Kapusta Anyone?
All the hoorah over the business of shooting-naked-women-with-paintballs (which now appears to have been 24 carat caca) got me to thinking of a story a good friend told me many years ago while he was a student at NYU in the sixties. You’ll see in a moment that the connection between the paintball-naked ladies story and the following is anything but obvious, but humor me, please. It’s just the way my cruller works.

So, this friend of mine told me (and swore that it was true) that there was a guy in Greenwich Village who would pay people to throw cabbages at his bare ass. My friend thought the guy was some kind of artist. I figured him to be a nut.

I often wonder whether he is still at it. He would have a pretty old ass now, and I’m pretty sure he would have to pay the cabbage throwers considerably more than he did in the sixties when a buck went a lot further. Now that I think about it, the cost of cabbage has probably also risen quite a bit. Art can be expensive, I suppose. So can being a nut.

I always thought the guy should have called himself “The Kapusta Kid.” It sounds great and would look swell on a tee shirt.

…And Some Return.
Well, we lost Mean Mr. Mustard and Life After Fifty, but the news isn’t all bad, because Spoons is back. I will happily put him back on the blogroll and even more happily read his stuff every day.

Some Have Gone…and Some Remain.
We read today that Mean Mr. Mustard, the ass-kicking, non-liberal who is being held hostage in Berkeley, is calling it quits, having decided to devote his blogging time to the study of law at Boalt School of Law, to which he was recently accepted. Recently we also learned that Gary at Life After Fifty has taken down his blog, having been hounded from the blogosphere by trolls

While we will miss them both and wish them the best, the contrast surrounding the circumstances of their decisions to cease blogging is painfully obvious. One voluntarily departed to explore new intellectual challenges, but the other was – to use an employment law analogy – an “involuntary quit,” which was caused by a “hostile blog environment.”

Rita, in her usual no-baloney fashion, has lamented the negative effect that trolls have had on the blogosphere, and there is no better example of that than the case of Gary at Life after Fifty. The vast majority of Gary’s recent posts were anything but controversial or confrontational (the kind that are most likely to attract the attention of trolls). Rather, they were deeply personal and moving observations – the kind that, some might say, reflect the wisdom and sensitivity born of the author’s having spent five decades on the planet. Gary wrote about his bittersweet re-acquaintance with any Army buddy who was terminally ill. He shared with us his devastation following the recent death of his handicapped son. He let us look in regularly on his wonderful grandchildren and made no bones about how much he loved them.

Nevertheless, he was targeted for harassment by a couple hate-spewing trolls. For the life of me, I cannot fathom how cowardly and evil one would have to be to get some sort of gratification from leaving mean-spirited and hateful comments in Gary’s blog. Did these wastes of oxygen celebrate when they learned that they drove this man off the internet? Could it possibly have made them feel good about themselves? Can we chalk it up to the foolishness and insensitivity of youth? I don’t know, because we have no way of knowing their ages. We do know that, whatever their ages, they are genuinely evil.

And, the thing I know for sure is that not one of them is worth the sweat off Gary’s ass.

The Tax Man Cometh.
Papers filed with the Federal Election Commission revealed that presidential candidate Al Sharpton is being audited by the IRS. The audit covers several years during the 1990’s. The document provides a rare peek into the rather mysterious world of Mr. Sharpton’s finances, and how it is he manages to put bread on the table.

We learn that last year Mr. Sharpton reported having earned $381,900, which is broken out as follows:

$120,000 from “Reverend Al Productions” for speeches and sermons;

$ 78,000 from the National Action Network, a non-profit organization founded by Mr. Sharpton;

$ 75,000 from the publisher of his book “Al on America.”;

$ 30,000 from SPN Broadcasting, described as a suburban Detroit firm;

$ 25,000 from PepsiCo for his work as a member of the company’s “black advisory board.”;

$ 25,000 for “consulting services” provided to Global Hue, Inc., a marketing company;

$ 25,000 for “consulting services” provided to Hawkins Food Group (here is a pic of Mr. Sharpton, Mr. Hawkins and others – scroll to 2nd photo), and

$ 3,900 (at least) from Inner City Broadcasting.

This is not Mr. Sharpton’s first encounter with the IRS.

He was indicted in 1989 for income tax fraud and stealing money from charitable donors, but he was acquitted of the charges in a jury trial.

In 1993, he pleaded guilty of failing to file a tax return in 1986.

In a December 2000 Deposition [depositions are given under oath], Mr. Sharpton testified that he had not filed a tax return since 1998.

Read about the tax audit here (Newsday may have already taken the article down) and here.

So, with reported earnings of almost $400K, Mr. Sharpton does pretty well for himself. I note that he received a hefty $120,000 for speeches and sermons. I believe that it is fair to ask what particular academic or other credentials “Reverend” Sharpton has to be giving sermons. Although biographical information on Mr. Sharpton is scarce, he credentials as a “Reverend” are clear. He was “licensed and ordained” at age 10. I am green with envy. I wish I could have been licensed as a lawyer (no ordination necessary, thank you) at age 10. I could have saved myself all the needless expense and work getting an education.

As for Mr. Sharpton’s education, we are told that he “attended Brooklyn College” between 1973 and 1975. No transcript was included with the biographical information. It is more likely that he honed his skills that qualify him to be president by serving as James Brown’s road manager from 1973-1980 (maybe he took those classes at Brooklyn College on those occasions when the Godfather of Soul’s tour hit New York City).

I also find myself being not just a little curious about why PepsiCo has something called a “black advisory board,” and what type of services Mr. Sharpton rendered for his $25,000. We’ll never get a look at Mr. Sharpton’s records concerning his consulting income, presumably including those records relating to his services to PepsiCo, Global Hue, and the Hawkins Food Group. His campaign reported that the records were lost in the fire at the headquarters earlier this year at the National Action Network headquarters in Harlem. I’m sure that those three companies have records, and I’m sure that the IRS knows how to get them. Oh, and one wonders why he would have used the offices of a non-profit organization to house the records of his profit-making activities, and one also wonders if he administered or conducted any of his profit-making activities from the non-profit organization’s office. If so, I can only presume that he reimbursed the National Action Network for the use of its facilities.

Not filing tax returns in 1986, 1998, and 1999? I guess he just plain forgot.

Mr. Sharpton’s income may well soar in the future if he is successful in his $1 billion defamation suit against HBO. The suit arises from HBO’s broadcasting in 2002 of an old FBI tape showing Mr. Sharpton participating in a discussion with an FBI informant and an undercover agent about laundering money from mafia-connected drug deals. Mr. Sharpton has claimed that he was “play acting” on the tape in order to extricate himself from the meeting. He also claims that HBO has one or more additional tapes that are exculpatory, and he has demanded that they be aired as well. When asked why he didn’t report the money-laundering meeting to the police, he stated that he did not do so because the police would not have believed him (scroll down to “Rev. Sharpton Tells the Rest of the Story”). I cannot imagine why.

And now he wants to be President of the United States. It would be funny, if it weren’t so damned pathetic.

Zogby Blog has Moved.
Zogby has moved off BlogSpot and now has nice new digs. Please check it out and adjust your bookmarks and links accordingly.

Sunday’s Choice.

Here’s the dilemma. Stay inside and blog, or be outside with a bunch of friends bobbing about in the pool and sipping vodka and seltzler with chunks of lemon?

Thinking…………

Pool wins.

Maybe I’ll be back later tonight. Depends on how much pool and how much vodka.

Enjoy the day.

Academia – Why am I not Surprised?
TJ tells a perfectly vexing story about a “professor” who obviously doesn’t understand the difference between “teaching” and “preaching.”

Cool Stuff.
I have to be away from the keys a bit, so here is some stuff I liked. I hope you will too..

Rachel Lucas writes a screamingly funny letter to her dog. I admit it. I had to Google “Grackle.”

The Country Store has a great, old picture of John Kerry (looking like a real doofus) with John Lennon. It would appear that this photo appears on a John Kerry campaign flyer. Why?

Zogby is featuring a picture and description of a Bill Clinton Action Figure. He even shows you where you can beat the rush and order yours today.

Bogie is blogging on the TypePad Beta Test Site. Overall, it looks good. Drop by for a visit while TypePad works out some of the kinks (the comments don’t seem to work too well).

Maybe I’ll catch ya later.

Jersey Oenophiles Phile Suit.
So, you are sitting at your computer in New Jersey, and you decide that you want to buy some wine to have delivered as gifts to your friends in New Jersey.

One of your friends is a true blue Jersey Guy – so much so that he even prefers to drink wine from one of Jersey’s couple dozen wineries. You locate the Jersey winery online, and with a couple mouse clicks the wine will be on its way.

Your other friend prefers California wine from a small vineyard he visited several months ago. You’re in luck. The vineyard has a website. You locate your friend’s favorite vintage, and when you click to make the purchase, a window pops up informing that you that direct shipments of wine into New Jersey are prohibited by New Jersey law. Sorry, pal.

It’s true. New Jersey’s alcoholic beverage laws prohibit direct shipments of wine to consumers from out of state wineries.

Recently these laws have come under attack by a California winery and four New Jersey residents, all of whom are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The lawsuit, like several others pending in other states, claim that the New Jersey laws violate the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, which states that it is the federal government and not the states that has the power to regulate interstate commerce.

Out of state wineries, particularly those that are not large enough to sell through New Jersey licensed distributors, want a share of the approximately 10 million bottles of wine Garden Staters buy each year.

New Jersey’s wine distributors oppose changing the law, lest they lose the revenue that would sail through cyberspace to out of state wineries, which, some estimate, could be as much as $500 million to $1 billion annually. It is also urged that lifting the prohibition of direct shipments from out of state would deprive the New Jersey of tax revenue, hurt local businesses, and result in illegal sales to minors.

It’s been quite a while since I spent any time reading the Commerce Clause cases in which constitutional issues of great import are spawned by things like apples and mud flaps on trucks. I also don’t know whether there are any recent decisions by the Supreme Court that may be dispositive of the issue, although I doubt it, because apparently similar cases in other federal districts have produced disparate decisions.

It seems to me that those who oppose New Jersey’s laws may have the better argument. Jersey’s laws do seem to be grounded solely on protecting its economic interests. And, while the argument that out of state direct shipments will lead to illegal sales may have some sex appeal in suggesting a legitimate state interest, it does not square with the laws’ permitting in-state wineries to sell wine online.

Soooo, I think I’ll have a nice glass of merlot and watch what happens.

Oh, yeah. That wine will be from some place other than New Jersey. As much as I love the Garden State, Jersey wine ….. oy!!!

Rita, the Weather Babe.

We all know that Rita at Res Ipsa Loquitur, is multi-talented. For instance, we know that she’s a lawyer and now college student (again), an algebra whiz, and the winner of an Excel “attagirl” sticker. We also are aware that she is pretty handy with a shootin’ iron and grown’ ‘maters. But we (at least I) did not know that she is also a weather maven.

In the wee hours of this morning Rita reported that she saw “a nasty looking bow echo on the radar headed our way,” signifying the possibility of a tornado. Bow echo??? Huh? I’m damned impressed.

I’m more than impressed; I’m envious. The truth is that I do not believe I have ever managed to be able to stay focused on a weather report for more than ten or fifteen seconds. As soon as the weather person walks up to the map and starts pointing out the “high pressure trough sweeping in from the northeast, bumping into the low pressure front…” blah blah blah, I mentally go to another place. Believe me. I try to pay attention, but it just doesn’t work. In fact, I used to think that nobody (except meteorologists and maybe pilots and sailors) paid attention to, or understood, any of that. Obviously, I was wrong. Rita has this shit wired!

I’m not worthy.