THE AUDACITY OF ARROGANCE PART 2

The sense of absolute entitlement that the permanent political class feels it possesses becomes more evident with each passing day. One day it is Nancy Pelosi wanting to investigate American citizens who do not want the Park 51 mosque to be built and the next day it is the revelation that NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has figured out a perfectly legal but totally amoral way to make money off of the pain and suffering of 9/11 survivors without disclosing it to the public. These are big nasty demonstrations of the total contempt the "mandarin" class has for us.

Other illustrations are less dramatic but just as poisonous as I witnessed last night at a Bronx Community Board 10 meeting on crime in the Zerega/Westchester Square sections of the Bronx. Concerned citizens from there and adjoining neighborhoods met at a local church to meet the new precinct commander and talk about a horrific crime against a defenseless 79 year old resident as well as the deterioration of the neighborhood as a result of over saturation of "social programs" by the city.

The three local elected officials were there in their official capacity and Frank Vernuccio President of COMACTA (Community Action Civic Association) was there in that capacity and not as R/C candidate for the 34th State Senate District. The rule at these events is no campaigning but that didn't stop incumbent State Senator Jeff Klein from putting out printed material until Vernuccio called him on it. His response to Frank really says it all. With a sneer he told Vernuccio that"I am an elected official , I just didn't wake up one morning and decide to run for public office!"

In other words "The Talented Mr. Klein" believes the rules don't apply to him and no one has the right to even challenge him about it or challenge him for office for that matter. This is a classic example of the "broken windows theory of politics". Like its counterpart with regard to crime prevention, the breaking of the rules begin with small rules and than mushroom into big time violations within a very short period of time.

It is also a clear indication of the sense of disdain this man has for those who pay his salary. He is after all, the author of the infamous March 11, 2010 "Pay to Play" letters to unions and other groups where access to your elected Democrat leadership (of which he is part), comes with a $50,000 or $25,000 price tag. An earlier shakedown involving him occurred in August of 2008 when then State Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith told an assemblage of lobbyists at the Wiltwyck Golf Club in Kingston NY, that in anticipation of a Democrat takeover of the State Senate they should think of the fundraising event as an IPO. Smith went on to say that the lobbyists should get in early because then it doesn't cost as much and if they didn't get in at all then it would be painful for them after November. Then as if to prove he was serious he referred four different times , according to press reports, to Senator Jeff Klein as his "enforcer" and said Klein was going to be brutal and aggressive about collecting contributions.

If these actions aren't illegal than it is because those who make the laws have provided escape clauses for professional politicians ...namely themselves. If laws were broken than the lack of any serious investigation proves that the system is truly and irrevocably broken and must be replaced with something novel and revolutionary like ...equal justice for the "rulers" and not just the "ruled".

Full disclosure mandates that I declare I am Frank Vernuccio's campaign manager and therefore the readers can decide if my comments about his opponent are tainted with the bias of what is becoming a very hard fought political battle. I hope however they do not do so, because these things are real and ugly and they manifest what is wrong with our politics and our government. Further, before I am a friend and partisan, I am a citizen... and as a citizen I see what I see and I hear what I hear like all my fellow citizens. Last night I saw the real face of Jeff Klein and all I have to say to him and the rest of his fellow parasites... Frank Vernuccio only claims to be an American Citizen and he unlike you... didn't just wake up one morning and decide to be an arrogant aristocrat !

ERLANDSSON

THE AUDACITY OF ARROGANCE

THE AUDACITY OF ARROGANCE
Nancy Pelosi is to politics what ebola is to health. She has strutted about the national stage since 2006 with her stupidity borne out of a fecal ideology on full display, and the proof of this is that she is too stupid to be ashamed.She has been the cover girl for the nanny state fascists who believe that we are all too dumb to live our lives without their direct involvement,allignment thereby creating a "secular progressive sharia" under which all we are and everything we do or hope to do is subject to their permission.Almost singlehandedly she has become the annoying, chalk on the blackboard voice of the left as they appease our enemies, bankrupt the nation and demonize all and any who dare protest.She is the personification of the reason that we must completely do away with the professional political class in this country and make these latter day mandarins a vestige of the past and not the ghosts of things to come. Yesterday she called for the investigation of those who seek to stop the Park 51 Mosque at ground zero from being built. She did this after one of the top leaders of Hamas came out in full support of the project. That bit of allignment even caused the hectoring "I'm the only adult in town" Mayor to shut up...but not our Nancy! In the rabid precincts of the far left, Hamas are the good guys. So, as the chief spokesperson of the "I'm not with the great Satan" wing of the Democrat party, Nancy felt it was safe to weigh in. Why do I think she and her cohorts want to make Gaza the 51st state?Nancy Pelosi needs to go... along with Maxine, Charlie, Barbara, Barney, Maurice, Louise, Henry, Alan and the other barnacles that are causing the ship of state to run aground. Her declaration of yesterday was and is, chilling and scary. Do we need any further proof that Democrats don't know what democracy is anymore?These lunatics have spent their miserable lives talking to each other and not to us and we like schmucks have paid them to morph into a pseudo aristocracy. No wonder Michelle takes 10 vacations a summer...that what royals do!But Nancy...dear Nancy...sweet San Fran Nan , the golden girl from the Golden Gate she has done her wrecking crew one better...she is now talking only to herself.All who read this and agree...let's do her and us a favor. Let's retire her! Go to http://www.johndennis2010.com/ and make a contribution. Nancy is just not the problem of the voters of Marin County any more ...she is Americas' problem.ERLANDSSON

THE POLITICAL CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE CASE OF THE WHITECHAPEL BUILDER (inspired by true events…present and past)

THE CURIOUS CORORNER

In the spring of ’91, it seemed at last that the horrors of Whitechapel were at last behind a city transfixed by serial butchery of the most savage kind. There was a feeling in the air that the good old town had passed through a storm of demonic proportions and while the fiend known as the “Ripper” had not been apprehended, somehow good in some unfathomable fashion, had triumphed over evil.

During the worst part of the killings, Holmes was in the field as the saying goes, privately assisting Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline and Chief Inspector Donald Swanson of Scotland Yard who headed the investigation. It seemed that someone very high in the Royal family had taken an acute interest in the murders and Holmes had been summoned by his elder brother Mycroft and asked to quietly assist. “It would not appear positive if the public thought the “Yard” was not “up to the job” his brother had told him.

Mycroft Holmes was the most mysterious of men and in physical appearance the exact opposite of his lean and saturnine brother. He was corpulent in the extreme but very agile physically. Some might even call him graceful. Holmes the younger had a vulpine quality to his sharply chiseled face while Holmes the elder could be mistaken for “Father Christmas” until you looked into his eyes that were black as night and the duplicate of his brothers. Those eyes betrayed no emotion or gave anyone a glimpse of what either one was thinking. Those who met them for the first time were aware that they were in the presence of extraordinary men just by looking into those coal black eyes of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes.

In revulsion over the murders of these unfortunate women of the East End, Parliament has passed two significant bills known as the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890 and the Public Health Amendment Act of 1890 which set minimum standards for accommodations in an effort to transform degenerated urban areas. Intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw had long advocated for such actions on the basis that poverty and deprivation were the root causes for crime and therefore extreme deprivation caused extreme and wanton brutality. Holmes however thought that premise simplistic, since as the world’s first Private Consulting Detective he had borne personal witness to despicable acts of violence and evil performed by members of some of the highest born and most privileged families in the realm.

However since the passage of these two landmark bills little seemed to have been done and while serious journalists tried to keep the issue alive, the rest of the “yellow press” moved on to whatever new scandal or curiosity seemed to be deemed worthy of a collective vicarious thrill. Only a year before the tabloids had been ablaze with the death of Joseph Carey Merrick also known as John Merrick at the London Hospital. Merrick a former denizen of Whitechapel was the grotesquely and tragically deformed young man that his physician Dr. Frederick Treves had dubbed “The Elephant Man” and Holmes had been his friend. At Merrick’s funeral, Holmes had encountered the coroner at his inquest Dr .Wynne Edward Baker, who had come to prominence during the notorious murders of 1888. Baker had sought Holmes out after the service and entreated him to share a Hansom cab with him back to town. On the ride back Baker shared with Holmes his concerns about the eventual success of the reforms then being debated by the House of Commons. “Mr. Holmes” he had said at one point in the conversation, “there are rumors of forces afoot that mean to use this effort to enrich themselves and if they succeed it will be to the detriment of those poor women and our dear friend that we buried today! They will allow the bills to pass and then they will delay the work until they extract their pound of flesh from the public fisc. It is a heinous threat and not worthy of a Christian nation. More than this I cannot tell you since I learned merely the broadest outlines of this scheme from poor Merrick himself who in turn had heard it from one of his many visitors at the hospital. After that conversation I made some discreet inquiries and met with a dead end when one promising lead was run down by a runaway hackney on High Street. I must confess to you Holmes that when I did my inquest on Joseph, I looked long and hard for signs of foul play but could find no definitive evidence. I am haunted by the thought that poor Merrick being the most trusting of souls, was done in by one of the new friends that came with his celebrity. He could have innocently said the wrong thing to the wrong person unaware that knowledge of this nefarious endeavor could spell his doom.”

Holmes had promised Baker that he would look into it and for a year had surreptitiously delved into the matter often using his amazing skills at disguise to visit the haunts of Whitechapel either as a Lascar seaman on the prowl or a foppish Count from Rumania looking for forbidden pleasures. After a time he ceased to update me on the course and direction of his investigation and I had come to believe that the Coroners fears were unfounded. Then in late April a missive came from Mycroft in the form of his “carte de visite” sans photograph which simply read “M.V. Holmes and underneath “Clerk”. In the upper right hand corner was the unmistakable Royal Coat of Arms of the Queen of England. On the back in the fine but minute calligraphy that was the handwriting of Mycroft Holmes it was simply written “Diogenes…2:00PM…bring Watson”

Holmes who had been languidly sprawled in his favorite easy chair encased in a dense cloud of sweetish tobacco smoke emanating from his meerschaum while perusing the morning broadsheets sprang up with alacrity and while rushing to his chambers to dress commanded me to “prepare yourself my dear old chap…at last the game is afoot!”

AN EPHIPHANY AT THE DIOGENES CLUB

The Diogenes Club was the unofficial home of Mycroft Holmes. While he resided in a flat in Pall Mall his life centered on his offices in Whitehall and his club. The club was one of the oddest in London and as I have previously described it in my writings about the “Greek Interpreter” was as such for the following reasons as states by Holmes himself.
"There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere."
At 2:00PM precisely we were shepherded into the “Strangers Room” where Mycroft Holmes sat reading a thin dossier with singular intensity. At first I was uncertain that he was even aware we were there and hence cleared my throat as a subtle way of announcing our presence. Without looking up at me Mycroft Holmes swiftly drew his finger across his throat as if the digit was a blade while Sherlock Holmes gave me a piercing glance of opprobrium. Sufficiently chastened, I bit my tongue and stood patiently until Mycroft had finished his scrutiny.

When at last he looked up at us a brief flicker of a smile glanced over his fleshy face and he motioned for us to sit. “Sherlock you look absolutely wretched and you my dear Watson sound as if you have a case of the grippe coming on.” To this assault in lieu of greetings Holmes the younger replied with an acerbic “and you my dear Mycroft look as though you are in need of a gourmet lunch”. With this rather queer round of faux bonhomie concluded, Mycroft went straight to the point. “Dr. Baker’s fears were well grounded. There are forces at work at the highest levels of the Social Democratic Federation that masquerade as friends of the poor but in reality are using them as a puppet master would use a puppet to gain wealth and power. I believe the key to finding conclusive proof of this criminal undertaking lies with no other than Mr. George Akin Lusk.”

“By Jove Mycroft you don’t mean the fellow from Whitechapel and the “Ripper” murders do you?” I asked quizzically. At this juncture Sherlock interjected “yes my dear Watson that is exactly who he means and I am a fool not to have seen this before!” “Do not be too hard on yourself my dear brother” Mycroft said softly in an uncharacteristically kindly way. “It took me a considerable amount of time and no small amount of money to piece together the puzzle of a conspiracy so blatant yet so simultaneously concealed that no one but a criminal himself would see at first blush what in reality was truly occurring. I am asking you …and this request comes from the highest authority…to go where the government cannot since we are in the midst of a very stiff election, where at this point in time the radical Social Democratic Federation may well end up forming a new government. I need not remind both of you that this organization controls the East End now and has made inroads in the slums of Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester and Leeds. Under a banner of helping the poor they want to tax the wealthy …or at least those whom they consider wealthy in order to bestow a vast amount of public charity upon the unfortunate in the form of direct stipends. The only requirement attached to the recipient is joining and working for the SDF. And …oh yes gentlemen …they are committed to the abolition of the monarchy”.

With that he stopped and simply looked at us for our response. Sherlock Holmes answered for the both of us with a simple nod of his head and with that Mycroft handed us the dossier and we both turned on our heels and quickly exited through the silent club into the bright afternoon sunshine with a dark cloud in the background.

The dossier on George Akin Lusk read as follows:

George Akin Lusk was Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee during the murders in 1888. Lusk is also a former Freemason (excluded from the Doric Lodge for non-payment of dues). George Akin Lusk is a builder and decorator who specializes in restorations and is also the Churchwarden of his church.
Lusk was elected Chairman by other local businessmen who made up the Committee on 10 September 1888. He and the Committee's Treasurer, Joseph Aarons, wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph, addressed to the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, stating that “the offer of a substantial reward from the government would convince the poor and humble residents of our East-end that the government authorities are as much anxious to avenge the blood of these unfortunate women as they were the assassination of Lord Cavendish and Mr. Burke."
In October Lusk came to believe that his house was being watched by a sinister bearded man, and requested police protection. On 16 October 1888 he received a small package in the evening mail at his home, 1 Alderney Road, Mile End. On opening the package he found a letter addressed to himself, inside which was half a human kidney. The letter read:
"From hell
Mr. Lusk,
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer
signed
Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk"

Convinced the letter was a practical joke, Lusk placed the box and the kidney in his desk drawer. At a meeting of the Vigilance Committee the next day he showed it to other members of the Committee. On 14 October, Joseph Aarons, W Harris and two other members called Reeves and Lawton visited Lusk at home to inspect the letter and the kidney. Lusk wanted to throw both away, but he was persuaded to take them to Dr Frederick Wiles, who had a surgery nearby on the Mile End Road.

Wiles was out, so his assistant, F S Reed examined the contents of the box and took the kidney to Dr. Thomas Horrocks Openshaw at the nearby London Hospital. The kidney was handed over to the City Police in whose jurisdiction Catherine Eddowes had been murdered. It was never conclusively proven that the kidney belonged to Eddowes.

The following is a list of Whitechapel victims and the original letter sent to Lusk.
Date
Victim
Circumstances
Tuesday 3 April 1888
Emma Elizabeth Smith
Assaulted and robbed in Osborn Street, Whitechapel.
Tuesday 7 August 1888
Martha Tabram
George Yard Buildings, George Yard, Whitechapel.
Friday 31 August 1888
Mary Ann Nichols
Buck's Row, Whitechapel,
Saturday 8 September 1888
Annie Chapman
Rear Yard at 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields.
Sunday 30 September 1888
Elizabeth Stride
Yard at side of 40 Berner Street, St Georges-in-the- East.
Sunday 30 September 1888
Catherine Eddowes
Mitre Square, Aldgate, City of London.
Friday 9 November 1888
Mary Jane Kelly
13 Miller's Court, 26 Dorset Street Spitalfields.
Thursday 20 December 1888
Rose Mylett
Clarke's Yard, High Street. Poplar.
Wednesday 17 July 1889
Alice McKenzie
Castle Alley, Whitechapel.
Tuesday 10 September 1889
Unknown female torso
Found under railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel,
Friday 13 February 1891
Frances Coles
Under railway arch, Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel.

A VISIT TO MR. LUSK

The next day Holmes and I prepared to go and visit George Lusk. I was surprised and a bit baffled when Holmes instructed the driver to proceed to 1 Aldeny Road, Mile End, the residence of Mr. Lusk, instead of his place of business. “Holmes” I inquired “why are we going to his home? It is mid-morning surely he will be at his place of business!”

“No Watson Lusk will at home …rest assured!” was his brusque reply.

Sure enough after a brisk rapping on the front door, it was abruptly thrown open by a wild eyed man of middle years in stained, odiferous and badly wrinkled clothing. With a curse and an oath he asked us “Who the bloody Hell are you!” at once betraying the fact that at half past ten in the morning, he was drunk as a Lord.

With a swift push of his right hand which I recognized immediately as an incapacitating blow from the Oriental art of Ju Jit Su Holmes struck .Lusk and abruptly ended the conversation before it could continue.

Lusk crumpled to the floor of his vestibule and Holmes quickly entered the house while dragging the inert form of poor Lusk after him. “Quickly Watson, shut the door before a Constable sees us!” Holmes admonished me as I stood mouth agape at entrance to the Lusk abode.

“Holmes whatever have you done to this wretched fellow?” I complained as Holmes propped up the groggy Lusk who was starting to recover his senses.

“Make coffee Watson…make it strong and make it black and make it quickly!” he commanded.

After a brief span of time and after copious amounts of coffee Mr. Lusk regained a measure of his senses and in a tremulous voice asked who we were and what we wanted with him. Holmes introduced us to the badly shaken man and with that introduction a wave of relief swept over the poor man’s face.

“Oh Mr. Holmes your fame proceeds you sir and very glad I am to make your acquaintance. I thought nothing could be worse than the season of the “Ripper” sir but I now find myself in the grip of forces that threaten to destroy my business and my reputation. As you gentlemen may know my principle expertise lies in the restoration of Music Houses. This is both a specialty and an art because of the knowledge required concerning acoustics, baffling and the like. However when the House of Commons passed the two bills to renew and renovate the East End and in particular, Whitechapel, I realized a great opportunity lay before me and I put all my savings and more into bidding on great swaths of areas condemned for destruction and rebuilding. That is when it first began and I should have known that there was something unsavory about the endless delays and the large sums of money I had to remit to the SDP and its MP from Whitechapel, Mr. Anatole Linski.”

At this pause in the story Holmes interjected “If I am not mistaken Mr. Lusk, this is the same Mr. Linski who claims to have been born in Kiev, Poland and came to London as a small child. At 16 years of age he matriculated at Cambridge under a financial sponsorship of unknown origin and upon graduation was one of the principle founders of the Social Democratic Federation. The SDF was formed as a counter point not to the Tories but to the Liberals, whom they hoped to subjugate to form a Parliamentary monolith that will control the Empire for many years to come. Linski has established local organizations that are recognizable by the red shirts they wear and the brutal street tactics they employ to force honest businessmen such as you to pay them for protection from labor unrest and vandalism. For many years Linski was secretly affiliated with the “Napoleon of Crime” Dr. Moriarty who saw him as a vehicle to increase his nefarious power over the city and nation.”

Amazement spread across the face of Lusk who was for a brief moment was stunned into silence. “Mr. Holmes you not only know this villain well, you have taught me much of which I had no idea” he finally stammered.

“Pray Mr. Lusk do continue with your tale of woe. I must know it all if I am to put an end to this grave threat to the nation. Leave nothing out …each and every little fact is critical” said Holmes gently but emphatically.

Lusk than continued his narrative. “When Anatole Linski first stood for Parliament he was relatively young with his only experience in life being part of the creation of the SDF or the Social Democratic Federation and the clubs affiliated with the movement. At that time he preached a kind of moral purity particularly with regard to the living conditions of the poor. Chapters of this organization have spread throughout the nation and then ever so gradually; it has all but made a metamorphosis into a full fledged political party. Many of his ideas he took from that German refugee writer Marx who died in 1883 and is buried in Highgate cemetery.”

At this point I interrupted to state that I knew the case very well and had in fact been summoned more than once by the children of Marx to attend their father after his wife had died in 1881. “His children were attentive to him plus there was another who resembled him the most and seemed to be in charge. He was introduced to me as the son of his house keeper, a woman by the name of Helene Demuth. By Jove Holmes, that young man’s name was Linski, do you think there is any connection?”

Holmes stared intently at a spot on the wall just above the head of Mr. Lusk and for a brief eternity said nothing at all. At first I thought he had not heard me but as always things rarely got by my friend and after what seemed to be several minutes but was in all reality less than a minute, he answered in a slow measured tone “that Watson may be nothing or it may be everything”.

On that cryptic note, Mr. Lusk concluded his narrative by recalling how he was awarded a considerable portion of the contracts to tear down and rebuild the slums of Whitechapel only to be delayed time and again by permits and regulations that seemed to spring up from every quarter. He and other builders experienced a tangled maze of bureaucracy that eventually drained them of their capital and still denied them the necessary permissions to begin the work and thereby begin to receive their compensation. Then slowly contractor by contractor the final approvals began to be issued…except for Lusk. who held the contracts for the largest amount of the work to be undertaken. In desperation with most of his laborers furloughed until he could begin his work, he went to one of his competitors and begged him to tell how he had received his permissions. “It was in the end quite simple Lusk” he was told “it was £5,000 a contract arranged through a certain Mr. Anthony Ress Esq., a barrister who claimed that by acting as a “facilitator” he could clear up any and all obstacles surrounding any of these awards.”

“With that Mr. Holmes I went to see the esteemed Mr. Ress to plead for his assistance before I faced utter ruin. I met him in a dining establishment instead of his offices which I thought peculiar. He was a clever and glib man, but one in whom I felt inspired little or no trust. He refused to explain what the £5,000 paid for or to whom it went. He kept raising vague reasons in explanation for this fee. I grew frustrated and angry and harsh words were exchanged between us. I accused him of extortion and again demanded an answer as to where this money would go and why it was even necessary in the first place. I raised a clenched fist to his face and his anger grew in response to mine. Then he blurted out the following “Don’t make an enemy of me or mine Mr. Lusk for we are from Hell and to Hell you will be consigned!” I was shaken to the very marrow of my bones with that Mr. Holmes for it was too close by half to the language in the letter sent to me by Jack the Ripper in 1888. I must have turned white as a sheet because at that instance the expression on his face told me that he knew he had struck a nerve. Summoning up all my courage I told him that threats did not frighten me, even though my demeanor must have suggested otherwise. I cursed him even thought I am a God fearing man and a warden of my church and declared that he was running a criminal enterprise and I would see that he was apprehended and punished for his wickedness. He just laughed and with a leer and a snarl on his lips said in the most awful tone “Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk!”

At this juncture the color drained from the face of George Lusk and he began to shake and weep in the most unmanly fashion. Holmes just stood there and waited for this fit of emotion to pass and then he said in a most surprising kind and gentle voice, “And this is how the Ripper ended his letter to you is it not Mr. Lusk?”

Lusk, still not in full command of his emotions looked up at the great Sherlock Holmes and in a small voice like that of a child instead of a sturdy man of at least 17 stone said, “Oh Mr. Holmes I am a ruined man because somehow the Ripper still lives and once again he has me in his gaze and this time he means to finish me like he did poor Eddowes and the others!”

A TRIP THROUGH WHITECHAPEL

We left the wretched Lusk in the early evening after an intensive interrogation. All of a sudden the case entrusted to us from Mycroft Holmes had taken several unexpected and puzzling twists and turns. Holmes however was in no mood for discussion on our way back to Baker Street in the Hansom cab and so we were both left with our thoughts as we pondered the situation and the facts at our disposal.

When we arrived back at our flat, I arranged for a light supper with Mrs. Turner who had been our first landlady and was for a fortnight substituting for dear Mrs. Hudson who was in Dorset caring for an ailing invalid Aunt. Holmes in the meantime sent for one of the Baker Street Irregulars and dispatched him with a note for Mycroft while commanding the street gypsy to “wait for a response and then return to me as swiftly as a bird in flight!”

After supper Holmes brought out the Stradivarius and serenaded me with a seemingly endless program of exotic, Slavic melodies each one more wild and passionate than the preceding one. Then shortly before midnight, the response from Mycroft arrived and Holmes uttered a harsh barking sound signifying triumph and in an instant donned his hat and coat was out the door saying only “don’t wait up for me Watson.”

Having been through moments like this before I retired to my chambers and fell into a fitful sleep awaking just after sunrise only to fine Holmes still absent. I did not grow worried about him until it was evening and he still had not returned. I resolved to send a note to his brother if he was not back by nine in the evening which came and went with no Holmes in sight. As I sat down to write to Mycroft, Mrs. Turner knocked on my door to give me a note that much to my relief was in the unmistakable handwriting of my famous friend. It simply said “bring your service revolver and take the cab waiting outside…H”.

There was a slight drizzle and a damp chill in the air as the Hansom proceeded at a steady trot through the Bishop’s Gate into Whitechapel. This had never been my favorite part of the metropolis for it contained all manner of dangers. The ugly heart of the district was Dorset Street which many called the most dangerous street in the city and the equal to the notorious “Five Points” of New York. Together with Wapping, Aldgate, Bethnal Green, Mile End, Limehouse, Bow, Bromly-by-Bow, Poplar, Shadwell, and Stepney the entire area was known collectively as the East End and it was the epicenter of every manner of human degradation known to man. Poor Merrick had been exhibited here like a caged freak in a shop on the Whitechapel Road until he was rescued by Dr. Treves. Inspector Lestrade had once told Holmes and me that there were over 1200 women of the night of very low class and over 60 brothels that catered to the most unspeakable practices in Whitechapel alone. All eleven of the poor creatures that had been murdered during the last three years had been fallen women.

The area had become the shame of the nation and during the period of the “Ripper” murders Parliament and such diverse groups such as the Law and Liberty League, The Fabian Society, which was a splinter group of The Fellowship of the New Life and The Salvation Army, (which was formed at 272 Whitechapel Road on August 7, 1878), attempted to reform or help the denizens of this lonely part of Hell. The SDF and the Socialist League were the most ferocious opponents of the status quo as well as of how civilized society was organized in general. In 1887and 1889, they were the principle organizers behind the “Bloody Sunday” November 13, 1887 demonstration in Trafalgar Square for the release of the Irish MP William O’Brien. This event had been the culmination of dozen of East End demonstrations involving both the “Irish question” and the conditions of the East End slums. All the SDF leadership was involved on that tragic day…Elizabeth Reynolds, John Burns, Annie Besant, Robert Cunningham-Graham and of course the omni-present Anatole Linski. 400 infantry and cavalry and over 2000 police were employed that day and when the violence was over, hundreds of men, women and children were beaten with three known deaths. This I know for a fact for I was called to hospital to attend the wounded. The Tory government of Lord Salisbury was shaken to its core but managed to hang on due to the overall distrust of and distaste for the SDF overall. But the winds of change were blowing and while Holmes was generally the most apolitical of men, even he was forced to admit that “This situation cannot continue or we shall all rue the day!”

In 1888 and 1889, the SDF were the masterminds behind the London Matchgirls strike and the London Dock Strike.

The latter event broke out on August 14, 1889 and helped to form the nascent Trade Union movement that now apparently is allied with reformers of all political stripes including the SDF. Cardinal Manning himself was the mediator between the owners and managers of the docks and the newly formed Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourer’s Union. Because it was a largely peaceful event much of the British middle class were sympathetic, if not supportive of the aims of the workers. Because of the Cardinals role, it was rumored that Pope Leo XIII himself was going to align himself with the trade unionists worldwide*.

All of these events, along with the “Ripper” murders were swirling about each other and as Mycroft Holmes once wryly remarked “In the season of virtue, the wicked shall trespass and try and lead the way!” It was a prescient and profound comment that stayed with me.

* On May 15, 1891 Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical “RERUM NOVARUM (Of New Things”)

POLITICS MOST FOUL


April 24, 1889 article in "The Palace Journal" about Whitechapel
A horrible black labyrinth, think many people, reeking from end to end with the vilest exhalations; its streets, mere kennels of horrent putrefaction; its every wall, its every object, slimy with the indigenous ooze of the place; swarming with human vermin, whose trade is robbery, and whose recreation is murder; the catacombs of London darker, more tortuous, and more dangerous than those of Rome, and supersaturated with foul life...Outcast London. Black and nasty still, a wilderness of crazy dens into which pallid wastrels crawl to die; where several families lie in each fetid room, and fathers, mothers, and children watch each other starve; where bony, blear-eyed wretches, with everything beautiful, brave, and worthy crushed out of them, and
nothing of the glory and nobleness and jollity of this world within the range of their crippled senses, rasp away their puny lives in the sty of the sweater.

The Hansom eventually stopped at what I presumed to be my final destination which was the notorious “Ten Bells Pub” at the corner of Commercial Street and Fournier Street
in Spitalfields in the East End of London. This sordid den of iniquity was notable for its association with two victims of the “Ripper”; Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly. I exited the cab with one hand on my revolver in the side pocket of my coat and the other on my cane, which was of a sturdy bamboo and concealed a sword that could cut through skin and bone with a flick of the wrist.

The drizzle had subsided and there was a fog growing since we were not that far from the docks. I glanced furtively at my watch since it was dangerous to display anything of value in this terrible place. It was half past nine and there was no moon, poor gas lighting, a growing ground fog and myself, alone in the most dangerous area of London looking every inch the proper English gentleman when a shadowy figure emerged from the Ten Bells and staggered over to me. “’Ello Guvnor …’ow ar yew this foine night? Say m’lord dew yew ‘ave a shilling to ‘elp a poor seaman git a ‘alf pint to quench ‘is thirst?”


The man was clearly an “East Ender” with a common “cockney” accent and was dressed as a common workman.

My first reaction was to draw my sword from its cane scabbard, when the man stopped short and said in that unmistakable voice “Be careful Watson oryou will cut yourself with that blade and then have to treat yourself and a Doctor who has himself as a patient, has a fool for a Physician!”

“Good Lord Holmes, I should have expected this from you. You nearly frightened me to death. Where have you been I was about to notify your brother that you had gone missing!”

“No dear Watson, I merely went aground and this night we shall solve a multitude of riddles and hopefully spare the nation a trauma of the first magnitude!”

With that he grabbed my elbow and we proceed south along Commercial Street into the belly of the beast known as Whitechapel.

Our destination was a nondescript building on High Street which when we arrived had us witness Hansom after Hansom pull up and discharge their passengers who promptly entered the structure after speaking briefly with two burly and decidedly malevolent appearing villains with tattoos on their face and necks. “Maoris” whispered Holmes, “on other occasions they use Cossacks or Turks,”

“Follow my lead Watson and when I give you the signal act with alacrity” he instructed me. With a steady gate and a grim visage we strode to the entrance of the building and started to pass through when we were roughly stopped by one of the guards with a rough hand to Holmes’s chest. “’Ere now laddie…there’s no reason to do that” said Holmes in his uncanny cockney. The larger of the two merely grunted “the sign” as Holmes hit him with a punch that dropped him like a load of bricks. The only word he said while this was being done was “gun” and in a split second my revolver was in the face of the second brute. Holmes placed his right hand on the neck of the man still standing and said in a most menacing tone “If you want to live to see the sunrise you will tell us the sign.” As he began to apply pressure on the carotid artery the man began to lose all signs of resistance and just before he crumpled to the pavement, he muttered “Ulyanov”.

Then from out of the shadows two new men emerged who were this time dressed in a Russian peasant fashion but were as menacing as the two who were unconscious on the ground. “Mycroft’s men” Holmes hissed through clenched teeth and in less than an instant both of the Maoris were bound and gagged and deposited in the shadows of the alley way adjoining the building.

With a silent nod to both men, Holmes and I proceeded into the building which turned out to be a moderately sized auditorium on the first floor with a stage and what appeared to be offices or meeting rooms running along the balustrade of the second floor. We followed the sound of the voices and entered the auditorium where close to fifty men and a smattering of women were seated in the audience waiting for some unknown program to begin. Holmes and I slipped in to seats in the rear where the lighting was dim and proceeded to observe the crowd. To our surprise, we saw many familiar faces some of whom were MPs, and others who were prominent wealthy business men or people associated with the recent social disturbances. The room was lined with unsavory fellows wearing the red shirt of the militant guard of the SDF. Then the crowd hushed as a thin man with bushy hair in his mid to late thirties, a younger man with a goatee and moustache and a well dressed man who obviously was well to do entered the stage from stage left and proceed to the three chairs situated behind a lectern at stage front center. I immediately recognized the bushy haired man and nudged Holmes whispering “that is Linski …I remember him from treating the German philosopher Marks…he has come to resemble him even more as time passes. Holmes merely nodded as if he already was in possession of this knowledge and then bid me be silent with a finger to his lips as the bushy haired young man began to speak.

“Comrades” he began “tonight we are on the verge of a great new era where the forces of religion, social convention and the rights and privileges of the bourgeoisie and the ruling class will commence to wither and die like the poison fruit they are. The system of capitalism must be forever be destroyed and we as the vanguard of that destruction must be uncompromising and even brutal if necessary in the furtherance of its destruction. To that end we have endeavored to utilize all means necessary to tear down the old order and create a new man for the new century. Sometimes that has involved what the moralists of this decadent and false democracy would call murder but what we call the sacrifice of the useless for the betterment of the many. I speak frankly to you tonight because you have all been proven to be the trusted members of an elite whose only goal and objective is the revolutionary overthrow of this Monarchy and its colonies and Empire as well as the genocidal faux democracy that grows like a cancer in the United States. Make no mistake about this Comrades… we are embarked upon a world wide struggle of historic proportions. We intend to use the very democratic principles, laws and rights which the capitalists so treasure as their strength, as our weapon and turn that strength into the fatal weakness that kills this beast called democracy from within. Before I introduce our guest from abroad I want to ask our legal advisor Barrister Anthony Ress to say a few words.”

At this point, the well dressed gentleman arose and proceeded to the lectern. “Most if not all of you know me”, he began in a gruff husky voice. Do not let my dress and manner fool you for I was born not far from here on the corner of Flower and Dean Streets which are amongst the very worst places on earth. I escaped this deplorable place by the strength of my wits and my sworn oath of determination to have my revenge upon those who take all the wealth and share it with none. Over the past months we have made sure that the parasites who want to profit off the rehabilitation of the poor of the slums, are forced to pay heavily for the privilege of “doing good”. The delay furthers the unrest of the poor and thus each day brings us more disciples while the blood money we drain from these business men “leeches” fattens our coffers and brings the day of revolution closer. In the upcoming by-elections, the SDF will swamp the Tories and the Liberals which are in such precipitous decline that soon they will die and we will feast on their carcass and assume the mantle as the majority party of the new century and of a new Britain. Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce to you that we have over £1,ooo,ooo at our disposal”. With that there was a collective gasp from the audience which instantly made me think how impressed these would be destroyers of wealth were with wealth itself. Indeed Mr. Ress looked as prosperous a man could be and the others too, while somewhat less fastidious in dress and appearance, wore suits that were not inexpensive and boots that even from my perch in the rear, I knew to be from the Royal boot maker John Lobb of St James Street.

To vigorous applause, Ress concluded his remarks and Linski resumed his place as master of ceremonies before the lectern. “And now Comrades, I want to introduce you to the future…he comes to us tonight, a young man in Law School in St. Petersburg, who will one day take our revolution from the steppes of the Caucasus and to the Urals and from Siberia, to Tbilisi on the Black Sea and Minsk in the Ukraine. His family has already sacrificed one son to the cause of the proletariat and now the younger one has stepped forward to lead Russia into the future. Comrades I give you a young man that you will here much from in the future…a man we had to smuggle out of his country for this meeting …I give you Vladimir Ulyanov.”

Amidst a robust applause the slight young man with the goatee moved to the lectern and proceeded through an interpreter to give a spellbinding and mesmerizing address. One soon forgot the impediment of his youth and was caught up in the intensity and passion of his words and his intellect. His eyes were like coals and strangely reminded me of the eyes of Holmes and his brother. This was a man with a great intellectual gift. This was also a very dangerous man who was as amoral as any I have ever known or read about. He had passion but no soul. Humankind as individuals with hopes and dreams were as unimportant to him as insects. He prophesized a world devoid of the restraints of God where the “Golden Rule” that he saw as the law of the jungle would be replaced by the law of the hive or the collective. He was also much more forth right about his absolute loathing of Jews than the two prior speakers and as he spoke on this topic my mind remembered the “Goulston Street Graffito” found after the Stride and Eddowes murders that inflamed the residents of the East End. It read "The Juews are no the men that will not be blamed for nothing" and while this evidence was removed for fear of instigating a “pogrom” against the many good and virtuous members of that ancient faith, it was revealed surreptitiously to the press and riots ensued.
With the conclusion of his remarks the meeting ended and the members of the audience departed from the hall to waiting carriages and into the arms of waiting members of the British Secret Service. Holmes and I rushed to the front of the hall to intercept Linski, Ress and Ulyanov only to see them disappear through a trap door behind the stage into a tunnel leading to the Thames. We followed andstaggered through the darkness after them pausing only to light a phosphorescent match, the flame of which caused bullets to nearly end our lives. By the time we reached the end of the tunnel and the river there was no sign of the three even as police launches were dispatched to stop each and every craft on the water that night.

Of Linski his fate is unknown but Holmes never stopped searching for him and from time to time rumors would reach him that he had changed his name and gone to the United States where he became obscenely wealthy through his manipulation of the Gold and Silver markets. This, it was believed, caused at least one if not two world wide panics that only made him even richer. One fine spring day in New York City in1907 he was found hanging from a tree in Central Park and his fortune was given to the Church since he died intestate.

Of the larcenous Mr. Anatole Ress, he too vanished from sight, although it was suspected that a body fished from the Thames months later might have been him. The fish and the effect of being immersed in the salt water of the Thames estuary while wrapped in chains for a good deal of time had the unfortunate effect of leaving very little of the corpus to identify. There was attached to his left wrist a handcuff bracelet that had at its other cuff a large leather Gladstone bag with its bottom cut away. On that bag engraved in gold were the initials A. R. Esq.

Of the young and charismatic Ulyanov he returned to Russia where he continued his revolutionary activities and from whence he was exiled several times. Holmes almost caught up with him when he returned to London for a spell and then missed him again when he lived in exile in Zurich. By that time Holmes was very old with the will to fight but not the strength and agility and besides Ulyanov had covered his tracks well. He had changed his identity and was now known by the name Lenin.

Dr. John Hemish Watson MD
London 1918

ERLANDSSON.

THE OBAMA DOCTRINE AND LENIN'S DREAM

THE OBAMA DOCTRINE AND LENIN’S DREAM

When the political history of the Obama administration is finally recorded for posterity, the “New START” treaty may well emerge as the prime example of policy driven by ideology in defiance of reality.

When you examine this particular irresponsible and dangerous attempt to make the world allegedly safer, you must do so in the larger context of American Foreign Policy in the “Age of Obama”. This context encompasses a growing list of actions, statements and behaviors that divert sharply from all past Presidents and when taken as a whole leave a majority of Americans puzzled, fearful and angry.

As with Health Care and other domestic initiatives, Obama has ignored the will of the American people in a consistent arrogant and haughty manner. His “Alinskyite” world view which at its base subscribes much of the wickedness on earth to capitalism and American exceptionalism, becomes glaringly more apparent with each passing day. Traditional allies are treated with disdain and self proclaimed enemies are wooed. Israel , like Honduras before it, is directed by Obama to ignore their laws and do what they are told. In the case of Israel it becomes increasingly difficult not to conclude that this is a President who privately believes the castration of the Jewish State is the only path to peace in the region. The emerging policy consensus that some how a nuclear Iran is something the world can or more pathetically, has to live with is either something created by a naïf or a darker more sinister scenario leading to a second Shoah.

Closer to home, Obama dithers, while a “narco-war” rages on our borders. Hugo Chavez is treated as inconsequential as he becomes the de facto Marxist leader in Latin America aligning himself with Iran, China, and Russia. In Asia, North Korea ignores us while China opens up trade with them knowing that while America is still strong on paper, under this President there is no longer any will to use American power as a deterrent to aggression or the threat of nuclear war. Both Europe and Asia wake up to the fact that the country that has guaranteed their security for 65 years has decided to retire or worse join the other side.

Since the end of WWII, the strategic concept of “extended deterrence” has kept the peace and allowed our allies around the globe to devote a relative fraction of their GDP (as compared to what we spend) to defense. During the Cold War with its ups and downs and twists and turns, the concepts of “Mutually Assured Destruction” or MAD and “Containment” eventually led to joint efforts to limit nuclear proliferation as defense costs skyrocketed and lesser nations obtained some measure of nuclear offensive capability. When Reagan adopted “Star Wars” as a robust (but theoretical) defensive missile shield and coupled it with the traditional offensive triad of Bombers, ICBMs and nuclear armed Subs, the Soviet economy crumbled and with it Lenin’s dream.

Post “Cold War” events and the belief that the era of major conventional warfare was over led military strategists and politicians to confront what they believed was the new reality of small wars with rogue states over regional issues. Then after 9/11, a new threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism suddenly became the djinn that escaped from bottle. . The United States began to adapt to an additional aspect of post cold war hostility …counter-terrorism in the form of intelligence, nation building and homeland security and anti-terrorism in the form of asymmetrical warfare. Meanwhile, a re-emerging Russia and a semi-capitalist China, each with new found wealth and economic power began to focus their energies on political hegemony through “globalism” and using proxies like North Korea and Iran to keep the US and the West on the defensive. While we looked at Iran, North Korea and political Islam as the main threats to world peace, we failed to see the puppet masters assembling backstage.

Obama, with a delusion that he could seduce any world leader with his rhetoric and his charm began his term of office apologizing to the world for the US being…the US. Alinsky would have been proud of his star pupil who as the most left wing President with the leanest resume in our history has proceeded to show friend and foe alike that the American Eagle had no claws.

The “New Start” treaty is such a flawed document that one wonders why any country would bother with the effort unless the effort was for dramatic effect only. In this sense it makes perfect sense that a President in perpetual campaign mode would put forth the nonsense that this was a great achievement and a major step toward nuclear non-proliferation. In campaigns it is all about the symbolism. In governance however it has to be about substance or it is about nothing at all.

This treaty in reality makes the world a more dangerous place. It leaves out tactical nukes all together while the Russians believe that our anti missile defense array are counted while we do not. Our bomber fleet is old and in need of modernization which we do not intend to do. They are modernizing. We have “de-MIRVed” our missiles. They are “re-MIRVing” theirs. They have 96 bombers in the air part of their offensive structure. Each one has around ten bombs or missiles. Yet, this element is only counted as 96 in the overall warhead count…and the debate goes on.

Some pundits believe that Obama believes that by signing this Russia will become more cooperative with regard to sanctions against Iran. Instead Russia agrees to help build another nuclear facility in Bushehr. Similarly we placate China for the same reasons as well as for some help with Kim Jung Il and we meet with similar results. So we put on a brave face, kick Israel around, insult the Brits and irritate the French and stoically march back to the UN to try for a new round of sanctions with even more limitations than the ones we proposed before. That part of the world that does not snicker at us simply shakes their heads.

Obama, they say is brilliant. I say he is merely precocious in the same way that a person with a lot of book smarts but no street smarts seems intelligent. He has a world view that does not incorporate that part of his oath of office which demands that he “preserve and protect” both the constitution and his fellow citizens. He believes that we are the problem and we have to be reduced before the world can truly be safe. His worldview also incorporates the fiction that only the left truly love the people and that the people are defined by their victim status at any given time in history. This among other intellectual frauds he adheres to, make up the context in which he proceeds to socialize the country and neuter our ability to defend ourselves and our allies. In the end our allies will attempt to defend themselves and instead of non-proliferation we will see either an arms races like none other or the subjugation of most of the world by a bellicose Russia and a belligerent China.

It is human nature for man to want to dominate other men. All of recorded history is testimony to this fact that most would like to avoid. But avoidance is not an option when it comes to freedom. The old dictum of “if you want peace then prepare for war” is truer today than ever before. To ignore this would be to condemn this nation and all of humanity to a new “dark age” while simultaneously giving new life to Lenin’s dream.

ERLANDSSON

HATIKVAH

Relations with the State of Israel are at the lowest point in 35 years. The Obama administration has never liked the fact that "Bibi" Netanyahu is Prime Minister. He is not an Israeli who will do just about anything to preserve the strategic alliance with the United States particularly in face of the fact that his country is facing the most serious existential threat in its history.

From the first days of this presidency, it has been clear that the President’s intention was to open up and broaden strategic and political relationships with the Arab countries of the region. Further they intended to broaden that effort to include the establishment of a substantive dialogue and possible thaw with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This has been a confusing policy to not only Israel but to the Sunni Arab world who for the most part view the “Persian” effort at religious and geographic hegemony as a major threat to them also. The Iranians, driven by religious fanaticism that most of the west doesn’t understand or chooses to disregard, wants their dreams of a Caliphate to come equipped with nuclear warheads for use in the first instance on Israel.

This is the “Mein Kampf” moment for the United States and the rest of the world. The mullahs of Teheran with Ali Khamenei and Amadinejad in control are deadly serious about the annihilation of Israel. This is not the tired and cynical game the Arabs have played for decades that uses the Palestinians as useful pawns to enrich themselves with foreign aid, weapons, and oil revenues in exchange for an ersatz peace. The real truth is that peace in the Middle East has never at its core, really been about Israel as a homeland for Jews until the Islamists reentered the picture and pan-Arabism departed. The new reality is now the old reality that was historically operational from the Crusades to the end of the Ottoman Empire…a struggle about the essential nature of God.

Obama has decided that despite there ever really having been a serious partner for peace in either Fatah or certainly Hamas, he will dispel the perception of American bias toward Israel by forcing Netanyahu and the “hard liners” into a corner where it gives the U.S. the space it needs to situate the Arabs on an equal platform with Israel. The essence of this is not wholly because of strategic concerns. There is a long festering attitude at work here that adheres to the premise that the main obstacle to regional stability (forget peace) is the existence of Israel itself.

Obama has foregone the opportunity to align himself with the anti regime protestors in Iran. By doing so he has painted a portrait of himself as someone who is either hopelessly naïve or someone who has decided that Islam is more important to his vision of America than three to four million Jews surrounded by people who hate them. He has reinforced this image by indulging in moral relativism by having Clinton, Biden and Gibbs vehemently denounce the accidental announcement of the construction of 1600 new housing units in a Jewish section of East Jerusalem while remaining silent while the PA dedicated a public square in Ramallah to a “Shaheeda” who blew up 38 people including one American and thirteen children.

This is the same kind of anti-Israeli garbage that was the centerpiece of the “infamous “
Goldstone Report and part and parcel of the anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic worldview that most of the “hard “ left in most parts of the world have adopted as gospel.

These people are the core of the Obama vote in this country. They are “intifada” leftists and while the President does not directly play to them in overt ways, the histrionic public scolding of the democratically elected leader of a country under siege by religious maniacs sends an unmistakable message to them that their guy knows who the “real” bad guys are.

So where is all of this taking us? One theory that starts to gain credence is that this administration has made a fateful decision to swing toward the Arabs for long term economic and political reasons. Another more sinister interpretation is that Obama is positioning the U.S. to be able to walk away from supporting any pre-emptive strike by Israel on the Iranian nuclear and military facilities. The fact that a lack of symbolic or material American support for such an event could mean potential catastrophe for Israel would, under this theory, seem to mean that Obama has decided to throw the Jews under the bus while possibly neutering the Ayatollahs in the process. The consequences of such a fateful decision could potentially be so tragic, reckless and disastrous that the already fragile global world order would break apart while a second Shoah takes place.

This President has already shown that public opinion holds little sway for him in either domestic or foreign matters. While some view this as a principled toughness, far more are seeing it as an arrogance born of a radical worldview that was disguised by endless generalities during the two year campaign. Now Obama the campaigner is in the real world and his inability to see reality and the potentially deadly consequences of his actions put us all in peril. A less harsh assessment of his motives is that he is simply in over his head. He is not a real President but he plays one on TV. If either is true it is not just Israel facing an existential threat.

ERLANDSSON

THE CASE OF THE TOWED AWAY CORPSE
It was one of those dreary late winter evenings, complete with drizzle and chill coming off the frigid waters of the Thames. I was ensconced beside a roaring fire with a rare edition of Livy hoping the heat from the grate would alleviate the dull ache from the Jezail bullet I had inside me as a constant reminder of my early days on the North West Frontier and the guerrilla wars against the fierce and wily Pathans.


Holmes, as was his wont, had indulged himself with a syringe of seven per-cent solution to cure his melancholia since tobacco had been priced practically out of existence by confiscatory taxes levied by the Lord Mayor. The Meerschaum and the Persian Slipper filled with a mixture of Turkish and Virginia blends still rested at their customary placed above the hearth where Holmes would from time to time dispatch one of the Baker Street Irregulars with an ounce or two to sell on his behalf to filthy rich foreigners from Russia or Arabia. This clandestine but lucrative sideline had more than once provided us with the funds to pay the rent on our shared bachelor flat at 221b Baker Street.


Holmes would always resort to the needle when boredom would overtake him due to the dearth of cases in the city since his arch nemesis Mortiarty had disappeared at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Holmes had returned home to the metropolis a changed man. He had become more introverted and was given to long occasions of tomb like silences where even the gastronomical miracles of our landlady Mrs. Hudson would not move him from his ennui to his normal level of manic rudeness.


My peaceful reading of the great Roman historian however was suddenly shattered by a great shout of joy from the great detective as he perused that days Daily News. "Watson" he bellowed, "the game is once again afoot and if I am not very much mistaken we are about to receive a visitor!"


"Holmes whatever are you talking about?" Then the door knocker was heard very distinctly.


"Watson...dear old chap, unless I miss my guess we are about to receive one of the subjects of two very odd stories in today's news...the Mortician from Chelsea is about to arrive!"


At that very moment Mrs. Hudson rapped on the entrance door to our flat to announce that we had a guest who proceeded to barrel by her in his haste to confront the world's first private consulting detective.


"Mr. Holmes he said looking squarely at me my name is...."


"I know who you are" said Holmes who was now perched on the settee with his Stradivarius tucked under his chin as if ready to play a gypsy polka. "You are the very famous and eminent Mortician of Chelsea who makes the departed come alive with the magic of your skill. You have come to me with a matter most urgent and so sensitive that if any word of it should reach the agony pages spewed forth by the denizens of the fourth estate, you would become a ruined creature of ridicule. You are also 51 years of age, suffer from episodic bouts of gout, imbibe at least one glass of claret a day for medicinal purposes and have a comely mistress of 24 with blond tresses whom you secretly provide for in a studio flat in Piccadilly where you visit her on Tuesdays."


It was if the air had been sucked out of his lungs and he began to stutter and stammer as if he were a child once more caught by his teacher red handed in some act of mischief. "How could you know all of this" he stammered, turning quite crimson as he struggled to compose himself.


"Elementary my dear sir" said Holmes, “you have the faint odor of formaldehyde upon you, yet your clothing is of the very finest quality, you have the redness of the face of a sufferer of gout and there is a slight but pronounced shuffle in your stride. You have two strands of golden hair on your waistcoat and a smudge of red on your collar. It is Tuesday and the buttons of your trousers are askew. Lastly you arrived in a Hearse emblazoned with the crest of the eminent Mortician of Chelsea, mortician to the royal family and most of the aristocracy in the nation, which I happened to see as I glanced out the window.


"But how do you know she is 24?" asked the startled but very impressed man. "That," said Holmes coyly 'is a trade secret". "You sir have come to me because you have lost a corpse!"


"Mr. Holmes you do not disappoint" said the man who was obviously impressed that the great detective had gone straight to the nub of matter and thus saved him from the utter embarrassment of having to relive what was obviously an event that had mortified and traumatized him. "Tell me everything “said Holmes "and leave nothing out!"


The great embalmer proceeded to share with us the story of how he had prepared a very eminent client for transport to Waterloo Station where he was to be sent north to Edinburgh where his family was to receive him for cremation. "I left him in the hearse for no longer than 10 minutes outside the main entrance of my establishment and when I returned to escort him myself to the station both he and the vehicle were gone."


Holmes stared intently at the man for what seemed like an eternity and the in a sudden burst of nervous energy leaped to his feet. "Summon a cab Watson and send an irregular to fetch Lestrade at the yard. Tell him to meet us at the impound yard by the docks for there is not a moment to lose!"


With that he donned his Deerstalker hat and his waterproofed caped coat and with the two of us in tow exited the house and into the cabriolet waiting at the curb. "Tell the hearse to follow" he ordered the mortician and in a flash we were off into the fog and the gloom at a breakneck speed.


When we arrived at the impound yard there appeared to be no one around save for the appearance of a faint light glowing through a dirty window in the building that clearly served as an office for the yard. Holmes quickly and expertly picked the lock on the on the chain that barred our entrance with a set of tools he had produced from his pocket and we silently slipped in to the darkened yard. "Watson did you bring your service revolver?" whispered Holmes to me. "There is an urban legend that a great hound guards these premises that is so savage that nothing but scraps of clothing is left of the trespassers he finds".


With that I pulled my trusty Wembley from the pocket of my greatcoat and Holmes made a sign with his hand to move toward towards the building. On the way there the mortician paused and pointed to his missing hearse sans horses. We quietly made our way to the vehicle and inside lie the deceased. As the Mortician transferred the remains to the second hearse, Lestrade appeared out of the fog.


"Now look here Mr. Holmes what on earth are you doing in this godforsaken place in the dead of night?" Holmes looked the Inspector straight in the eye and said in a tone laced with steel,"Lestrade, the Napoleon of crime lives and he has been at the center of a vast scheme to rob hardworking citizens of their money under the guise of enforcing the law!"


At the mention of the acronym for the supposedly late Professor Moriarty, both Lestrade and I stiffened for Holmes now had our complete attention. "Unless I am mistaken my dear Inspector inside that otherwise innocent and drab building we will find the proof of a conspiracy so malevolent in intent and grand in design that normal god fearing people would be unable and unprepared to mentally come to grips with its sinister nature. For some time the hardworking merchants and taxpayers of this city have been subject to an onslaught of fines and punishments for infractions either so miniscule or outright fraudulent that it amounts to a hidden tax. This has been done by our esteemed Lord Mayor and disguised as an act of civic virtue in the vestments of law and order when in reality it is a punishment to drive the law abiding out so that the minions of Moriarty can come and take their place. Once the honest "butcher” has gone then the criminal butcher can take his place, overcharge the customer and the surplus will go into the coffers of the most fiendish arch criminal the world has ever seen. Remember the recent case of the nursing mother who was fined for stopping her coach to breastfeed, or the citizen who was sitting alone on the omnibus at night only to be accused of taking two seats, or the pregnant woman who had to stop and rest in the sweltering heat of August only to be ordered to court.


At that I chimed in, "Holmes if you are saying that the Lord Mayor is in reality Moriarty, then the tax on tobacco and the prohibitions on fats, sugar and salt with the heavy fines attached are also part of this demonic conspiracy to alter the very nature of our great metropolis. This is the most fiendish distortion of the law and democracy that we have ever witnessed!"


"Yes Watson I knew in my soul that Moriarty survived. I could sense his presence everywhere. At first it was little things and then a pattern emerged. It was as if a great gigantic nanny had herded us into a large nursery where we to be subject to more and more rules until we had lost our freedom and our free will!"


"Lestrade raid that building...you will find not only the records of this nefarious plot but you will find in the cellars some of the ill gotten loot for I greatly fear that most of it has gone abroad!"


Later when I was writing the account of this singular episode I asked Holmes if he had been reading an account of a missing vehicle from the mortician when he intuitively understood what had happened and by whom. "No Watson" he purred through half shut eyes as he smoked his precious Meerschaum..."that was not it... it was the article saying the Lord Mayor was taking a long extended holiday to Switzerland that tipped me off"


Dr. John Watson MD

PS The previous version of this was filled with mispellings as I was slightly inebriated due to a marvelous Madeira with which I fear I overindulged myself. My apologies to my readers.

Your most obediant servant,

John Watson MD
ERLANDSSON

THE CASE OF THE TOWED AWAY CORPSE

It was one of those dreary late winter evenings, complete with drizzle and chill coming off the frigid waters of the Thames. I was ensconced beside a roaring fire with a rare edition of Livy hoping the heat from the grate would alleviate the dull ache from the Jezail bullet I had inside me as a constant reminder of my early days on the North West Frontier and the guerrilla wars against the fierce and wily Pathans.

Holmes, as was his wont, had indulged himself with a syringe of seven per-cent solution to cure his melancholia since tobacco had been priced practically out of existence by confiscatory taxes levied by the Lord Mayor. The Meerschaum and the Persian Slipper filled with a mixture of Turkish and Virginia blends still rested at their customary placed above the hearth where Holmes would from time to time dispatch one of the Baker Street Irregulars with an ounce or two to sell on his behalf to filthy rich foreignors from Russia or Arabia. This clandestine but lucrative sideline had more than once provided us with the funds to pay the rent on our shared batchelor flat at 221b Baker Street.

Holmes would always resort to the needle when boredom would overtake him due to the dearth of cases in the city since his arch nemesis Mortiarty had disappeared at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Holmes had returned home to the metropolis a changed man. He had become more introverted and was given to long occaisons of tomb like silences where even the gastronomical miracles of our landlady Mrs. Hudson would not move him from his ennui to his normal level of manic rudeness.

My peaceful reading of the great Roman historian however was suddenly shattered by a great shout of joy from the great dectective as he perused that days Daily News. "Watson" he bellowed,, "the game is once again afoot and if I am not very much mistaken we are about to recieve a visitor!"

"Holmes whatever are you talking about?" Then the door knocker was heard very distinctly.

"Watson...dear old chap, unless I miss my guess we are about to recieve one of the subjects of two very odd stories in today's news...the Mortician from Chelsea is about to arrive!"

At that very moment Mrs. Hudson rapped on the entrance door to our flat to announce that we had a guest who proceeded to barrel by her in his haste to confront the world's first private consulting detective.

"Mr. Holmes he said looking squarely at me my name is...."

"I know who you are" said Holmes who was now perched on the settee with his Stadivarius tucked under his chin as if ready to play a gypsy polka. "You are the very famous and eminent Mortician of Chelsea who makes the departed come alive with the magic of your skill. You have come to me with a matter most urgent and so sensitive that if any word of it should reach the agony pages spewed forth by the denizens of the fourth estate, you would become a ruined creature of ridicule. You are also 51 years of age, suffer from episodic bouts of gout, imbibe at least one glass of claret a day for medicinal purposes and have a comely mistress of 24 with blond tresses whom you secretly provide for in a studio flat in Picadilly where you visit her on Tuesdays."

It was if the air had been sucked out of his lungs and he began to stutter and stammer as if he were a child once more caught by his teacher red handed in some act of mischief. "How could you know all of this" he stammered, turning quite crimson as he struggled to compose himself.

"Elementary my dear sir" said Holmes, " you have the faint odor of formaldehyde upon you, yet your clothing is of the very finest quality, you have the redness of the face of a sufferer of gout and there is a slight but pronounced shuffle in your stride. You have two strands of golden hair on your waistcoat and a smudge of red on your collar. It is Tuesday and the buttons of your trousers are askew. Lastly you arrived in a Hearse emblazoned with the crest of the eminent Mortician of Chelsea , mortician to the royal family and most of the aristocracy in the nation, which I happened to see as I glanced out the window.

"But how do you know she is 24?" asked the startled but very impressed man. "That," said Holmes coyly 'is a trade secret". "You sir have come to me because you have lost a corpse!"

"Mr. Holmes you do not disappoint" said the man who was obviously impressed that the great detective had gone straight to the nub of matter and thus saved him from the utter embarassment of having to relive what was obviously an event that had mortified and traumatized him. "Tell me everything " said Holmes "and leave nothing out!"

The great embalmer proceeded to share with us the story of how he had prepared a very eminent client for transport to Waterloo Station wher he was to be sent North to Edinburgh where his family was to recieve him for cremation. "I left him in the hearse for no longer than 10 minutes outside the main entrance of my establishment and when I returned to escort him myself to the station both he and the vehicle were gone."

Holmes stared intently at the man for what seemed like an eternity and the in a sudden burst of nervous energy leaped to his feet. "Summon a cab Watson and send an irregular to fetch Lestrade at the yard. Tell him to meet us at the impound yard by the docks for there is not a moment to lose!"

With that he donned his Deerstalker hat and his waterproofed caped coat and with the two of us in tow exited the house and into the cabriolet waiting at the curb. "Tell the hearse to follow" he ordered the mortician and in a flash we were off into the fog and the gloom at a breakneck speed.

When we arrived at the impound yard there appeared to be no one around save for the appearance of a faint light glowing through a dirty window in the building that clearly served as an office for the yard. Holmes quickly and expertly picked the lock on the on the chain that barred our entrance with a set of tools he had produced from his pocket and we silently slipped in to the darkened yard. "Watson did you bring your service revolver ?" whispered Holmes to me. "There is an urban legend that a great hound guards these premises that is so savage that nothing but scraps of clothing are left of the trespassers he finds".

With that I pulled my trusty Wembley from the pocket of my greatcoat and Holmes made a sign with his hand to move toward toward the building. On the way there the mortician paused and pointed to his missing hearse sans horses. We quietly made our way to the vehicle and inside lie the deceased. As the Mortician transferred the remains to the second hearse, Lestrade appearedout of the fog.

"Now look here Mr. Holmes what on earth are you doing in this godforsaken place in the dead of night?" Holmes looked the Inspector straight in the eye and said in a tone laced with steel,"Lestrade, the Napoleon of crime lives and he has been at the center of a vast scheme to rob hardworking citizens of their money under the guise of enforcing the law!"

At the mention of the acronym for the supposedly late Professor Moriarty, both Lestrade and I stiffened for Holmes now had our complete attention. "Unless I am mistaken my dear Inspector inside that otherwise innocent and drab building we will find the proof of a conspiracy so malevolent in intent and grande in design that normal god fearing people would be unable and unprepared to mentally come to grips with it's sinister nature. For some time the hardworking merchants and taxpayers of this city have been subject to an onslaught of fines and punisments for infractions either so miniscule or outright fraudulent that it amounts to a hidden tax. This has been done by our esteemed Lord Mayor and disguised as an act of civic virtue in the vestments of law and order when in reality it is a punishment to drive the law abiding out so that the minions of Moriarty can come and take their place. Once the honest "butcher " has gone then the criminal butcher can take his place, overcharge the customer and the surplus will go into the coffers of the most fiendish arch criminal the world has ever seen. Remember the recent case of the nursing mother who was fined for stopping her coach to breastfeed, or the citizen who was sitting alone on the omnibus at night only to be accused of taking two seats, or the pregnant woman who had to stop and rest in the sweltering heat of August only to be ordered to court.

At that I chimed in, "Holmes if you are saying that the Lord Mayor is in reality Moriarty, then the tax on tobacco and the prohibitions on fats, sugar and salt with the heavy fines attached are also part of this demonic conspiracy to alter the very nature of our great metropolis. This is the most fiendish distortion of the law and democracy that we have ever witnessed!"

"Yes Watson I knew in my soul that Moriarty survived. I could sense his presence everywhere. At first it was little things and then a pattern emerged. It was as if a great gigantic nanny had hearded us into a large nursery where we to be subject to more and more rules until we had lost our freedom and our free will!"

"Lestrade raid that building...you will find not only the records of this nefarious plot but you will find in the cellars some of the ill gotten loot for I greatly fear that most of it has gone abroad!"

Later when I was writing the account of this singular episode I asked Holmes if he had been reading an account of a missing vehicle from the mortician when he intuitively understood what had happened and by whom. "No Watson" he purred through half shut eyes as he smoked his precious Meerschaum..."that was not it... it was the article saying the Lord Mayor was taking a long extended holiday to Switzerland that tipped me off"

Dr. John Watson MD

ERLANDSSON

T

NEW YORK AT THE ABYSS

NEW YORK AT THE ABYSS

The state is dying. True political leadership is absent. Scandal is the rule and not the exception. We the suffering citizenry, exist in a political desert at the edge of a political abyss. We are a one party commonwealth with no wealth left in common.

How did we come to this? How did we become the state of the Union that most resembles Venezuela?

Why did we allow one party to assume near total political hegemony and why did we allow that party to be co-opted by a virulent ideology that distains democratic capitalism, limited government, and individual rights over group entitlements?

How do we save our state and ourselves and where do we begin?

The answer is simple on it’s face and complex in it’s details. We must have true partisan competition! That means two or more parties that offer real choice to the voters and not just be pale reflections of one another. The voters in this state are not stupid despite how the elected elite and the chattering classes treat them. We are overtaxed and underserved.
We are treated with condescension by having elected and appointed officials determine what we can eat, drink, or smoke and how we are to transport ourselves to work, shop or eat, drink or smoke that what the nanny state allows. Elected official seem to believe that being our mothers is now part of their job description.

So how do we begin?

A good first step would be for each of the two major parties and the minor ones in addition, to present the voters with a “Compact with New York”. This would be the basic pledge to New Yorkers as to what each candidate and each party promises to accomplish if elected. The head of each ticket would secure the support of all the candidates running under him or her to sign on to this “Compact”. This would in fact be the first test of leadership they could demonstrate to the electorate. The success or failure of someone who wants to lead the state through these perilous times rests in the first instance on their capacity to lead through the art of persuasion, the act of consensus and the power of ideas.

This “Compact” should be inclusive, concise and detailed where necessary and appropriate. It should be as much a blueprint for governance as a strategy for problem solving. It should not mince words…we are too far down the rabbit hole for glibness and obfuscation! It should address the citizens with respect and candor and offer them practical solutions for getting us out of the mess we are in.

Where necessary it should identify both the problems we face and how we got to where we are. You cannot solve a problem in a vacuum. You can only deal with it in the historical context from which it arose and the present reality in which it festers.

New Yorkers deserve a real choice. They also deserve that this choice be in no small part be part of a local, state and national dialogue in which they participate. The ideas that grow into policy and programs must, like the problems they wish to solve, emanate from the real experience of real people. In other words we must once again become a government of the people, for the people and by the people.

If we do not allow the ultimate stakeholders, the people, to decide on not just conflicting
ideas, but also on conflicting philosophies, we run the very real risk of collapsing the house because we have not strengthened the foundation.

We are living in a new era. It is an era where complacency will wither and citizen involvement will become the new norm. There is simply too much at stake…too much to lose and that whistling sound you hear is the teapot boiling!
ERLANDSSON

INTO THE PERSIAN NIGHT

Iran has become the tipping point for not just the Middle East but for the entire world. They are the Djinn that cannot be put back into the lamp. History teaches us one vicious lesson over and over again...believe the maniacs when they tell you what they intend to do!

The world has that 1930's feel about it. It's the deja vu of having read "Mein Kampf" and dismissing it as the ravings of a delusional socialist with a Charlie Chaplin moustache.

It is becoming monotomously predictibile that the Obama administration with it's puerile inability to ever admit that their child like world view might be just a tad off center, would have no single coherent policy to deal with the coming storm. First we studiously ignor the demonstrations after the rigged election,, then we ignor the killings of innocents like Neda, then we ignor the jailings,the one minute show trials and same day executions. In return Obama sends conciliatory missives to Khameini who ignors him!

All of the above is not lost on Israel, Sau'di Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, the Emirates and Jordan who now have proof positive that the old tough America is gone and a new soft politically correct one has taken its' place. The Saudis and the Egyptians in particular want their own bomb. They are truly scared of a new Xerxes on the march in a region where western civilization began and God was first revealed.

Israel, fighting two proxy wars(three if you count the Syrians) while being increasingly demonized by the UN and parts of the EU, know that a Persia with nukes is an existential threat out of the Old Testament. The infamous "Goldstone Report" commissioned by the equally infamous and misnamed "UN Commission on Human Rights" is nothing more than a multinational permission to finish the "Shoah". Some where in Hell, Hitler is telling Satan "I told you so!"

All of this is a recipe for Armageddon. Modern American liberalism is incapable of recognizing the reality of the danger much less doing anything to prevent it. If you don't accept the reality of good and evil then you are blind to the threat before you. Moral relativism, the mother of "Political Correctness" simply does not allow a world view that involves a civilizational struggle over the nature of God and his rules for humankind, because it mocks the idea of God in the first place.

The Islamic world or the "Ummah" has far too many adherents who believe that faith and politics are synonomous. The separation of Mosque and state is to these mujahideen, nothing more than a quaint and sacrilegious notion taken from the "Dar el Harb", the world of war or the world of the "kufr". In other words, democracy is "Haraam' or forbidden and Muslims who adhere to it are "takfir" and should be punished by death since they can no longer be muslim.

Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual and spiritual mentor of the modern "Muslim Brotherhood" wrote in his book "Milestones" that Muslim society comes into existence when a person says "La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadar Rasul Allah"..." There is no God but God and Muhammed is his Messenger". This is the whole of life. All else is a "Jahili" society be it Capitalist, Socialist, Communist or Fascist. Further for Qutb and the Salafists who follow his credo, Jihaad rises to the the level of a sixth Plllar of the Faith and is for the moment the most important. These view are shared by the Wahabist in Sau'di Arabia and the Shia "Twelvers" running Iran.

Qutb was executed by Nasser in 1966 but remains a seminal force in the struggle for a new "Califhate" for Sunni and Shia alike. It is a great mistake to think the great Sunni/Shia divide will stop those muslims who share the Salafist worldview from joining forces against the "Little Shaitan" or the "Great Shaitan". The followers of Amadinejad and his mentor the Ayatollah Yahzi believe in the return of the twelveth or "Hidden Imam" who will return with Jesus or Issa as his helper to enact Armageddon to cleanse the world in preparation for a new purified Islamic world.

Thus the worldview of the current regime needs a holacaust in order to proceed to the next level. When they people tell us "we embrace death and you embrace life" it is perhaps wise to take them at their word.

There is a famous end scene in the film "Three Days of the Condor" when the hired assassin played by Max von Sydow tells Robert Redford, the CIA analyst whose co-workers were killed by von Sydow in the beginning, his lament on modern life. Redford has tracked down the man who ordered the killings but finds him dead at the hand of von Sydow who has been offered more money by others to kill his former employer. von Sydow harkens back to WW II when things were black and white and you could tell the bad guys from the good guys. "I miss the clarity" he says.

How many of us are starting to miss the clarity of the "Cold War" which was at least comprehensible as a political battle? How many of us are trying to understand the current struggle in outdated cold war terms to our peril? The first and greatest rule of war is "know your enemies!"

ERLANDSSON

A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

The media and press are awash with scandal. Politicians are at it again...draining the last vestige of faith in the "political process" from the hearts and minds of the public. Like vampires they seduce us with the promises of wonderful things that they never mean to keep. They then leave us cold and numb in a cemetary of lies, bereft of any faith in our fellow man, consigned to walk the earth until we die, not trusting anything or anyone.

Bad leadership is the great existential crisis of our time. How are we to be led into the future if true and good leadership, which by its nature imbues trust, has ceased to exist? We are not by nature anarchists. We cannot as a society or a civilization survive in a state of ethical chaos. The inmates, as they say, cannot be allowed to run the asylum.

New York State is now grappling with so many problems great and small, that one feels like the possessed girl in "The Exorcist" with ones' head spinning around. The MTA is broke and must make service cuts so drastic that the very economic life of the city and its suburbs are endangered. The solutions put forward are higher job killing taxes which as a cure may be worse than the disease. The people in charge don't seem to understand what being in charge means.

A long term NYC Councilman from the Bronx who has literally spent his entire adult life on the public fisc is indicted on thirteen counts of larceny by the US Attorney from the Southern District. One of the allegations is that he took a bill for a Bagel sandwich and a Coke for $7.00 and changed it to $177.00 for reinbursement purposes. This of course only serves to give one the flavor of the remaining charges. These contain what has become an almost formulaic involvement of a not-for-profit organization, set up by the accused for noble purposes that have apparently not come to fruition but has managed to give fairly lucrative jobs to wife, family and mistress.

A key leader in the State Senate and his colleague, a US congressman from Queens are up to their necks in a project to create a "Racino" at Aqueduct Racetrack sponsored by the State Government. This award worth at least $300,000,000, was won by a consortium that also included a former Congressman who is a very powerful Minister/Developer/politician . The bidding process seems to have been in the opinion of one of the losers akin to trying to hit a moving target since the rules seemed to change as the process moved along. The one thing that didn't move however was that the Governor needed the support of all three of the gentlemen for reelection which he apparently got a scant three days after the award was announced. Since then stories have appeared alleging that the slot machine operator chosen by this consortium does not operate in Las Vegas but instead is confined to smaller Nevada venue where their Casinos apparently are unclean and second rate. Oh yes...the the State Senator and the sitting Congressman also have several not-for-profits, one of which was set up for giving aid to victims of "Katrina". They apparently collected over $31,000 but only distributed a little over $1300. no one knows where the rest of the money went.

The Mayor or those close to him distributed $1,200,000 to the Independence Party, on whose line he ran, for pollwatching and other assorted Election Day tasks via an entity created under law a month after the Election was over. The head of the party claims not to know anything about it. The New York County DA wants to know everything about it!

For the last five days the NY Times, has dangled a juicy tale of sex, drugs and presumably Rock n' Roll before the public. Allegedly it involves the Governor and the Governors' mansion and women not his wife. The story has yet to run, so this is the "Empire State" version of "death by a thousand cuts". In other words the rumor of the story has now become the story. The governor, no stranger to strange women by his own prior admission, has denied all. After the prior Governors' daillance with $4500 "ladies of the town", the voters are frantically seeking a "castrato" to run for the office if only to eliminate one barrier to putting full and devoted energy into the "peoples" business.

Another State Senator who was a former Police Officer, beat and cut up his girl friend so badly that she required surgery and a post assault order of protection from the courts. The attacker was tried and convicted and is awaiting appeal. The State Senate convened a Commission to decide what to do with this thug and eventually they recommended he be expelled. Yesterday they voted to do that even though by so doing, the Democrats would lose temporary control of the Senate. This is actually positive so why am I including it in my list of misery? Well the Senator was a Latino and other Latinos are outraged by this punishment even though the woman victim was a Latina. Apparently ethnicity and a deranged sense of victimhood trumps justice and moral principles. This is not just sad ...it is disgusting!

All of the above has hit us within the last week. The 15 inches of snow we got yesterday was in some way a repreive from God that has nothing to do with climate change. It stopped the miscreants from doing damage for a 24 hour span of time. This is a good thing. God apparently reads the papers also. The fact that sucessive "snowmageddons" has shut down Washington for most of a week is also good. It is costing us $100,000,000 a day but when the Government is functioning it costs us billions and sometime trillions. Hmm... perhaps a way out of the deficit...ya think?

I have to laugh because if I don't I will scream. Where is the leadership that can help us thread our way out of this thicket of corruption and idiocy? It's not only my country, state and city at stake...it has become personal... it is my sanity at stake as well. I'm not looking for a savior...I'm just looking for integrity! Why does this appear so hard to find?

ERLANDSSON