The Establishment strikes back.

Got into it a bit with a follower of Jennifer Rubin, who is the Washington Post version of the NYT’s David Brooks. You know. Conservative in name only.

She called Ted Cruz incoherent. I inserted a comment, which precipitated a spirited discussion with someone named Zach.

Despite the deficiencies of Facebook, I’m hoping you can find her post titled “Ted Cruz needs better answers” and the comment string here. (You have to log in to FB first, then peruse the news feed of Robert Laird. If that doesn’t work, try Jennifer Rubin’s page. You’re looking for a Ted Cruz post with more than 20 comments.)

The lesson is that I was not, as many insist I am, mean. I asked a single question, which was never answered, while responding to all relevant points. No name calling. Just a repeated question that was never answered.

If you can’t answer simple questions, don’t duel with Instapunk. You will lose.

Jeff McGarry, a next generation hope.

In my wife’s job, she has to deal with interns. You know, millennials who think the world owes them a living. She puts up with it patiently, the way only a woman with multiple grandchildren can. Occasionally she is impressed.

Like with this McGarry kid. He’s polite, diligent, and poised. If you push, he will admit to playing baseball. Here’s what the sports press has to say about him:

But here’s the thing. You wouldn’t know any of this from talking to him at work. You’d have to tease it out of him by asking questions in the probing way my wife has. He’s content to be a communications major working hard to give you his best.

Why I say, and continue to insist, that all is not lost in these United States.

He had talent. I had something like it.

She’s been with me for more than a decade. She’s tired of me pretending that guys are smart. Every time I reach out, she just laughs. “They don’t want to hear it. Did Frank respond? No. He’s one more schlemiel.”

She’s been living with software “geniuses” for more than a quarter century. Her laugh about them is a continued haw-haw-haw. Her message to me is focused: you’re a writer and they’re code freaks; never the twain shall meet.

She thinks smart code guys are, well, idiots. Except for Harvey. But he’d probably agree with her.

Oddly, she thinks I am smart. What are the odds?

Oh. We’re supposed to be scared of women. Are not. Sorry.

So rich. I’ve done everything. Been everywhere. In all times. Learned everything about all times. Last of a breed.

Never faked a story though. Changed some names to protect the guilty, but that’s all. Everything else I actually did. 50 mph in a Boston whaler in the open sea. 130 mph on Rte 77. Youngest final club president ever. Nearly died in a hurricane at sea. All true.

I have so many stories to tell. You have so little curiosity. I’ve had a wonderful life. And you have such a dreary lack of interest.

Yes. I am awful. Never told you a lie. Why aren’t you interested?

Much worse post to come. Maybe you can live up to it. Or not.

You’ve got to admit, the man has some nice ties.

I always figured Brian Williams was Peter Jennings without an education. You do know, don’t you, that the managing editor of NBC News is a high school graduate? But he always looks gooood.

Conservatives are trying not to pile on.

I’m not piling on either. He’s just par for the course. I wrote about network news eight years ago, when Katie Couric became the anchor of CBS News.

Helping Katie.

Note that I spared no one. Not even Fox News. Especially not Fox News.

They’re all in the entertainment business. They don’t report the news. They foster narratives. And flash their personal assets. What just happened to Brian Williams is no surprise. He’s just another casualty of a completely corrupt profession.

Why I write mostly about dogs and cats.

Standing on a 6″ square platform dozens of feet in the air. No one mentioned it.

I noticed. I’m mentioning it. Think she has more guts than Tom Brady. Even if her pecs aren’t as well developed.

Does she sing too? Can’t say I heard that, but if so, I’m doubly impressed.

The best quarterback ever? How feminized are we?

Cognitive dissonance at Breitbart Sports.

Chief editor Daniel Flynn wants to paint the Seahawks as the bad guys.

The New England Patriots, portrayed as the Super Bowl villains by the national media as a result of Deflate-gate, traded their black hat to the Seattle Seahawks at some point during Sunday night’s Super Bowl.

The good guys won, or, if you’re from Baltimore, New York, or any of the 28 other NFL cities and can’t quite admit that, just concede that the bad guys lost.

Rich Tucker from the same site on the same day wants to make us recognize the feminization of America via Super Bowl ads.

The Super Bowl isn’t really a sporting event anymore; it’s a cultural event. As such, it can tell us a lot about where our culture is headed. Based on the ads during Super Bowl XLIX, the feminization of the United States is well advanced.

This year, few of the ads had anything to do with the game, or even seemed to acknowledge there was, indeed, a game. On the field, the football was as violent as ever — witness the Seahawk who intercepted a pass in the first quarter, then was carted off the field with a broken arm.

But the ads that followed that injury tended to be both kinder and gentler.

Consider the nearly identical ads from Toyota and Dove. Both ads centered on the idea that fathers should be nice to their children. Nothing wrong with that, of course.

But what’s the tie-in between dancing with your daughter and driving a Camry? What’s the tie-in between hugging your child and showering? Neither ad seemed to have much to do with selling cars or shampoo.

A generation ago, the ads featured beer bottles playing football (Budweiser) or an “office linebacker” tackling employees (Reebok). The game was the cultural touchpoint. This year, touching seemed to be the only touchpoint.

Super Bowl ads have always been a leading indicator of where things are heading. At the turn of the century, the game was filled with dot-com ads. The ads themselves were often foolish — see the Pets.com sock puppet — but the goal was to encourage you to go to the dot-com website at some point.

This year, though, advertisers almost seemed embarrassed to be trying to peddle a product. In the case of the Dove ad, the product on offer didn’t even appear until the very end of the commercial, leaving viewers at my Super Bowl party wondering what it was an ad for.

Worse, it was Breitbart Sports that probably made the gravest hit on the Patriots as inveterate cheaters in a post yesterday.

Though much of the conversation around Deflategate has centered around whether Brady could throw a deflated football easier, former NFL players have explained that since deflated footballs are easier to grip, players would be less likely to fumble it.

Sharp Analysis also “found that the Patriots performance in wet weather home games mysteriously turned ridiculous starting in 2007.” The Patriots went 0-2 in “home games in wet weather in 2006″ and have “gone 14-1 in those conditions at home since 2007.”

Sharp wondered if the Patriots are “so good that they defy the numbers” or if something else is at play…

Make up your damn mind. The Seahawks are thug tough, sure. How would they have fared against the Oakland Raiders in their heyday? The world is still full of Raiders fans yearning for a return to the days of yesteryear, when quarterbacks were actually football players not beauty models rivaling their beauty model wives. When winning the fight after the game was actually part of the game.

Kenny “the Snake” Stabler. A quarterback I’d bet on ten times out of ten against Brady. And against the wusses who caved at the end yesterday.

The Raiders cheated too. Openly. In your face. Not sneakily. Fred Biletnikoff and his stickum was intimidation, not an under the radar stratagem. Miss those days.

He shows up late and wants his tummy rubbed.

He’s the toughest kid on the block. The only one of our crew who can walk on top of Raebert’s head without ill result. But he waits for Raebert to go to bed, meaning he shows up late and settles in.

He’s also enormous. Nothing saggy about him. He’s some kind of a rock. And he likes me. A lot. That’s a good thing.

He’s beside me right now. What could be better?

He is who he is.

So Mommy isn’t helpful either. Ring a bell with anyone? Hate the post. Need a new one but don’t expect me to help.

I’m not really concerned. I just do what I do. Raebert is the same way. Neither one of us is unfaithful. We just act like assholes all the time. Not that we’re ever impolite. We aren’t. Don’t believe it? Ask the missus.

No. Seriously. If they wanted to kill you, they would. I love my wife, she loves me. Anticlimax. And ultimate cartoon. Oh look. Boobs and pussy. Never seen those before.

I’ve had the full court press. An all out assault on my desire to live. My oldest friend tells me none of my books will sell. My putative writing son shows himself a psychotic just waiting for his next break with reality. My wife can’t come home. She’s busy. Not such a big deal. Except that I need her. Because I can’t defend myself from her friends at Facebook.

Guess what. I LIVE. like Roddy Piper at They Live.

I. Always. Win.

My secret weapon? What NONE of you have. A sense of humor.

We shared it. Yes we did. Exactly how he listened.

Full disclosure. I missed the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (if we can truly call it liberation rather than appalling discovery). Didn’t know till I saw stories about how Obama chose not to attend ceremonies at the Washington, DC, holocaust museum.

For my own remembrance I chose the third movement of Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which is unmistakably about the holocaust.

Raebert was on the couch with me. I expected him to flee. He hates (hates hates hates) all high-pitched sounds. The third movement features a particularly piercing soprano for most of its 17 minute length.

But he stayed. Normally he bolts like a scared child from high sounds and gunfire in action movies. He shifted and looked at me. I explained (one does attempt to explain things to deerhounds) that the voice was of a woman mourning the loss of her family. He settled as you see him above, making no attempt to leave. He does not like violence, killing, shrieking threats of any kind, but he is entirely comfortable (apparently) with lamentation.

Honestly not trying to make this all about us. Thing is, we shared a moment during this music. Mourners hold hands for a reason. I know I had my hand on Raebert throughout. Hard not to suspect that a breed as ancient as deerhound does not carry some sense memory of war, horrific events, massive loss of life. So we listened, the two of us, to this holocaust requiem, gravely, sadly, sorrowfully. All the way to the final doleful note, which hung in the air like the last sigh of dying life.

From Raebert there was none of the usually near constant moaning and groaning. After I explained the music, he just looked at me and fell still and silent. As I write this the moaning and groaning have resumed.

I won’t tell you he knew. But I can’t tell you he didn’t. And I’m not making this up. The holocaust was an event so profound that it made a hole in the universe. Even at this distance I feel it. How many other creatures feel it? If you don’t, sorry for you.

This is CGI. Unfortunately, our current plight is not CGI. It’s splat time.

After more than 20 years of commenting at length on current events, I guess I have some obligation to continue doing so. Or do I?

We’ll get through this, the forty somethings say. (Never mind the twenty and thirty somethings who just know they have Everything figured out.) No we won’t. Our president chews gum in the face of foreign dignitaries and ducks out of ceremonies remembering the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And our heirs are illiterate, spoiled, amoral morons. We’re not getting out of this alive. Or free. Unless you mean free falling.

When I’m in a better mood, I’ll explain it to the ones who still know who the first president was and what century he served in.

Frank Bogage.

Interesting article at Hotair today. Called “The Smartest Person Who Ever Lived.” The nomination was Isaac Newton, and I can’t disagree. Scientist, theologian, mathematician, alchemist, technologist. Whatever the subject, if he didn’t have the tools, he invented them, including calculus and the scientific method.

I would not, could not dispute this nomination. All I can do is mention the smartest person I’ve ever known personally. As you may have guessed, his name is Frank Bogage. I’ll remind you of the Newton nominator’s criteria:

We must first discuss what we even mean by smart. Colloquially, we routinely interchange the words smart and intelligent, but they are not necessarily the same thing. There is an ongoing debate among psychologists, neuroscientists, and artificial intelligence experts on what intelligence actually is, but for our purposes here, a simple dictionary definition will suffice: “capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.”

Implicit in this definition of intelligence is general knowledge. An intelligent person capable of understanding quantum mechanics is useless to society if he is completely ignorant. So, a truly smart person will know a lot of things, preferably about many different topics. He should be a polymath, in other words.

Finally, there is the element of creativity. Creative people think in ways in which most other people do not. Where society sees a dead end, a creative person sees an opportunity.

What Frank was and is. In college he studied urban development and did onsite archaeology on the Anasazi peoples. He divined how human organizations worked. Then, inexplicably, he became a computer jock. He built microprocessors by hand, he learned machine code, he sussed out systems architecture and systems analysis on the wing.

I learned about him before I ever met him. I went to work at a company called Datapro, where they hired people who could write and might learn something about computers. And they hired people who knew about computers and might be taught how to write. I was an English Major lost at sea. Our business was documenting and reviewing computer hardware, software, and peripherals, including communications. Our most senior editor had worked on the original Eeniac project. We were supposed to be the gray matter of the biz, much in demand by everyone who wasn’t IBM. My editor kept talking to me about Frank Bogage, the smartest guy who had ever worked at Datapro. I took seminars, listened in the hallways, heard much more about the legend of Bogage. I got sick of hearing about him.

By accident, I suppose, I went to work at the same company that had hired Frank. He showed up at my cubicle on the morning of my first day. I forget what questions he asked me. After that we somehow became inseparable. He had made a judgment on incredibly slight data. He chose me as a partner in corporate crime. Jersey boy buccaneers. He would teach me what I didn’t know. He’d decided I could learn it.

Which was the third leg of his four-footed stool of polymathematics. He knew everything about everybody. From the temp secretaries to the most ambitious Vice Presidents. It’s not that he was a gossip. He was curious, his questions prompted answers somehow, and people told him things they wouldn’t have told their parents or spouses. He had a kind of brusque empathy that made people want to talk.

The executives hated him. Not because he knew their personal secrets, which he did and they didn’t suspect, but because he knew their business way WAY better than they did. He was a walking threat to their authority. They used and abused him nearly to death. They sent him on the road to peddle a flawed corporate networking strategy. He was so creative that he succeeded more often than anyone should have thought possible. Hell on the road. Once he couldn’t remember where he was. Only the sight of a dangling replica of the Spirit of St. Louis reminded him he was in the St. Louis Airport. So he had coffee and proceeded to his next Executive Briefing.

Which he accepted because of the fourth leg of the stool. He was, more than a computer genius or a potential office politico, a family man. He did everything he did so that he could take care of his wife and kids. Corporate advancement wasn’t on his list.

But integrity to his profession and job was. He wasn’t prepared to claw his way up the ladder. But he was prepared to fight to the death for principle. Which we did together. He taught me everything I’ve ever known about the computer industry. His rules — like Gibbs’s from NCIS — still hold true. Microsoft operating systems are all fatally flawed. Companies have never figured out that emails are corporate documentation or how to secure them. Great code is worthless without a usable interface or documentation of how everything works. What sank the division where we worked.

They came to hate the sight of us together. They called us the Blues Brothers.

I provided the car. Because though we were both from Jersey, I was the only one of us who was a motorhead.

I played my part. But I wasn’t the one — in the midst of a 36 hour day to defeat a disastrous software release — who descended in a glass hotel elevator looking like a suit-and-tie version of this guy.

Call it the central pillar of a four legged stool. The eyes. Black but not evil. Just hard to meet if you had something to hide. Eyes that made executives hate and fear him. Eyes that made other people tell him secrets. Eyes that saw the future of a technology that just got started. Eyes that saw family as more important than all the other fires burning within.

Now he’s a mild mannered grandfather. I saw him at war. In about 16 months I learned enough from him — about technology, people, organizations, office politics, thinking on my feet, courage in the face of bureaucracy — to build a whole career. Until I discovered the fourth leg of the stool something more than a decade on. He’s a great man. And the smartest I’ve ever known.

God bless you, Frank.

Sorriest for the dogs, who will soon have to wade through this mountain of snow.

Thank God we are generally well prepared for emergencies. We have a 12 pack of AA batteries, a 6 pack of D batteries, and a crank powered radio for the inevitable power failures. We also laid in the requisite provisions from a largely denuded supermarket: 12 gallons of water, 25 loaves of white bread, a large jar of Jif peanut butter, and 25 gallons of milk. (We don’t actually drink milk anymore, but who are we to gainsay official disaster protocols?)

At present we are in good health but as I write this my wife is donning the approved four layers of down-filled outerwear and hip-length snow boots in preparation for the 30 foot journey to the mailbox where further survival instructions from the government almost certainly await.

My job is to look out for the mental health of our dogs and cats, who have been severely traumatized by the immensity of the storm.

The two small dogs can’t hope to go outside, so they are tossing and turning restlessly in their crates, evidently having nightmares that could eventually awaken them. Elliott the orange cat is sitting on the couch staring in rigid shock at the sight pictured above.

Raebert is as you see him below, exhausted by all the stress of the past 24 hours.

All we can do for the moment is wait and hope, and see how much milk and peanut butter sandwiches we can consume before help arrives.

Wish us luck.

We do not seek attention. We get unintended attention.

Wow. Two lies in a single caption. Probably a record.

I’ve just been accused, dismissed, of doing doggie blogs.

Funny. As I get closer to the heart of things, I find myself getting farther from the things bi-coastal progressive America cares about. Odd? Not really. The self important ones know nothing of things not related to their own importance.

I am learning that I am not important. Except insofar as I love my wife, my dogs, my cats, and something called family.

Bri Zoni knows that there is no God.

“If America is in decline, we ought to go back to what made America both great and possible in the first place. When you look at the, you know, facts of, you know, history, we see that wasn’t Christianity. The faith of your fathers was a barnacle, a lichen, a weed tangled up in the true root. The Greek way. Which grew into consciousness, philosophy, science, individuality, and liberty.

Gods not required. Even if still present.”

The only god required is Bri Zoni. Sure he’ll explain how his pure rationalism will fix everything. With no reference to Nazism, Soviet Communism, and Maoism. Total human cost? Probably above 200 million dead souls. The better alternative? Putting Bri Zoni in charge.

Are we clear?

They should have the nerve to remake the ultimate spaghetti western.

From left to right, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Don’t have to rewrite the script or commission a new score or even make any wardrobe changes. Just do it in IMAX and everyone will be happy. (Well, the Good’s nom de guerre will probably have to be changed from Blondie to Baldy, but c’est la guerre.)

Hollywood has no business sense. Perhaps the sorriest commentary on our age.

Some call you the Breeze. Others just call you a blowhard.

Last we heard at Facebook, Bri was irate that I cut off his latest atheist oration at Deerhound Diary. Based on the moronic argument that absolutely everyone was sick of the repetition, the sanctimoniousness, and the presumption.

Of course, he conveniently overlooks the fact that I gave him the last word at the ten-year blog called Instapunk. Worse, he waited eight months after I had moved on to Deerhound Diary to stab me in the back with what he called a ‘Double Fisk.’ Screaming himself blue in the face in the void. What a man. Eight months to cook up one more ignorant, incoherent rant. If someone screams on an abandoned Internet blog, does it make any sound?

Bri-heart

Sorry. He’s a coward, a sneak, and a creep. Even if he looks a lot like a sorta bloated and more dissipated Leonardo Di Caprio.

Nevertheless a great and symbolic romantic interest on the Titanic.

Right now I’d be willing to shut the whole thing down. The prospect of a Seahawks-Patriots Super Bowl is as close to a double dose of Melatonin as an old geezer like me can take. But that’s not in the cards. Yes, the Patriots always cheat and get away with it. Yes, the Seahawks always act like back-alley muggers and get away with it. What else is new? They’re going to play a game bent around an endless halftime show featuring some no-talent or other, and the best I can hope for is some saucily spiced boneless chicken wings prepared and paid for by someone else. What else is new? As I said.

BUT! I have an idea for next year. Wait till you hear it.

The president can issue one of his unconstitutional edicts forcing both Tom Brady and Peyton Manning to retire. Think of it! An immediate end to the endless blathering about the two of them. Peyton is obviously shot and Tom is obviously a crashing bore. What could redeem the two of them and the NFL at the same time?

A brand new typically creative NBC sitcom called “The Odd Couple.” Think about it. One boring old pretty boy who gets booted by his supermodel wife winds up rooming with a querulous old jock whose whole family has finally grown sick of his pizza commercials. The two of them rent an apartment in Queens (got to get the gay angle in these days, right?) and the fireworks begin.

It’ll be so cool. Retirees, shut-ins, invalids, and horny old women will kick the ratings through the roof as Tom’s OCD fascination with the mirror and his hair styles drives loutish, hick-Cajun Peyton through the roof. One is a would-be Bostonian sophisticate from the Midwest, while the other is a would-be Midwesterner from the Deep South. Raw oysters or gourmet catfish and grits? Savile Row suits or, uh, suits hand tailored from down south somewhere? Appletinis at the Ritz or Belgian beers nobody’s ever heard of at the Ritz? Constant quibbling, phone calls between agents, gorgeous women who can’t decide between a perfect nose and a broken one, Maseratis or custom Corvettes? The suspense just builds and builds, along with the list of cameo guest stars out on bail…

Her too. Why not? Tom can throw up, Peyton can send her ass out for a pizza and bar the door. FOFL, right?

…Thereby accomplishing the real mission. Which is to distract from the ongoing dissolution of NFL football into a dreary thugocracy of media blowhards, flash in the pan diva stars, felonious millionaire Pro-Bowlers, idiotic sybarite owners, and increasingly embarrassing attempts at cover-ups of all the above via gestures in the direction of political correctness.

The Odd Couple should be a ratings success at least until the NFL can agree to rename the Redskins the “NARAL*,” short for Native American Reparations and Litigiousness.

Can’t show you the new helmet yet, but it’s predetermined to be an iconic version of this, just prior to her pro-choice decision.

Then we can all get back to the business of watching Patriot scandals and Jets/Giants soap opera while ridiculing the fans of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Oh. Did you say football is played outside the northeast? Really? Where do The Odd Couple have their apartment? See what I mean?

Perfect strategy. Why I’m so so good.

* Not to be confused with the other NARAL, because the NFL has no political positions of any kind.

P.S. Actually, I’m serious about getting these two out of the NFL. They’re getting tedious.