Politics: Uglier Than the East End of a Westbound Mule!

Politics: ‘Poli’ a Latin word meaning ‘many’; and ‘tics’ meaning ‘bloodsucking creatures’. ~ Robin Williams

As I do most days, I got up at 5:45 this morning pushed the ‘start’ button on my coffee maker and turned on the TV to catch the daily . 

Those of you who are familiar with my rampant are probably wondering why I don’t have an automatic coffee maker; one that can be set for a pre-determined time so that coffee is ready and waiting as soon as I come downstairs in the morning. 

I actually do have an automatic coffee maker, but I have two reasons for not using that feature. First of all, I don’t trust appliances to operate the way they’re supposed to. In my estimation, they’re a disaster waiting to happen. 

You may not understand this if you’ve never left a load of laundry in the washer while you ran out for a few minutes only to return home to find the drainage hose flailing around all over the laundry room like a python in heat, spitting filthy rinse water all over the floor, the walls, the cat and anything else unfortunate enough to be within striking distance. 

Or maybe you’ve never awakened to find the shattered remains of what was once your coffee carafe scattered about your kitchen because you set the automatic timer the night before and then dozed off on the couch before filling the coffee maker with water. 

And of course there’s always the horror stories on the news about the occasional house that has burned to the ground leaving its terrified owners homeless and destitute simply because they were too lazy to turn on their coffee maker manually and the automatic timer malfunctioned, the heating element melted and the blazing coffee maker caught the kitchen curtains on fire.  

But my main reason for not utilizing the auto-setting is that my wife generally gets up fifteen to twenty minutes before I do. She starts the coffee and the captivating aroma drifts up the staircase, luring me out of bed. The best thing is that she’s not dangerous – ordinarily. 

Okay, I lied. Not about my wife not being dangerous, but about the fact that she gets out of bed fifteen to twenty minutes before I do. She doesn’t usually get out of bed fifteen to twenty minutes before I do; she always gets out of bed fifteen to twenty minutes before I do. And since I’m coming clean here, I’ll have to confess that she gets up thirty to forty minutes before I do. Hey, have you seen me lately? I’m not getting any younger. I need my beauty sleep! 

I do my fair share, though. Every night before I head upstairs to bed I put the coffee and the water in the coffee maker, put two coffee mugs on the kitchen counter, and set out the sugar for my wife along with my Splenda® and a teaspoon. Okay, maybe not every night, but nearly every night; at least three out of five weeknights. I don’t normally make the coffee until morning on Saturdays or Sundays because I’m always up way before my wife on the weekends. 

Wow! That was a long way to go to get to my point, assuming I have one.

As I was saying before I took off on that tangent; I turned on the TV to watch the weather, but ended up seeing some of the news also. I try to avoid newscasts as much as possible because it’s generally nothing but bad stuff and not a good way to start or end my day. There’s way too much negativity. Filling my head with all that garbage poisons my mind and God knows I poison my mind enough on my own. I don’t need any assistance from the talking heads on TV. 

This morning’s news featured a story on the that was just recently passed by the Massachusetts House and must now go before the Senate for a vote. If passed by the Senate, it would clear the way for Casino gambling in the state. 

, I think you’ll have to chuckle when you hear what one of the state senators had to say about this bill. He's concerned with the impact casino gambling would have on the moral fiber of the state. Moral fiber? In Massachusetts? Now that’s funny!

The last three speakers of our illustrious Massachusetts House of Representatives, Charlie Flaherty, Tom Finneran, and Sal DiMasi were all indicted by the feds. I won’t go into the details of each of their felonious deeds; you should already be familiar with them. If you’ve been living with your head in the sand, or your memory is similar to mine, sieve-like; Goggle will be more than happy to supply you with more information than you ever wanted about these three rapscallions. 

But these three malevolent miscreants don’t stand alone by any stretch of the imagination. After all, this is Massachusetts. The list of corrupt politico’s from both sides of the aisle in this state reads like a veritable pantheon of culinary giants. Oh, hold on a minute. My bad! That’s Iron Chef America that has the veritable pantheon of culinary giants. I’m not sure what kind of veritable pantheon the list of corrupt politico’s reads like, but I know we’ve elected a lot of scoundrels in this state, including one congressman who had a sexual encounter with a teenaged congressional pageboy and another whose significant other ran a brothel for male prostitutes out of the congressman’s Washington D. C. condominium. 

Oh, did I mention that both of these ‘legislators of all that’s lewd and lascivious’ were reelected by the highly intelligent and exceedingly moral voters of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? 

In today’s politically correct vernacular, I guess it could be said that our corrupt politicians are sustainable. The feds indict ‘em; we replace ‘em. 

Moral fiber? I think not!

Bob Havey is a freelance writer and a Mansfield native, currently living in Easton. His column "Take Me Back" appears each Friday at http://mansfield-ma.patch.com and his column, "The View From Here", may be seen each Tuesday at http://easton-ma.patch.com.