Terry Cowgill

Over The ‘Hill’?

Oh my God. Click here to see the worst photo of Hillary ever taken. It’s so bad that I can’t muster the cruelty to post it here. It’s on Drudge but is subject to being taken down at any time. So hat tip to Ann Althouse for capturing it.

My question is: does Hillary really look that bad or do we have an unrealistic view of feminine beauty? Is the campaign so grueling that it wears on a candidate to that extent? As one of Althouse’s commenters said, Fred Thompson looks like that every day. But the former Law & Order star is noted more for being a slacker than resembling a droopy bulldog.

My distaste for Hill is well known, but it’s based on her record, her interminable triangulation and her lack of candor. I’d hate to see her taken down several notches for having a bad face day.

Only In San Fran

Colin McEnroe may be on vacation in San Francisco (his favorite town, after Jewett City), but he still manages to amuse Connecticut with this post on a proposed use for an old armory there.

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, a porn producer bought the armory to use as a studio and there were the usual outcries that it wasn’t being used for housing in a affordable housing-strapped city. So what does the guy propose to do? He wants to build porno condos.

“Internet voyeurs would be able to dial into the doings in the dwellings, for a fee,” The Chronicle says.

This begs the question: what would be required for tenancy beyond a checkbook that would cover the monthly rent? Would it be legal, for example, for the landlord to discriminate against someone who has ED? How about an applicant whose religion demands some degree of modesty?

And isn’t the rent tantamount to paying for sex? Mark my words. It’s only a matter of time before some bored professor designs an entire law school course around Porn Village. Take it away, Alan Dershowitz.

Like Sands Through The Hourglass …

Hey Curtis, what is the policy in Salisbury? Can we come down to the town highway garage and get free sand in the winter like Falls Villagers can? That’s quite a place, Falls Village. Free sand and free theater on the weekends. Plus, great breakfast at Toymaker’s Cafe. Not bad for a town of 1,100.

I-MusT Blog On This, Part II

As was the case in April, when Don Imus got canned for using a racial slur against a group of young women athletes, I had promised myself I wouldn’t blog about the recently released Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball — if for no other reason than the simple fact that everyone else has blogged about it. Actually, since Imus recently returned to the airwaves, a comment on both items is in order.

I’ve listened to Imus a couple of times since he came back on the scene earlier this month on WABC and on RFD TV. In a word, he stinks. I was a longtime former listener who enjoyed his locker room banter and take-no-prisoners approach to interviewing famous people and media pundits. Now it seems he is so wary of offending people that he has lost his edge. He’s become a boring old codger.

Since he really has nothing interesting to say anymore, Imus (and his return) begs the question: did he come back just to show CBS and MSNBC that there’s life after being fired? Imus has been fired several times, so he’s already proved that point. And he has enough money to last the rest of his life and keep his young family happy well after he is gone. Be that as it may, goodbye, Don.

Continue reading I-MusT Blog On This, Part II…

LJ 12.13.07

Another busy news week. The lead story (penned by yours truly) concerns the uncertain future of Sharon Pediatrics, where I send both of my kids when they get sick. The group is down to one pediatrician and it’s not clear when and if the latest departing physician, Dr. Gray-Clarke, will be back in action with her own practice.

This has been some cause for concern on both sides of the Connecticut-New York border. But as is often the case in the rumor mill, the problem has morphed into something more than it actually is.

When I called MACONY Pediatrics in Great Barrington to ask if they were accepting new patients, the office manager said they had received a lot of calls from the NWC and she had even heard Sharon Pediatrics was going out of business.

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Meanwhile, there are still no answers on a fatal car crash earlier this month in North Canaan, land on the Riga Plateau has been protected, North Canaan vets will get some help soon and the legendary Carl Williams had a retirement bash (see photo above).

Inside, the Lake Wononscopomuc Association is embarking on a PR campaign to re-sell the idea of fighting aquatic weeds with chemicals, bog turtles rear their cute little heads again (this time in Sharon) and we’ve got a thoughtful editorial on the quest for a new Salisbury-Sharon transfer station.

Also, check out Bob Estabrook’s perambulating column. About 2/3 of the way through, he weighs in on the Salisbury petition to ask Rep. Chris Murphy to work toward an investigation of the president and vice president. As he often does, Bob provides a wise perspective.

Lastly, in Compass (no links available yet) Marsden Epworth visits the Trevor Zoo at Millbrook School, while Judy Linscott speaks from experience in relating the conundrum of shopping for teenage girls. Enjoy, and drive safely on your way to buy a copy. As I write this at 1:20 p.m., it is snowing heavily. Hope I can make it up Wells Hill to my house …

Hillary Lies, No One Dies …

Sometimes when my Democratic friends complain to me about the lies and ethics of the Bush administration, I am sympathetic. But when they tell me a Hillary administration would be a refreshing change from the mendacity of GWB and his minions, I am thrown into fits of laughter.

Stuart Taylor does a great job in National Journal reviewing Hillary’s abject lack of candor over the years — and not just about her husband’s sexual escapades. Now if you want to say at least her lies didn’t get us into a brutal war that cost us 3,500 lives, then you are certainly correct.

But if you think the Clintons are honest people, then I’ve got an old blast furnace on Mt. Riga that I’d like to sell you. With Hillary in charge and Bill roaming the halls, White House ethics would be no better than … Johnny’s.

P.S. Hat tip to Jake.

Obama-rama

You know, one of the kicks I get out of seeing Hillary meet her match is not just that I shudder at the thought of another Clinton presidency, but I am intrigued by the notion that my demographic (the just turned eligible to join AARP crowd) actually counts for something in politics.

I’m sure Hillary and her people are seething with anger at the idea that some young punk interloper could come out of nowhere and derail her campaign of inevitability (the New York Post calls it O-Mentum). But they must be lapsing into fits of apoplexy at the latest developments.

Polling data have consistently shown that Hillary’s strongest demographic is middle-aged women with a high school diploma. Now Obama is threatening to take that away with the support of a mega-media female superstar whose strongest base of support is … middle-aged women with a high school diploma. As Rush would say, as I watch this spectacle unfold, “I’m having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.” (First Read calls it the OPRAH-PALOOZA)

But here’s the gratifying part: in the world of politics, my generation counts for something. When it comes to marketing goods and services, people my age and older are often forgotten in favor of that target demographic of 16- to 35 year-olds. I always wondered why that was. After all, starving journalist that I am, I would still venture to say I have more disposable income than your average 22-year-old.

Why then, would Proctor & Gamble’s marketing department ignore me and focus their efforts at selling toothpaste on some skateboarder with a lip ring? I posed this question to a marketing executive a few years ago. She said the answer is really quite simple. Younger people have flimsy loyalties and can be persuaded more readily to switch brands, while tea-sipping geezers like me are happy to be stuck in a rut.

But for some reason politics is seen as more fluid, even if you happen to be old enough to have hemorrhoids. Hence the Oprah-Obama axis. As a 50-something, I am gratified to be included again. Now if I could just get my kids to clean up their rooms …

Out of Luck

I had meant to post a link to this earlier, but old friend Rick Green of The Hartford Courant had a terrific column on Friday about the rapidly disappearing pay phone. Now that AT&T is gradually pulling out of the pay phone business, it’s only a matter of time before they all vanish.

As regular readers of this blog may recall, I wrote an earlier post on this last year, along with a news story on the status of pay phones in our area about two years ago (links to that news piece have expired but I have pasted it into that earlier post linked just above).

For most folks, this is not a crisis situation. Wireless phones are becoming increasingly affordable. In fact, while on a business trip to New Orleans in 2003, I saw a panhandler along the Riverwalk talking on a cell phone. He hastily put it away when he saw me about to jog past him, so maybe he was a poser. Be that as it may, I suspect affordability is less an issue than the spotty cell phone service we have in rural areas such as ours, where low population density and hilly terrain conspire to deprive us all of good coverage. Hence the need for pay phones.

I know they are magnets for vandals but I’m still sad to see pay phones go. It may be time for an update story in the LJ on where these machines continue to exist in the NWC and in neighboring New York, but it would be great if in the meantime my readers could update me here with the location of pay phones in our area.

In Salisbury, I know of three places where pay phones were still in place the last time I checked: between J. Stack and Town Hall; an old-fashioned booth in the White Hart; and at the Town Grove. Are those units still there? Cell service is now available in those areas, so they may have disappeared since I wrote the piece in September 2005. Let me know …

Surely You Jest …

TCextra.com news alert: Gennifer Flowers is mulling the possibility of endorsing Hillary for prez. But it does sound like “Jennifer-with-a-G” thinks Joe Biden is either highly qualified or hot (or both). Wonder what Hillary thinks of him … we know what she thinks of Obama.

I agree with lefty David Corn (linked above). There is a nettlesome arrogance associated with the Clinton campaign that could doom it. And it’s not just the “now the fun starts” comment and the profound sense of entitlement. But her campaign has trotted out Obama’s elementary school teacher to say Barack has wanted to be prez since kindergarten — as if that were so awful.

If memory serves, Hillary’s husband also harbored such ambitions from an early age. Indeed, I can just imagine Billy triangulating from his crib about the most marketable public policy for diapers. Cloth or disposables? How about disposables that can also be washed? “That would satisfy both constituencies and everybody will still love me …”

Marriage Is Green, Divorce Is Blue?

Guess what … breaking up is not only hard to do, but it’s bad for the environment. I suppose all those advocates of no-fault divorce better rethink their positions if they want to be green and stave off the effects of drought and global warming. Or find another mate and fast.

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From the amusing to the troubling: the declassification yesterday of a national intelligence estimate indicating Iran halted work on its nuclear weapons program in 2003 should give everyone pause. That year is the same one in which we marched into Iraq on what turned out to be flimsy evidence.

Hmm … The Bush administration’s intelligence operatives were wrong about both Iraq and Iran. Coincidence or deception? Good news is it will reinforce in the minds of the American people that it’s buyer beware when their leaders bluster about threats posed by rogue nations. Bad news is it’s another nail in the coffin in which out nation’s credibility now lies.

This is how rotten GWB has become: I might actually vote for Hillary over Dubya in a hypothetical race. And he is doing his fellow GOPers no favors. The Dem candidates for prez will surely seize on the story and have a field day.

Ironically, it will hurt the perpetually posturing Hillary, who recently voted to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Hillary or Dubya: who makes your stomach turn more? Right now, I think Dubya and I need to start seeing other people.