...free White House tours...open to public at any time...contact the Secret Service after entering only if you feel like it...the U.S. Secret ("Breach of") Service is supposed to protect the President and his family but has fallen to such a disgraceful state that the President is literally in danger even in his own house...last week, the latest in a dizzying string of security breaches occurred, and it was the scariest one yet...Omar ("Oh My") Gonzalez, a crazed war vet, jumped the outer security fence, raced across the lawn, walttzed right in the unlocked(!!!) front door of the White House, then bolted past a security guard, went through the Entrance Hall, wandered around the grand Central Hall and past the stairway leading the the First Family's living quarters where Malia and Michelle's mother were at the time, then strolled through the East Room and was entering the Green Room, all the time wielding a knife, before finally being tackled by a guard...Secret Service officers failed to release the attack dogs trained for just such an incident, failed to lock the doors, failed to hit the alarm button inside the front door, and then lied repeatedly about their miserable failures...Secret Service mouthpiece Ed ("if my lips are moving I'm lying") Donovan said the intruder was unarmed, which was a blatant lie, then said his boys got the suspect as soon as he entered the mansion, which was another blatant lie...

Big Ed: "Trust me. We've got it covered (up)."

...this sorry episode comes on top of a 2012 incident when Secret Service agents brought Columbian prostitutes back to their hotel and then refused to pay them for favors rendered, another incident in 2013 when agents passed out drunk in a hotel hallway in Amsterdam, one last month when an armed felon got on an elevator with Obama because Secret Service officers on duty didn't even question him, and a 2011 incident recently uncovered by the Washington Post when a gunman sat in his car out back of the White House and repeatedly fired a rifle at it, hitting a window and knocking pieces from the exterior while the idiot Secret Service supervisors ordered its officers on duty to "stand down" because they thought it was just a car backfiring (7 or 8 times?!)...this is clearly an agency that is rent with incompetent, out-of-control macho clowns who have no sense of responsibility whatsoever...predictably, our hypocritical Congress, which has slashed the agency's budget thereby precipitating many of the staff problems, is now expressing outrage and demanding hearings and answers but typically that will probably amount to nothing but political grandstanding just like in 2012...yesterday, Secret Service Director Julie ("Blame Me") Pierson wisely resigned but Disgraceful Donovan remains arrogantly at his post/microphone...so once again Congress has extracted its pound of flesh from the woman while letting the incompetent, lying man stay on (see, New Jersey Governor Chris ("women are stupid but men are just disappointing") Christie re Bridgegate)...does the story line ever change?...see story immediately below...

...notes from the National Domestic Violence League...the National "Blame-the-Victim" Football League is reeling from its left-footed handling of star player Ray ("Rotten") Rice's arrest for knocking his fiancee, Janay, unconscious and dragging her lifeless body out of an elevator...first they did nothing, then they suspended him for all of two (2) games, then Rice's team the Baltimore Ravens had the gall to release a tweet from Janay apologizing for her role (!!) in the incident  (you know, she asked for it and all that), then denied they had seen a video of Rice punching her inside the elevator, a lie that was immediately exposed by a hotel security person confirming he had sent the video to the NFL months ago...

Ray and Janay after a night out it's lights out (for her)

...the Rice woman-beating revelation was immediately followed by Minnesota running back Adrian ("Kids are for Beating") Peterson's arrest for whipping his 4-year old son with a tree branch so fiercely that it caused bruises and scrapes to the boys legs, buttocks, and scrotum...The boy told authorities that there were “a lot of belts in daddy’s closet,” and that daddy used them often...Peterson also allegedly stuffed leaves into his son’s mouth while he was being struck with his pants down...Big Brave Adrian's response?...he said that what his 4-year-old son received was a  “normal whooping,” and he couldn’t remember how many times he hit his son, but that it was likely “10 to 15″ times...he added that he doesn’t “ever count how many pops I give my kids”..."pops" as a euphemism for beating a four-year-old! - with a branch! - on the back of his scrotum!...what a sicko...this guy should be in jail on felony child abuse charges and have his kids immediately taken away from him for their safety...but even this did not earn Mr. Peterson so much as a suspension from NFL Commissioner Roger ("Boys will be Boys") Goodell until a public uproar demanded it...in quick succession this was followed by Carolina defensive player Greg ("Hit 'Em") Hardy's arrest for violently beating up his girlfriend, strangling her and threatening to kill her last May...which again did not initially result in any punishment from Goodell as Hardy played in a game last month, until the League was humiliated into suspending him...and now comes San Francisco defensive end Ray ("Dirtball") McDonald charged with belting his pregnant fiancee but still scheduled to play this Sunday...it is clear that the NFL is rife with thugs, women-beaters, child-abusers, violent psychos and assorted other severely warped societal misfits because the NFL not only enables such behavior, but conspires in covering it up and coddling the perpetrators...

Rice: "Janay apologizes for making me knock her out cold.
It may take several more sessions but I promise I'll beat her into shape eventually."

Peterson: "Give me the ball, kid, or I'll beat the crap out of you."

     Hardy: "The bitch deserved it."                            

McDonald: "So did my bitch -- and so did her fetus."

                                                        

Commissioner "Jolly Roger" Goodell reacts to his players' comments

...on the other hand some people just have no sense of humor....in breaking news from the ACLU, we have learned that the book most frequently challenged and sought to be banned is....(drum roll please)...."CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS"...according to the ACLU's Samia ("Just Sayin'") Hussain, complaints have included "offensive language and violence"...Hussain says the books contain no inappropriate language (unless one considers potty jokes offensive rather than just juvenile), and the extent of violence consists of a kiddy game that shoots out eggs instead of balls that land on everybody's head...your editor, who does not normally read such childish material, preferring grown-up literature like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, can relate personally to the Captain's humiliation...having just undergone abdominal surgery I am currently in the midst of several weeks of donning an undergarment embarrassingly similar to the Captain's, and it ain't fun or funny!!!...so the Captain and I don't want anybody making snide remarks about our attire, much less trying to ban our use of them...OK, TMI!!!

Just don't let this guy anywhere near Times Square!

...since this edition is a few days late, it's already October, which means its OCTOBERFEST time...and my recommended brew is, fittingly, Octoberfestbier brewed by Spaten-Franziskaner-Brau...aromatic, savoury, gold-colored nectar of the Gods...great in the bottle, to die for in draft...better yet, try all of these great German brews in celebration of Fall....

- the Brewmeister -

POLITICIANS AND PRISONS AND PRETENDERS

"The first time I see a jogger smiling, I’ll consider it."

                                                 - Joan Rivers, who died September 4, 2014, aged 81 years

Bad call Bob...it will be recalled that the January 27 edition of Pete's Brew reported that Virginia ex-Governor Robert McDonnell had rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors that would have dropped all charges against his ex-Washington Redskin cheerleader wife Maureen in exchange for a guilty plea to a single, i.e., one, charge against him...after five weeks of sordid, peek-a-boo soap operatic trial testimony in which Gallant Bob forced his own daughter to testify, causing her to break down on the witness stand, and which featured among its low lights a pathetic tweet from lovely Maureen to rich businessman Johnnie Williams exclaiming "I just felt the earth move and I wasn't having sex!!!!", a jury of seven men and five women quickly found the former Gov guilty on 11 of 13 counts of public corruption and associated felonies and Maureen on 9 of 13 counts...the couple had been the epitome of the phony "Christian (Catholic) values", loving, hetero-family and was a hero to the right wing crowd who was touting him for the Presidential race in 2016...it'll be kinda hard to run for Prez from behind bars...the McDonnells face up to 30 years in the slammer for their misdeeds...
...Worse call Hank...from my lawyer's view, McDonnell's legal representation by one Henry ("Hank") As("shouldn't")bill, was just about the worst I have ever witnessed in any case, criminal or civil...let me count the ways...1. letting his client reject a plea deal for one guilty plea in exchange for dropping the other 25 charges against McDonnell and his wife...2. building the entire defense on an utterly ridiculous theory, i.e., that the marriage was so broken that the McDonnells couldn't have conspired together, when only one of the 25 counts hinged on a conspiracy theory...3. not suing for peace, i.e., striking a deal with prosecutors, midway through a trial which when it going against his client horribly...4. expressing that he was "shocked, shocked," a la Captain Renault when his client was found guilty...Asbill paraphrased his utter cluelessness when asked to comment on the verdict: "I have no idea what the jury deliberated about," he admitted...Hank, for having no idea what the whole case was about, you get our "Eejit of the Year"...
Comic headlines from the past year..."Man Arrested for Assault with Mashed Potatoes" (KBOI2TV.com, Aug. 18, 2014)..."Big Law Goes to Bat for Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell" (Legal Times Blog, Dec. 13, 2013)...new headline: "Big Law Strikes Out"...
...they shouldda figured it out from the Dude's name...the principal of an elementary school in Manassas, Virginia has been fired and decertified from teaching after officials discovered that his resume was a crock of you-know-what...Robin Toogood ("To Be True") claimed he had three degrees from different universities, including a doctorate in education, none of which was true...at least he attended two of the schools listed on his resume - the other one, Regent University, said it had no record of him whatsoever...the Manassas school system's sordid vetting process could almost be seen as an improvement since the same system previously hired a serial child molester who was arrested in 2010 for "taking indecent liberties" with a student and now is a resident of the state prison (where he'll soon be joined by the ex-Governor)...
...the House of MisRepresentation and Partisanship and...The House of Special Interests voted to sue President Obama for overstepping the powers of the presidency...in a 225-to-201 strict party-line vote, Republicans voted to move forward with a lawsuit against Mr. Obama for his application of the Affordable Care Act by issuing executive orders, which they argue has been selective and intended to delay the law’s most undesirable aspects...during a pointed, impassioned hourlong debate, Republicans summoned lessons from the American Revolution and the Bible...but ignored statistics showing that Obama has issued a total of 183 executive orders while George W. Bush issued 291 and Ronald Reagan 381...

...Hypocrisy and Lies...two days later, the same crowd of Congressional Republicans excorciated Obama President for not exercising his Presidential powers...after they were forced to scuttle an emergency spending measure to address the surge of young Central American migrants at the southern border due to their bigoted, economic ignoramus Tea Party allies, House Republican leaders said, and we quote: “There are numerous steps the president can and should be taking right now, without the need for congressional action, to secure our borders and ensure these children are returned swiftly and safely to their countries”...Dems welcomed the move...the party claimed to have raised $1 million overnight...Steve Israel (D-New York), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, “When they decide to obsess on suing the president, they shouldn’t be surprised that our base is as energized as they’ve become.”
...not quite a do-nothing Congress.. in an exciting announcement that should make every American's life better U.S. Representatives Rick Crawford (R-AR) and Jim ("will") Costa ("lot") (D-CA) on July 31 announced the formation of the Congressional Rodeo Caucus to serve as an informal group dedicated to issues of the rodeo industry...yippy-yi-yo-yi-yo...
...Beware the Square...a sordid assortment of caped crusaders and other cartoon characters were rounded up in a Times Square sweep on a recent Saturday night, including Captain America, Jessie the cowgirl from “Toy Story’, and Spider Man...Spider Man did not go easily into the night, punching a police officer in the face as they grappled on the sidewalk before falling to the ground. 

...the fun started when Spidy refused to accept a dollar tip after posing for a picture with some tourists, telling theme that he would accept only larger sums...when the cop approached, the web-spinner told him to “Mind your own business,” leading to a sorry take-down spectacle in front of hordes of amused picture-snapping spectators...A crowd of law-abiding fellow mascots, including Elmo, Batman and Mickey and Minnie Mouse, watched in disbelief...the miscreant was eventually spun into custody and arraigned on charges of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct...

"Who's next, Goofy?"

...Meanwhile, the Naked Black Cowboy, a skivvy-wearing character confirming that men should never be seen in underpants, was nabbed for drug possession after cocaine was found in his wallet during a frisk...leaving us to wonder what lucky cop got to frisk this frisky guy...

"help yourself to my wallet"

"help yourself to my wallet"

...not to be outdone, the Times Square “Cookie Monster” was accused of violently shoving a toddler and nearly slamming him into the pavement because his mother wouldn’t tip him...arguably worst of all is Elmo, who was previously arrested for anti-Semitic remarks at tourists and blocking traffic...now bad Elmo has been sentenced to a year in jail for tying to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts -- by threatening to spread a false story that the Girl Scouts regularly arranged sexual encounters between men and its campers....

How low can you go, Elmo!

Cheryl Navielloshe, a 58-year-old woman who was rudely groped by Super Mario, said it best: “You don’t know who’s under there — that’s the scary part”.... 

Mario to Cheryl: "wanna find out?"

...but enough of those imposters...as a nod to my favorite month (well, I'm partial since I was born in September), I offer this wonderful tribute penned by my favorite poet, Louis MacNiece:

        September has come, it is hers

       Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
       Whose nature prefers
       Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.                                                                                                                                               - from "Autumn Journal" (1938)

...and with a longer eye toward the advancing Fall season, we are pleased to recommend a new taste in stout, Rasputin, introduced to me by our neighbor Mark Steinbach...a good, rich, bold taste which may make you hesitate to go back to Guinness (unless you're out of Rasputin, of course)...

Happy September!

- the Brewmeister -

IT'S SUMMERTIME, AND THE NEWS IS STILL CRAZY BUT AT LEAST THE LIVIN' IS EASY...

...picture of the day...the County Mayo Irish Football team, a perennial power, has expanded its development and recruiting efforts to Northern New York...during a wonderful break in the Adirondack Mountains last week Sharon and I were delighted to witness a youth team in training...after practicing hard all day, they posed for a team picture...

Mayo All-Ireland, 2025: Zach, Luke, Brady, and "Billy" 

...well now that's reassuring...Maine Governor Paul ("Time to turn") LePage has outdone himself (again)...already notorious for telling the NAACP to kiss his arse, suggesting the IRS is like the Gestapo, and joking about bombing a newspaper, according to Politico LePage has now been caught cavorting with a group of anti-everything nut cases who call themselves "sovereign citizens", which the FBI considers to be a domestic terrorist movement...Pathetic Paul's response to this exposure of his unseemly friends has been to (1) blame the messenger, and (2) explain that in his eight meetings with them “We did not discuss execution, arrest or hanging” of leading Democratic legislators......

Yup, Guv, you shore are a head-scratcher...

...new method for death penalty proposed...in the May 22 edition of The Brew we reported on Oklahoma's concept of a humane death penalty...after poisoning Clayton Lockett for 45 minutes of a slow, twisting death, a state official wisecracked "the line had blown" (referring to Lockett's vein)...now the great state of Arizona has obliterated the record for a drawn-out cruel and unusual death and one-upped Okie in insightful comments...Arizona slow-dripped death row inmate Joseph Wood ("not die") for two agonizing hours before he finally stopped heaving, snorting, gasping, and, finally, breathing...in an expression of profound remorse, Governor Jan Brewer deadpanned that Wood did not suffer and the brother-in-law of Wood's victim offered as an alternative "why didn't we give him Drano"...what a lovely thought from our family values folks in the Southwest...

now available at Home Depot, Lowes, and on Amazon in bulk to save taxpayer dollars on your future executions --  

May we suggest the crystals to 

further prolong the scumbags' agony.

...anti-immigrant hard-liners unveil new ad campaign...the anti-immigration crowd, emboldened by the defeat of Eric Cantor and the rollout of the Obama Administration's renewed determination to kick out South American kids who arrive without their parents, have adopted a new campaign poster to capture their political philosophy...quite catchy it is, too...

...we suggest Deporter-in-Chief Obama ("2 million off our shore and hunting for more") and his pathetic excuse for an Attorney General Eric ("Clueless") Holder, as well as their cold-hearted fellow travelers in Congress, would do better to contemplate the words of Rabbi Asher ("White") Knight of Dallas: "We're talking about whether we're going to stand at the border and tell children who are fleeing a burning building to go back inside"....

...on a cheerier note...we circle back to our lead story above...Murph and I spent five beautiful days at my brother and sister-in-law's summer place, Hawkeye Lodge on Silver Lake in The Middle of Nowhere...the Adirondacks were "lovely, dark, and deep," and unlike Robert Frost we had little to do but sleep, and swim and read and eat and drink...which leads to our brew of the month...Sea Dog Blueberry Wheat Ale is truly unique, with a mildly wild fruity taste perfect for a lazy summer day by the lake...the keg did not last long...may your summer days and evenings be long and drawn-out and delicious...

- the Brewmeister -

  

                 

...kind of like taking a frog to a snake den...we have some very serious items to report on, but we're going to lead with a single picture story that says it all about kicking back in a very un-PC way, courtesy of David Kilkenny from...County Mayo of course...

"Uh, Dave, I'd really rather not go in there."

..."Cantored" ('kan-turd)...to be knocked off your high perch for being too arrogant, too obnoxious, too rude, too cozy with fat cats, and too dismissive of those who brought you to the dance, i.e., the voters...Washington, long the city of acronyms, has sprung a new word thanks to the ignominious demise of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Two-faced Republican-VA) who lost badly to the fortuitously named David Brat (we cannot possibly improve on that name!), an unknown economics professor at a little-known college in southern Virginia...Tea Party types and other conservatives are tying to spin a narrative that Cantor's defeat is a blow to the Republican establishment and a big victory for right-wing ideologues and bigots opposed to any immigration reform...but as my favorite football announcer Chris Schenkle used to say, "hold the phone"...Cantor's defeat is primarily a fundamental lesson of the arrogance of those in power, ignoring constituents, and swimming in perks while rubbing shoulders and sharing shrimp with special interests, in other words, why Washington politicians are hated by most of the free world...Cantor's coziness with the hedge fund glitteratie cost him badly but most of all his dismissive treatment of constituents and his opponent led to his defeat...but the Tea Party could be in for some unpleasant surprises of their own, because Brat is more of a political unknown than they think...as The Daily Beast's Candida Moss has written, among other oddities he's a Catholic espousing Protestant triumphalism...not to mention that even if Brat is to the right of Cantor on most issues, he will have no clout whatsoever as the newest member of a 535-member club of real brats, unlike Cantor whose powerful position was hugely influential in policy fights...at the least, it will make it even harder for the Republicans to control their own party...so enjoy the Brat victory, Tea Party, but you may have gotten more than you wished for...

Before

After

...But don't they know he lost his Congressional seat?...in what must be the stupidest faux news headline of the year (so far), the New York Times has set a new low for utterly irrelevant, made-up, so-called "news" stories...on June 13, the venerable old, once-great, newspaper actually ran a story titled "For Cantor, Loss of Leadership Role Means Far Fewer Perks"...um, knock-knock, hello, Times...Cantor is not just resigning his position as House Majority Leader August 1 -- he's been kicked out of Congress...why did you waste paper, internet space, and our time on this bit of senseless trivia?...

...the end of the world as we know it (NOT!)...on the other hand, NY Times columnist Gail Collins wrote a delightful reality-check on April 22, tallying up various apocalypse scenarios that various wackos have confidently declared over the past several years...they include such doozies as the paranoia hype over Y2K and all the millennium end-of-the-world scenarios, Harold ("Dead Man") Camping's insistence that the final Judgment Day was going to be May 21, 2011, the Mayan calendar end-of-days nonsense in 2012, not to mention money-grubbing televangelists like John ("Show me the money") Hagee, who is hawking his doomsday book Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change...something should change all right - people should wake up and stop swallowing the drivel fed them by nutcases and shysters...because one truth my Catholic upbringing impressed on me is that no one knows when the world will end and anyone who claims to know is full of bull...but if I had to guess about how it will end, I tend toward Tennyson's prediction that it will end not with a bang but a whimper...'till then, as said in Ecclesiastes, let us "eat, drink, and be merry"... 

or if you prefer

...actually, we'd rather not be there...speaking of Utah (state motto: "industry" (honest))...that great state of the Mormon "religion", the Sundance Film Festival, polygamists, great ski resorts, and wild-and-crazy guys like Sen. Orin ("Anita Hill is still guilty") Hatch is prominent in the news lately for such stalwart American family value headlines as "Utah woman accused in 6 babies' deaths appears in court" and "US Marshall Fatally Shoots Defendant in Utah Courtroom...meanwhile the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (whew, that's a mouthful so let's just call them Mormons), which was founded to legitimize multiple mistresses for its lecherous founder Joseph Smith (today this guy would be in jail for life, back then they just murdered him), has thrown out of the club (they call it "excommunicated") Kate Kelly for "apostasy"...Kate's crime (besides being an unmarried woman) is that she founded the "Ordain Women Movement" (no explanation needed)...the Mormons monkety-monks are now going after John Dehlin, a straight married man who has a website which advocates (horrors!!) for fair treatment for gay Mormons... this all should do wonders for that "Bring Back Mitt Romney" movement (yes, there really is such a thing)...

...Grimm news (cont'd)...our February 21 edition of Pete's Brew reported on the unstatesmanlike behavior of Congressman Michael Grimm (Neanderthal-Staten Island), who threatened to throw a reporter off "this [blankety-blank] balcony" for daring to ask about Grimm's sleazy financial dealings...we are pleased to report that Congresscrook Grimm has surrendered to the FBI to face a battery of charges including tax evasion related to a restaurant business he owns...we shudder to think about what creep the voters of Staten Island will send to Congress to replace Grimm, whose predecessor Vito Fossella resigned after it emerged that he had a "secret family" in Virginia in addition to his public family in New York...

...it's just a lifestyle, people...our favorite moron politician, Texas Gov'nah Rick ("Scary") Perry is at it again...the most recent words of Longhorn wisdom to emerge from Perry's mouth are that being gay is sort of like being an alcoholic...let's listen to Rick speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California on June 11: "whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way"...but we're encouraged - for Texans, this qualifies as progressive thinking ("or not")...good thing Rick doesn't live in Utah, he could be prosecuted for being too tolerant...

Perry: "I am not a drunk"

"and I pray for the strength not to choose the homosexual lifestyle
...or follow the homosexual agenda...unless they're for guns"

Well it's the FOURTH OF JULY in America, and as we say here in "the most important city in the most important country in the most important world in the most important universe in the most important"....well, you get the drift anyway, "Have a Capital Fourth"...with one of the newer all-American beers, brewed by none other than that most American of beach dudes, Jimmy Buffett...Landshark Lager...trust me on this folks, it's really good!!

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

- the Brewmeister -

"How could Oklahoma botch an execution? If there’s one thing I would expect Americans to know how to do by now, it’s kill somebody.”" - From @TheTweetOfGod

...A Modest Proposal (apologies to Jonathan Swift)...Oklahoma has again highlighted the moral bankruptcy of the so-called "Bible Belt" by torturing to death inmate Clayton ("Botched It") Lockett, who mumbled and writhed on his gurney for 45 minutes before dying of a massive heart attack rather than by the lethal injection that was supposed to murder him...referring to Lockett’s vein, Oklahoma's director of corrections Robert Patton said “the line had blown”...so here's my proposal for Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia and other leading State death merchants -- send your executioners to Saudi Arabia for some on-the-ground training in how to stone people to death or for beheading lessons - both arguably more humane and effective...

...Or they could take lessons from Texas....The Lone Star State of Execution was enthusiastically looking forward to its next killing, scheduled a mere two weeks after Oklahoma murdered Lockett...Governor Rick ("Scary") Perry proudly noted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “I’m confident that the way that the executions are taken care of in the state of Texas are [sic] appropriate”...David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston, had a more succinct assessment: “I think Texas probably does it as well as Iran”...
                    

 They do kind of look alike!

...enough hypocrisy to go all around, and around...new National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver ("Bullet") promptly banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald ("Not Very") Sterling from the league for life for racist comments he made to his girlfriend, one V. ("Vamp") Stiviano...Sterling was recorded ordering her to stop hanging around black people...the ironies are endless...Sterling is 80 and white with a fake last name...he tries to hide his age by putting so much artificial coloring on his hair that he looks top-heavy and and tries to hide his ethnicity by legally changing his real last name from Tokowitz to something conspicuously Anglo-sounding but with no family connection whatsoever...Stiviano is 31, part African-American (yep - we didn't make that up!), with no known first name (maybe her Sugar Daddy could come up with a white-sounding one for her), and zero identifiable credentials other than the obvious, who has been prostrating herself (literally and figuratively) to a racist old fool for years...according to a lawsuit brought by Sterling's wife against Stiviano, "V." has received a Ferrari, two Bentleys, and a Range Rover from good ol' Don, not to mention another $2 million or so in cool cash for "services rendered" (wink wink)...the NBA for its part is now puffing out its chest with righteousness despite having tolerated and enabled this guy for over 30 years...and all the NBA players are suddenly parading their new-found moral indignation but were more than willing to continue playing their kids' games for creeps like Sterling so they could collect their obscene salaries without interruption and have raised not a single peep about Sterling's sexism or other owners' gay-baiting actions...as John Mellencamp might say, ain't that America!...

Sterling and his Vamp:
"This girl is half his age" (well, not quite)

....speaking of leadership, and the lack thereof...President Obama has hit a new low in approval ratings as even his supporters are thoroughly disappointed by his actions and non-actions...Deporter-in-Chief, spy agency defender, drone cheerleader, drug law defender, foreign policy double-talk and failures...New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on April 30 contrasted the President's lack of leadership to the NBA Commissioner's strong action: "You should take a lesson from Adam Silver, a nerdy technocrat who, in his first big encounter with a crazed tyrant, managed to make the job of N.B.A. commissioner seem much more powerful than that of President of the United States..."...Ouch!...but true...

Sterling Silver

"Uh...do you have...uh...another bullet for...uh...Assad?"

...the "Christian way of life," Southern style (I)...after winning an election pledging to “defend our Christian way of life,” Representative Vance ("Fancypants") McAllister (Hypocrite-LA) figured he should spread a little love among his staff...but he didn't figure on getting caught on videotape passionately kissing a married aide while leaving a tryst with her...the aide's husband said "I loved my wife so much...He has wrecked my life”...in response, McAllister took a page from the playbooks of fellow "family values" Republicans Sen. David ("I like prostitutes") Vitter and Sen. John (“put your pants on and go home”) Ensign, and Gov. Chris ("fire the women and call them stupid") Christie and forced the staff aide to resign while declaring that he has no intention of doing so himself...touchingly, though, he promised to come clean with his wife...another real "family values" Republican...

...the "Christian way of life," Southern style (II)...Georgia Governor Nathan ("Straight") Deal has signed legislation that allows anyone to carry guns anywhere, including into church...just in case any stray Roman soldiers get any  funny ideas about the good old days...we're sure Jesus feels relieved...

...Patriot Wars...Mr. Cliven ("Hoof") Bundy, a rancher in Nevada, would like you to know some Patriot-style truths about them people he calls "Negroes"...“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro...because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves"...what Mr. Bundy doesn't want you to know is that he is an expert on government subsidies because he has poached his cattle on government land for years and refused to pay published land-use fees, and now owes the government (i.e., me and all other taxpayers) over $1 Million...two Senators and the Texas Attorney General fell all over themselves praising his American character...and now Sen. Rand ("Pathetic") Paul (Racist-KY) and Dean ("Ain't he a") Heller (R-NV) are tripping all over themselves backpedaling from Bundy's moronic, racist comments... for Paul at least, this is curious, since he previously has expressed his belief that discrimination against blacks should be legal and the Civil Rights legislation should never have been enacted...

               

Some of Mr. Bundy's supporters

...time to drown our thoughts of all these creeps...so this month we'll go with Blue Moon Belgium Wheat beer...now on tap at the Gaelic Nation...
- the Brewmeister -

SEAMUS HEANEY AND HIS LEGACY

...I spent last week in Belfast week at the Seamus Heaney Conference and Commemoration hosted by Queen's University's Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry...Belfast.2014.4 is a fascinating, accessible city growing in confidence and optimism about its future but still struggling with its legacy and how to best deal with it...when Sharon and I first drove through Belfast in 1994 it was an ominous, scary place that we could not get out of fast enough...while things may not yet have "changed, changed utterly" in Yeats' term, the positive changes brought about by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement are quite dramatic...we could walk anywhere night or day without fear of danger...most of the pubs are now wholly integrated religiously, gender-wise, and in all other respects...there is an abundance of delectable restaurants of infinite variety (though they still close too early)...and the city has a definite "vibe" to it..

Queen's University - Langford Hall

Queen's University courtyard

Belfast City Hall (West front)

City Hall - interior rotunda

                               

       

Silver cross in St. Ann's Cathedral

          

  

Street mural in West Belfast

...Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Laureatte who died last year, is revered as a universal figure, perhaps the only one, in Ireland...Digging is perhaps his best-known poem but others are of equal power, such as The Tollund Man, Death of a Naturalist, Follower, Mid-Term Break, Station Island, The Otter, Requiem for the Croppies, or Postscript...in a keynote lecture the noted literary critic Peter McDonald spent an hour and a half deconstructing a single poem, The Harvest Bow, which I had never read or heard of...when asked later what I thought of McDonald's presentation, I responded that I left the lecture thinking The Harvest Bow was the greatest poem Heaney ever wrote...

...one afternoon we embarked on a tour into the Derry countryside to visit Heaney's home townland, Ballaghy...Heaney was raised on a farm and wrote often about his family and the farm and the strong values it gave him...

    Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

    When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   
    My father, digging. I look down...
...
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
    ...
   Between my finger and my thumb
   The squat pen rests.
   I’ll dig with it.

Sculpture of turf digger - Heaney museum, Bellaghy, Co. Derry

...Heaney was sometimes criticized, alternately and inconsistently, for not directly condemning (take your pick) either a) the British security apparatus or b) the IRA, yet anyone who made the effort to read his poetry would know that he wrote movingly and effectively about the impact his country's difficulties had on him as a Catholic from rural County Derry who attended Queens University...Seamus' best friend, collaborator, and friendly competitor was the Protestant poet Michael Longley, who described their friendship as that of an "agnostic Catholic" and an "atheistic Protestant"...I was privileged to meet Heaney once and can attest to his special aura, his reassuring presence of being, his universal appeal as a person as much as a poet...

Seamus and Marie Heaney, 2007

...I am also fortunate enough to have become friends with Michael and Edna Longley, a leading literary critic in her own right who helped organize the conference...Edna and Michael have been extremely kind and encouraging to me in welcoming me into their wonderful literary world, often over several pints of Guinness, which both of them also love...

                               

                                              Michael Longley

Edna Longley

                                         

..the collective psyche of Belfast is still strongly influenced by the so-called "Troubles" of the recent past and the people are still purging their emotions and real pain from that era...I went to the Lyric Theater to see Quietly, a new play by playwright Owen McCafferty which focuses on two middle-aged men - a Catholic and a Protestant - who reluctantly meet in a bar to try to come to terms with their violent past...a difficult, hard, but excellent performance which ended with the audience virtually exploding out of their seats in applause and catharsis...only one other time have I experienced such emotion at the end of a performance, when the first act of Riverdance concluded during its premier run in Radio City Music Hall...  
                                      

...I must add that a highlight of the visit was the cask-conditioned Irish ale Scullions sampled in the iconic Crown Bar and Liquor Saloon...a real treat for your Brewmeister's taste buds...since this delectable is not available anywhere outside the Crown, my recommendation for April is Alewerks American Ale...so grab yourself a copies of one or two of Seamus' poems and your favorite brew (or other libation of choice) and raise a glass to the poets in all of us...

[Please note: all photographs by Peter Kissel; all rights reserved]

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