Was Clinton Eastwood the Fifth Column last night? Or had he just been drinking?

Normally, I can't wait for the Republican convention to end. The four day pack of lies that generally goes unchallenged by the media was such a gross display of falsehoods that even the press winced. In the meantime, the base of the Republican Party went wild.

But I'm sure I wasn't the only one who got a kick out of Clint Eastwood's "speech" last night. Was it even a speech? What was the deal with that empty chair?

After I saw the speech, I was scratching my head, too!!

For the few who missed it, the star of Unforgiven and  Gran Torino decided that he would crash the GOP convention with a speech between him and President Obama, the latter being represented by a chair. Was the chair some sort of metaphor? Like when a faux rancher is said to be "all hat and no cattle?" Is guess Obama is just another long-legged beauty queen who is silent on the issues that matter?

That's would I would have presumed, but apparently, this chair was quite talkative. Eastwood had to constantly remind the chair to "shut up." What was he basing this on? Has Obama been trying to keep the star of In the Line of Fire out of the public eye?

What made the Oscar winner's bizarre speech so puzzling is that Eastwood is no stranger to politics. He once served as mayor of Carmel-by-the-sea during the 1980s, and has spent the last two decades serving of various state commissions in California. How could someone familiar with both entertainment and politics be so bad? Was he trying to make Fred Thompson look good by comparison?

What had me must confounded was Eastwood's rant against lawyers serving in the Oval Office. "Take that Adams! And Jefferson! And Lincoln! And 22 other Presidents!

Maybe the chair represents the wooden nature of  . . . Oh I give up!

"Lawyers can see both sides of the issue," said Eastwood. "Always playing Devil's Advocate!" The crowd cheered--sort of. Perhaps many of them were subdued because they were lawyers themselves. Eastwood's loudest cheer of the night came from trumpeting Romney's tenure as a businessman, but was back to nervous laughter and subdued applause when he called for Obama to expedite troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Weird.

Rachael Maddow, the most intelligent voice in broadcast journalism, was dumbfounded by Eastwood's conversation with said chair. "I guess he's 82," she said, trying desperately by figure out what we all had just seen.

I don't understand why someone in the crowd shouted out "make my day!" to Eastwood, either. Did that mean that said shouter wanted to shoot Clint Eastwood to shoot him in the face? Or was said person hoping that the Dirty Harry star would say the line, and then pop a few into the crowd? When everyone joined in, asking to "make each other's day," were they entering some sort of mass murderer/suicide pact? It wouldn't seem so far-fetched after watching someone have a conversation with a chair for ten minutes, speaking to a group of people who clamor for the right for schizophrenics to carry assault rifles into movie theaters.

I don't want to continue speculating, because it's just mean, and Clint Eastwood is a man I have respect for. Also, one of my reporters in the field enjoyed a soaking wet embrace with Newt Gingrich last night. I'll have more on that later. Until then, good day, and good luck!

Hopefully, these are Final Thoughts on Chris Christie

 Every so often in the political realm, we here lingual play on the term "political party." In the 1994 film Forest Gump, the autistic Forest apologizes for spoiling a "black panther party." As surely as the sun rises in the East, eccentric Pepperidge Farm delivery truck driver Ralph Ferrucci has run under the banner of the "Guilty Party." The obnoxious, egotistical Chris Christie can add himself to that list after tonight. I don't care what kind of party one is hosting, but if I see this guy, I'm heading for the door.

We should notify the world's top-notch anthropologists  that we have found the missing link!

Has the Huffington Post Jumped the Shark?

Back in my high school days, I remember taking a study break in the school library when a friend notice something unusual for the setting.

"They're playing Metallica on the radio," he said.

It would have seemed unfathomable: heavy metal in a high school library! Alas, this was 2000. It wasn't 1992 anymore. Once something becomes mainstream, it loses some of edge.

Do you want your tax dollars paying for this nonsense?

The same can now be said of the Huffington Post. What started as a combination of sledgehammer headlines about the major news stories of the day, coupled with new left commentary, is slowly but surely joining the ranks of the mainstream media that it for so long has protested.

It's not just the merger with AOL or the birth of Huffington Post television that marks this occasion. Rather, it is quality of Huffington Post's new found homegrown reporting that recently has made a disturbing editorial statement.

In an exclusive write-up, Huffington Post's Lia Shapiro covered a story about the State of California's decision to outlaw gay therapy. Fair enough. It would seem that anything advertised as a "medical treatment," yet provided absolutely no value, should be illegal. The fact that gay "conversion therapy" results is numerous suicides is even more cause for condemnation.

But that's not quite how Ms. Shapiro sees it. "There aren't any scientific studies showing that the practice [gay conversion therapy] actually causes harm" opines Shaprio.  Yet in the following sentence, she contradicts herself: "Anecdotal reports of depression, even suicide, abound, and a task force convened by the American Psychological Association found the practice to be both harmful and ineffective. "

Harmful. Ineffective. Might cause sudden death. If gay conversion therapy were a consumer product, the public would be screaming to take it off the shelves. But hey, if Huffington Post is going mainstream, it has got to present both sides of the story. 

I can only wonder if Ms. Huffington, herself once a prominent political conservative before she discovered that her husband of 11 years was bi-sexual, believes that gay therapy is the harmless practice that should be unregulated. All I can say, I sincerely hope not.

Fund Medicare with More Jobs

Jobs are good for the economy. This fundamental tenant is so basic, that it is beyond my comprehension that anyone could think otherwise. Sadly, many people do, and some of them are in positions of power. In the midst of an election for the Office of President, now would be a good time to state the obvious in hopes we can get our country on the right track.

A job creates many jobs. That is the reality of the marketplace. We are all based on a system of interdependence. Working together to solve problems creates prosperity. One such system that we have is Medicare.

Jobs are a good thing. Let's not lose sight of this.

Medicare works on the same tenant as Social Security: younger workers pay into a general fund, and that fund becomes available to them once they retire. Various cost-saving measure, some prudent (Obama's), some nefarious (Ryan) are the topic of discussion right now, but a policy that would be both a necessity to the viability of Medicare would be to simply add more people to the workforce.

The premise is simple. Right now, the unemployment rate is 8.3 percent. By most accounts, approximately 14 million Americans are looking for work. If the Federal Government were to seriously make an effort providing jobs, such an effort would not be onerously difficult.

Our highways are literally falling apart. Our mass transit is dysfunctional in most of our major cities--if a city even has any form of mass transit at all. Even in New York City, home to its iconic subway system, is not without its flaws.

Take construction of the Second Avenue Subway. Not only is this project a full seven decades behind schedule, but once complete, it will provide a lower level of service than the elevated train lines it was meant to replace! Not only are we plagues with high unemployment now, but simply getting to and from work in this country is a disaster!

This is a problem of which we, as a society, have direct control over. We can increase our budget allocation to hire workers to fix bridges, plug potholes, and yes, update our crumbling mass transit system to something that was at least good as what we had at the turn of last century.

14 million jobs should be a major campaign issue. The median annual income for the American worker currently stands at $26,363. If 14 million people were to be added to the workforce, it would add an extra $369 billion into workers pockets. At current tax rates, these new workers would increase Medicare receipts by over $10.7 billion annually. Projected over 10 years, this would over $100 billion to Medicare.

With more workers, we could actually build this stinkin' thing!

And that's merely projecting the median salary. Most jobs created by government pay substantially more than that, much to the ire of today's modern conservative. Most workers employed in such a massive, large scale jobs program would make more than a paltry $26k per year. If we project the same number of jobs with a salary that is typical for said job, amount of money earned would likely to double, to nearly $540 billion in salary, and an extra $22 billion into Medicare per year.

How would the Feds finance such a program? Well, we may have to raise taxes on job creators like Lindsay Lohan and Alex Rodriguez, but I'm sure they will find it in their infinite wisdom to deal with it. And in the meantime, the rest of us can enjoy getting to work on fixing America.

As Michael Jordan would say, Just Do It!

Dick Cheney's backtrack on the Disaster from Alaska: Why it's good for society that Sarah Palin stays in the news

Ah, Sarah Palin, how we've missed you.

Not for your views on government, not for your television shows, or your ghastly ghost-written memoirs.

No, we miss you because every time we see you, we are reminded as to what a total laughingstock the Republican Party has become.

 Please--don't retire from whatever it is that you supposedly do.

Laughingstock, like Woodstock, but instead of Hendrix, the Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, you've got Romney, Boehner, and Palin. The very notion that any Republican could win a national election with their outwardly extremist views and cartoonish public personas is laughable.

Lobbyists may have succeeded in preventing Federal action on climate change, meaningful financial reform and instilling a progressive income tax, but when Dick Cheney is afraid to speak ill about Sarah Palin, at least we have something to laugh about.

Yes, Palin. The half-term Governor of Alaska who hasn't held elective office in some time--and most definitely won't ever again. If she were to run, George McGovern would steamroll her in a landslide.

That probably won't happen. But it's fun to see her straw-man character in the news. After all, it makes great fodder for satire. I spoke with Hal Ruzal, a legendary CBGB's rock 'n' roller who currently fronts Kilifax. He told me that his band will play his "Sarah Palin" song at his next  show on August 17th at Fontana's. The original CBGB's may be long gone, but Fontana's is in the heart of the Lower East Side, located on  Eldrige Street between Delancey and Grand. I strongly urge all fans of satire and music to attend.

Am I plugging Kilifax? Heck, I just think everyone should share the joy--the joy of mocking the disasta' from Alaska!

That's Friday, August 17th. If you've already made plans, change 'em!

In the meantime, see if you can figure out why this video didn't go viral back in 2008. Maybe it just needed better recording quality? You be the judge!