“Clear Jersey Shore”
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the rather balmy, partly sunny, soon to be rainy island of Nantucket! Great to be back with you on this Saturday morning, the 29th day of March, 2014, a beautiful morning here on the Cape, just getting back from Dowses Beach in Osterville, spying on the first Osprey of the season, yes, the most excellent ’sea hawk’ of the skies, coming back from as far away as the Brazilian river of Amazon, readying the nests for yet another year of endless fishing and soaring high above this little sand bar created 11,500 years ago by the Last Great Ice Age…
Of course, ‘back on planet earth’ as my mom used to say, the world is seemingly in a whole load of trouble. The tragedy in Washington state, in the little town of Oso, just north of Seattle, is a good example. A community is mourning the loss of many souls, as a giant mudslide took out most of that town roughly week ago, leaving many still missing, presumably gone forever. Our prayers are with them.
Chris Christie, however, may be on his own with this newest attack on Bridget Anne Kelly, the New Jersey Governor’s former assistant chief of staff, who was fired a few months back for infamously ordering (via email to David Wildstein, Christie’s ‘eyes and ears’ at the NY/NJ Port Authority), “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”, to wit Wildstein replies, “Got it.”. My, my, my, I should say so, that the Governor is on his own with this doozy of a million dollar report (paid for by NJ taxpayers) that “clears” the good Governor of any wrong doing when it came to those “lane alignments” going onto the George Washington Bridge in and around September 11th of last year. Staging a big press conference in Trenton yesterday with brash chest pounding of old, Christie claimed that “…I don’t know what the problem is with you guys (in response to one of the reporters questions, going on to say…), is it that you aren’t listening or not taking notes?”
We are listening Governor, however, it is quite clear your scapegoat is going to tell the world the TRUTH about what really went down, leaving your bid to become this nation’s next President dead in the water. This whole thing stinks to high Heaven and you above all people know it! It was rather convenient that the Chairman of the Port Authority resigned yesterday, a Mr. David Sampson, the powerful partner in the now very successful law firm of Wolff & Sampson, ‘bringing you billion dollar deals (fingers crossed!) in Hoboken and possibly Fort Lee since 1972 or thereabouts’, for now it will be impossible for the New Jersey state legislature to convene and come to any conclusions about his involvement in the whole sordid affair. And speaking of affairs, what does Bridget Kelly’s and Bill Stepien’s relationship, brief as it was, yes, what in the world does that have to do with anything anyway? Yes, sir Governor sir, we, the people of this great land believe you had nothing to do with closing down those lanes (illegally) and that your lowly assistant took it upon herself (acting alone much like Oswald) to chirp an email to your other spy Wildstein ordering lanes closed on the busiest bridge in the world, all while your other spy, Bill Baroni, Wildstein’s boss at the Port, tried to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes with some dog and pony show covering up the lane ‘alignments’ with a phantom “TRAFFIC STUDY”! And you had no idea any of this was going on. REALLY?!! “Hope it’s a wonderful coffee shop Jack…” (credit the great Charles Grodin and the incomparable Robert De Niro starring in the classic film, circa 1988, “Midnight Run”).
This nation must realize that the outside money (thanks SCOTUS for 2010’s Citizens’ United! Rock on Justice Roberts!) that a Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Rick Perry and the like is sucking up for today in Nevada is a cancer upon our democracy. Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas mogul worth almost 40 billion dollars, is one of the plutocrats like David and Charles Koch (worth at least 68 billion) who are attempting to buy this country– local, state and federal–one puppet Congressman/Senator/dog catcher at a time. Sheldon’s pet peeve is online gambling, to wit he has now ‘convinced’ the Congress to put forth a bill restricting that practice as it may be eating into his bottom line. Creating a path for mutual destruction is this one, for in a den of thieves there is no HONOR. This nation was built on honor, a word that used to mean something in the land of the free and home of the brave. Today, that land is ‘of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation’ who now claim religious piety (Google ‘Hobby Lobby’ for more nauseating religious horse$hit), hoping the Supreme Court will uphold their ‘view’ that female contraception should not have to be covered under the group medical ’cause sex offends the flock y’all. What’s next? Will Goldman Sachs claim that they will not hire people who don’t sell their soul (like everybody else) to the Devil himself? Of course everyone up in Heaven is laughing at the concept of Goldman Sachs claiming anything remotely referencing God or Love, not to mention peace, harmony, compassion, empathy, charity and JOY. Not really their cup of tea I’m afraid.
So on this Saturday at the tail end of March, after yet another blizzard on Cape Cod and the Islands (March came in like a Lion and is going out like a Lion), I bid you and yours a wonderful Spring, a rebirth of who you and what you really are. For as the song says, “Just sing, sing a song, sing it loud, sing it strong. Don’t worry if it’s not good enough, for anyone else to hear…just sing, sing a song.” And to Bridget Kelly and everyone else out there who has been thrown under some kind of a bus, your time to shine has arrived–Rock & Roll! PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
