The two definitions of "con"

Con: short for convict..often used in context of a former prisoner..as in  "ex con". Con is also used as a verb, being derived from the term "confidence man" To con someone is to gain their confidence and then swindle them. Sometimes the two uses of the word come together, as they surely do in the person of Barry Minkow. His latest fall from grace angers me, more than anything else because of his current expressions of remorse and self loathing. Not only do they ring hollow, they ring of familiarity .  It is the same song he sang when he wrote his first book about his prior fall and redemption.

He ran a con and money laundering outfit via his boy genius company ZZZZ Best in my childhood Reseda. He got caught , went to jail, found God and started a prison ministry. When released, he was given an opportunity to make good by two different churches, becoming the Senior Pastor of the second one. He wrote several more books, the latest of which having to do with how to avoid being defrauded, conned or swindled. He became, for all appearances, obsessed with catching other frauds. He started his own fraud squad (while still head of his church) and financed it by taking stock positions against the companies he was exposing. That part had me wondering if he was wandering near the edge.  Well, near the edge and off the cliff he was. He has been arrested and confessed to a number of charges of fraud and attempted extortion, even, if I understand correctly, stock manipulation. Better than all that, he used church funds (by forging documentation) to finance his dealings. 

Several stories have run in the local papers. He is quoted more than once beating his breast in self denigration, on how he blew it big time. You think, Barry?  You think? You used the office of the church to  cloak yourself in an air of redemption and respectability. You made a fortune of trumpeting your second chance, and then you blew that second chance to smithereens.

In what I believe to be  the ultimate example of irony, he was quoted in the paper in a story about a movie producer who is accused of taking production money to make indie films, and then pocketing much of it without producing the goods. He made what I can only term a vanity film with Minkow, which failed to come to light of day. Minkow called another investor and warned him against the producer. I guess you can't con a con, right? Or it takes one to know one.

Go to jail, Barry. And when you get out, I hope you go straight...but I don't want to hear about it. Not another book, not another movie, not another remorseful word. If your ego can handle it.

God help us

It is beyond my comprehension that anyone could give serious consideration to voting for a candidate who believes that being gay is "of Satan" and/or a mental disease that can (and should) be cured. Yet such are the views of the current media-christened "front runner" for  the Republican Presidential candidacy.  Demonizing our sisters and brothers and cousins and children is simply unacceptable to me. If your religious beliefs  leads you to the conviction  that homosexuality is against God's Law, I cannot hope to dissuade you. Good, then, don't be gay. But leave my friends and family alone. I have had it with the demonization of being gay.  Having not been successful in keeping homosexuality hidden or stifled in our society, opponents fan the flames of fear. "They" are out to get our children, to indoctrinate them, to to teach them to be gay via our schools, to destroy our institution of marriage... you know, that Gay Agenda. Of all the gay people I know the only mutual agenda they have is to be left the hell alone to live their lives, raise their children, and have the right to marry.

Wicked,  huh? It does not seem so much to ask. The fearful are not being asked to marry outside their beliefs, nor to do anything they do not wish to do with their lives...except to accept these other people's right to do the same. What is it to you if my gay cousin married his long time partner in a state that allows it, and formally adopted their foster child? Did the foundation of your own marriage shatter beneath your feet? If it did, your marriage was beyond repair long before then.

Citing history of unacceptance as the reason not to change now is self-serving at its core. "5000 years of human history" , say you?  Denial of equal treatment, refusal to recognize rights, and other such practices are easy to codify as "the way it has always been" when you are now among those to whom those rights have been granted. Does the right to vote ring a bell, Ms Bachmann? This was only granted to your sex less than 100 years ago. You would not be in a position to threaten the rights of others, had you not been granted your own. Imagine how the suffragettes felt when they were told that history supported those who denied them. Some were branded as "hysterical" and mentally disturbed. No, really.

God help the Republican Party if she remains their front runner. God help us all if it gets farther than that.

As I said in the first paragraph, it is beyond my comprehension...but unfortunately not beyond imagination. The stuff that nightmares are made of.

July, already?

I swear it was just January.  Then it was June, and (first sign of summer) Wimbledon, then the summer season of SYTYCD, 4th of July...and now, within a month of my annual vacation to the shiny beaches of Coronado. It is hot and humid here right now, and I swear I can hear the salty breezes calling to me.

I have already been to Seattle in March and June, and will hit NY sometime in the Fall.  I hope it is the sign of a busy life, rather than advancing age that this year seems to have passed so quickly.

I really cannot believe that oh so soon, Sis and I will be driving up to the hallowed halls of my beloved Del. I can see the lobby, smell the salt air...the scent of Coronado.

BTW, another sign of summer, aside from two weeks of watching tennis from the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club, is my dragging the portable a/c in from the garage and setting it up in my room. That, and my making studied notes on the Top 14 of SYTYCD.  Oh, and my plum jam!  I do love this season. (Except in AZ..sorry, desert residents).

Someone save me a lounge chair by the "quiet pool."