually be
Jesus. Keep that under your hat, he says
to me. So you see, I do deal with cases
like yours, Miss Frost.”
“Wow,”
Chrissy said as Dr. Fink cracked open another Dr. Pepper. “Do you have any other interesting patients,
ones more like me?”
“Sure
… There was Melissa. That wasn’t her
real name. Always wanted to be in show
business, TV, the movies. But she had no
talent and was what I would call homely.
In her dreams, she was in the movies, not a star mind you, but a
significant bit part player. It was
always the same movie, the one that won a lot of awards last year, you know,
‘La La Land,” and she always played the same part. Well, I downloaded the video and she pointed
out to me where she was in the movie in her dreams, and to my amazement, when I
paused the video exactly there, damn it, it actually looked like it was Melissa
playing that role! Or at least someone
whom she resembled very closely. I
zoomed in and the actress in the movie had the same mole on her neck as
Melissa, sitting right where you are now, had.
Of course, some other actress played that role in the film, so I
contacted the people who made the film, so I might really compare what she
looked like with Melissa in person. They
told me they couldn’t help me since the actress had died in an automobile
accident shortly after the film was made, but they would send me a
photograph. I have it right here in her
file, and as far as I can see, it’s a photograph of Melissa. She claims she remembers from her dreams when
they took it after one of the shoots in Hollywood and even identifies some of
the other actors in the background.
“What
happened to Melissa,” Chrissy asked.
“Nothing
much. I told her never to go to the
movies anymore and to cut out watching them on her TV screen too. She also cancelled her Netflix subscription. I know she got married last year and I think
she just had a baby. She’ll be fine so
long as she stays away from movies. But
as far as I am concerned, professionally, I do believe that there was some
cosmic merger of her dreams and the making of that movie which resulted in the
real actress getting killed and Melissa, from her dreams, retrospectively
taking over the role. These things do
happen.”
“Another
one. This guy, call him George, always
was dreaming that he was cheating on his wife with another woman in a hotel
room somewhere. The hotel catches fire
and the fire department calls up to them on a bullhorn to jump out of the
window and they’ll catch them in a net.
The two of them do that, stark naked, and who do you think is one of the
firemen holding the net? The guy’s
wife! And this is where this dream
always ends. Normal stuff so far, George
is dreaming that he’ll get caught.
Classic guilt. Now his wife, I
was given to understand, was a stay-at-home type wife, baking cookies, sending
the kids off to school and all of that usual good stuff. She had majored in Italian Renaissance Art in
college and was a really bright woman.
So one day, right out of the blue, she tells George that she has decided
to become a volunteer fire department aide.
It would be a change for her, she claimed. Smiling, she said it was perfectly safe, he
shouldn’t worry, the closest she would get to a fire would be to help those holding
the net when someone was forced to jump out of a window in a burning building. At this point, George turned white. He went to the doctor the next morning and
that is how I got involved.
“You
mean,” Chrissy said, “that his wife in real life was about to enter his dream
world, and she was totally unaware of what she would encounter there.”
“She
wouldn’t encounter it there,” Chrissy, “George was the one doing the
dreaming. He would.” But her presence in the dream would be as a
real person, and under deep hypnosis, she might even remember being there in
his dream, but we won’t go there. Maybe
it was just a coincidence, but it served to turn him into a faithful husband,
as I’d advised him to be, and which he has been ever since. Now do you think I’m capable of dealing with
a bit of filet mignon stuck between your teeth?”
Chrissy
replied “Yes, Doctor.”
After
Chrissy repeated the full story of her dreams and the dental residue that
remained afterwards, Dr. Fink smiled.
“You’re
an easy one, Miss Frost. We can wrap
this up right now in one sitting, and my fee will be just $29.99. And I’ll include a second consultation with
that free! That’s something I learned
from watching TV … and of course, there’s no charge for shipping and handling. Ha, Ha. Okay?”
Crissy
nodded, adding, “And you can call me Chrissy, Dr. Fink.”
His
remedy was a simple one. “Chrissy,” he
said. “Set your mind to controlling your
dream as soon as it starts. When the
waiter brings the filet mignon, scream at him saying something like ‘I don’t
want that, take it away, no meat for me.’
You get the idea. And if he
persists, pick up the damn steak and throw it at him! You must be the one who controls your dream,
not that little bit of your brain that really wants the filet mignon. Got it?”
Crissy
smiled, wrote a check and went home.
That night she had the same dream, but this time she tried to confront
the waiter. “Take than goddamn steak
away! I don’t want it.” Despite her entreaties, he placed the piece
of meat on a plate before her. The aroma
was almost overpowering, but she hung on.
It was slow-motion in the dream, but it was really happening. With her
left hand, she stabbed her fork into the steak and slowly, ever so slowly
raised it off the plate. Transferring it to her right hand, she drew her arm
back as if she were a quarterback throwing a pass. As her arm moved forward, the steak flew off
the fork and sailed across the room, hitting the waiter squarely in the
eye. And then the dream ended.
The
next morning, her sister-in-law came into her bedroom as she was getting
up. “Is everything alright,
Chrissy?” I heard you screaming during
the night, something about taking a steak away.
I looked in but you were sound asleep.
“Wait
a sec, Stella,” Crissy said as she ran into the bathroom.
“No
meat between my teeth! Great! That doctor cured me!” Chrissy was delirious with joy as she waved a
string of clean dental floss! Let’s go
shopping!”
Later
that afternoon, walking through the Town Center mall in Boca, Chrissy thought
she recognized one of the waiters from what used to be her favorite steak house
strolling toward her. He had a black
eye.
Turning
to Chrissy, he said, “Pardon me, M’am, I think I recognize you. Were you dining in New York Prime last night
about eight?”
“No,”
Crissy replied.
“I
could have sworn you were there and you threw a steak at me. See my eye.
Don’t you remember, we had to call the cops to escort you out of the
place.”
“You
must have been dreaming. I haven’t been
in the place for months. But I hope that
eye heals up fast.”
“Yeah,
I do too. If it didn’t hurt so much, I would
swear it was all a dream”
JL
* * *
Housekeeping on the Blog
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time
there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and
we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might
suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. (You can pass those email addresses to me by email
at jacklippman18@gmail.com . )
Forwarding
Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you
think might benefit from reading it.
If you
want to send someone the blog, exactly as you
are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can
just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to
them. I think
this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of
forwarding it though! Google
Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that
possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom
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addresses to which the blog will be forwarded, along with a comment from
you. Each will receive a link to the textual
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as access to the blog’s archives.
Either
way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or
clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I
recommend sending them the link.
Again, I
urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from
reading it.
Have a
nice day!
* * *
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