2005 Haut Bergey and "The Bachelor."

[JimHow]

…I'm assuming that's what's on my TV screen right now, as I sip on a delicious 2005 Haut Bergey.
The sound on the TV is off.
The dude is on the beach, with some blondish/brown haired girl with big black eyelashes.
Now she is crying.
Now he is on his knees, offering her a ring.
Now she is nodding yes. They embrace, passionately, her loins girding his.
Now she is pinning a rose on his shirt.

So. I NEVER watch TV.
The only reason why this is on is because my Directv went off for some reason and I needed to reboot it.
It took about 5 minutes to calibrate the satellite signals, etc., etc.

And then Jeopardy came on, I watched Jeopardy celebrity contestant Anderson Cooper struggle to answer some easy questions -- Elizabeth Dole, you idiot! Colin Powell, numb nuts! Is that Joe Johns over on the right? I don't know the girl in the middle, I vaguely recognize her I guess, this must be some "JEOPARDY CNN CELEBRITIES" night. I can't listen any more to Anderson Cooper huffing and puffing through his answers, so I turn off the sound, planning to look back up at the TV later tonight, probably around 10, the Sox are on the west coast in San Diego.
Next thing I know, I'm looking up, and "The Bachelor" is handing over his ring.
I mean, I have NEVER watched this show before, surely I couldn't have looked up at the exact moment that he chooses his bride???

Now I'm confused again.
I look up at the silent flat screen. There is another "bachelor" <rolls eyes>. With another bride to be. This one a brunette. Is this some sort of special episode?
Maybe this is like a recap of all the Bachelor Proposal Moments.
I don't know. I'm confused, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.
OMG he's on his knees….
They kiss….

Anyway. That was intense. I'm beginning to guess these bachelor proposals are not once-in-a-rating season events. I have no idea.

So this is my third relatively easy week in a row, my court schedule has been nice at the end of the summer, an otherwise very busy summer. I only have to work two days this week. And September and October look good too. I'll be in the Graaayyytt Sttaaayyyyt of Teeeyyyyxxxxaaass next week.

So when you see Racer Chris (great name) talking about 2012 Haut Bergey at $17 in CT, you start to question yourself, is this stuff any good? I mean, how good can a $17 Bordeaux be?

Well, I've loved that 2012 Haut Bergey on numerous occasions but, perhaps more significantly, I'm finding this decade-old 2005 HautBergey really singing tonight!
To me it is in a really nice place right now. I don't know if I'd be drinking these wines at the 20 year mark.

Woah. wait. Now there's another couple on the same beach.
Some tall dude with a beard.
To me, this straight haired brunette with the sultry lips is the hottest of them all.
But wait.
They don't look happy.
Indeed, they both seem to be crying.
No ring.
He's rejecting her!
They hug. But… No ring.
They walk off.

The sound is off, mind you.
Now they're hugging again.
They part.

Another heart ache.
He puts her in the fancy black jeep like vehicle.
The car pulls away.

There's gonna be another heartache tonight….

So, as I continue to sip on this very lovely, 92 point Haut Bergey, the sound on my TV off, I'm coming to realize this is not some "special" coincidence, this must be some retrospective of Bachelor moments, good and bad.

Ah, American culture….
"The Bachelor." "The Bachelorette." "Donald J. Trump."
Let's face it, friends.

We are doomed.

[DavidG]

No kidding.

I watch Jeopardy regularly. Never seen Bachelor.

It's "Power Player" week on Jeopardy. I think the lady was a 60 Minutes reporter, not sure. The guy on the right was Michael Steele. He was the doofus Lieutenant Governer of MD under our doofus Governor Bob Ehrlich before going on to become the doofus RNC Chair for a while before Rancid Prepuce. I thought his doofus-ness was well in evidence.

I shared your frustration at Anderson Cooper missing a bunch of easy ones. This was a rerun. He couldn't even get them right the second time around. Oh well, our vaunted press takes another one in the pants.

[JimHow]

Ah sure I know Michael Steele. I looked up at the screen for a second. Pretty sad, Anderson struggling with those easy questions.

[Racer Chris]

He couldn't even get them right the second time around.

LOL
I watched that the first time and was surprised at how badly they did.

I never cared for Michael Steele as Chairman of the RNC but he is pretty good as a representative for the Republican party on political TV shows.

I popped another of the sale wines I bought at TW recently - 2012 Chateau Dalem (Fronsac).
I'll drink a second bottle before making up my mind, but so far I'm not impressed. Too much oak presence without enough fruit.
So far the only one of 4 which I've thought was great QPR is the cheapo - 2014 Chateau Bois Redon.

[DavidG]

Yes, Steele has come across fairly well on the political shows lately. He seems to have learned from his previous experiences.

[JimHow]

Agreed, I actually kind of like Steele's style, even though he's a bit of a carnival barker. He was a buffoon as RNC chair. He's pretty entertaining on msnbc. Frankly, I think he's closet liberal.

[stefan]

I've drunk a number of bottles of '05 Haut-Bergey that were as nice as yours. Unfortunately, the one last week was not.

The Texas weather looks good for the following weekend. It will be great to be in the pool swiggin' Champagne from plastic wine glasses.

[Jay Winton]

Agreed, I actually kind of like Steele's style, even though he's a bit of a carnival barker. He was a buffoon as RNC chair. He's pretty entertaining on msnbc. Frankly, I think he's closet liberal.

When Steele was running for the US Senate in MD, he bussed in homeless people from out of state to hand out literature in our town next to the elementary school where voting was held. I talked to a few of these poor people. They had no idea who Steele was or even where they were. No one bothered to buy them any food or drink. I think I gave some of them a few bucks so they could eat. They were supposed to be paid when they were returned to their locale but they had no idea how much.

[JimHow]

Candidates don't "bus in homeless people from out of state." That's just myth. I mean, think it through. A candidate is going to spend precious campaign resources to have staffers go driving around looking for some unknown homeless people, in some unknown out of state location, to approach said homeless people and ask them to get in a bus, drive hundreds of miles, to go hand out leaflets for some guy they never heard of, and then, what, after one afternoon, they're gonna be bused back to their respective neighborhoods in their respective states hundreds of miles away? Please.

[DavidG]

He was a buffoon as RNC chair.

I'm beginning to think that goes with the job description, whether DNC or RNC Chair. Donna Brazile the exception that proves the rule?

[Jay Winton]

[quote="JimHow"]Candidates don't "bus in homeless people from out of state." That's just myth. I mean, think it through. A candidate is going to spend precious campaign resources to have staffers go driving around looking for some unknown homeless people, in some unknown out of state location, to approach said homeless people and ask them to get in a bus, drive hundreds of miles, to go hand out leaflets for some guy they never heard of, and then, what, after one afternoon, they're gonna be bused back to their respective neighborhoods in their respective states hundreds of miles away? Please.[/quote\\

from the Washington Post 11/2006 The six Trailways motorcoaches draped in Ehrlich and Steele campaign banners rumbled down Interstate 95 just before dawn on Election Day.

On board, 300 mostly poor African Americans from Philadelphia ate doughnuts, sipped coffee and prepared to spend the day at the Maryland polls. After an early morning greeting from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s wife, Kendel, they would fan out in white vans across Prince George's County and inner-city Baltimore, armed with thousands of fliers that appeared to be designed to trick black Democrats into voting for the two Republican candidates.

It happened.

[DavidG]

And Jay saw them first hand...

No one said Ehrlich was particularly bright about how he spent his precious campaign resources. Come to think of it, I can't recall anyone saying he did anything particularly bright during his administration. He didn't get indicted for or convicted of any crime, so that puts him in a class above a significant number of governors.

[AKR]

Arizona and Hawaii buy one way tickets for some of their homeless and parolee populations, preferring to send them to San Francisco.

SF has howled about it but it doesn't seem like there is much they can do.

[JimHow]

Why would they not get "homeless" people from Maryland?
Why go all the way to Philly.
Where did they find these "300 mostly poor African Americans" from Philly?
Did they walk around the streets of Philly and say, hey, are you homeless?
Do you want to get on a bus with us, and drive hundreds of miles to Maryland, and pass leaflets for some guy?
We'll give you donuts.
How many such homeless African Americans did they approach before they rounded up 300 of them?
Did they just like get one on the bus at a time until they rounded up 300?
Did they drive around the streets of Philadelphia with megaphones saying, all homeless people, come on this bus, we will give you donuts and take you someplace hundreds of miles away?
For each homeless person they approached, how many said, ok, I'm getting on board, I'll have a chocolate glazed? Was it one out of every two?
1 out every 10? One out every hundred?
How long did this rounding up of the 300 homeless people take?
Did the Washington Post interview all of them to find out if they were in fact poor African American from Philly?
What was the source of the Post's information?
Did they bring these "poor looking people" back to Philly?
When? Same day? Next day? A week later?
If they stayed overnight, did they house them? Did they feed them? Did they feed them anything besides donuts?

I'm just a country lawyer from Maine, but I've run a campaign or two.
Call me skeptical.

[DavidG]

All very good questions Jim, and I don't have any answers.

I must lack the requisite skepticism to be a simple country lawyer. It's probably a big lie spread by the Post, no doubt originating with Hillary Clinton. We need a special prosecutor. I think you may be just the man for the job!

[jal]

I knew nothing about it and the story seemed pretty crazy but I did a google search and here is the Washington Post article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 84_pf.html

I imagine it answers most of the questions. Any additional ones should not be addressed to me. I'm just an immigrant who has lived in New York for thirty some years and now lives in Florida.

[JimHow]

LoL. I have not read the article yet.
You know, there are a lot of drawbacks to being a trial lawyer: Alcohism; failed marriages/relationships/addiction/anger-management; OCD; ADHD; overall imbalance and dysfunction.

But one of the great things about being a trial lawyer is that, with experience and training, you learn to scratch below the surface. You're required to, actually. When somebody makes an observation, you have to ask at least 20 questions to assess its validity.

It's really interesting to see how people in important positions view things, with or without legal training.
John Kennedy, as brilliant as he was, was not a lawyer.
And there were times when it showed, there were times when the less inately intelligent Bobby and Teddy had advantages intellectually because of their legal backgrounds.

More recently we've seen it with that gangster Roger Goodell (his wife, by the way, once asked me for a date... Long story). Here's a jerk who makes $40 mil per year. If he knew anything about due process, presumptions of innocence, burdens of proof, etc., he would have tossed the Tom Brady case aside as the joke that it is. But he's incapable of that because he doesn't "think like a lawyer," he doesn't see it from the discerning perspective required. Well, Ted Wells is a lawyer, you say. Yes. But Ted Wells is a gangster, part of the New York legal mafia hired to do a hit on football's greatest quarterback ever.

But I digress...

Any modest questioning of the homeless invaders from Philly would reveal that it is pure nonsense, that it is something out of some 1960s political novel.

People... Trust me. There was no big invasion of Philadelphia "poor African Americans rounded up on buses because they like donuts..." I mean come on. Give me a break, guys.

[DavidG]

Well the story rings true to me. I can be pretty gullible, but Jay actually met one of them. And it fits with Ehrlich's personality. Talk about genuine phonies! (Is that like jumbo shrimp?)

Now what is it with you and these women? First HRC rubbing your thigh, then Jane Skinner (a Fox News anchor!) asking you out?! I'm trying hard not to imagine you and the two of them in a threesome...

[JimHow]

Ah yes, the young Jane Skinner… I knew her before she was famous. Well, of course, he father was Transportation secretary at the time.

The Post story does seem credible but I have to wonder why would anyone do that in the first place, and I still don't understand the logistics and resources involved in rounding up a bunch of homeless people from out of state. Doesn't Maryland have its own homeless people?

[DavidG]

I have to wonder why would anyone do that in the first place,

Dishonesty and stupidity?

and I still don't understand the logistics and resources involved in rounding up a bunch of homeless people from out of state. Doesn't Maryland have its own homeless people?

Yes, we have homeless but..

While they may be poor they're not ignorant of Maryland politics. They would recognize the faces on the flyers and recognize them for what they were: lying propaganda for politicians that they couldn't stand. Many wouldn't do it. And the risk of a leak to the press or the opposition would be too great with Maryland residents. Out-of-staters wouldn't know and maybe wouldn't care even if they did, it's not their state. Why not for $100 and a free meal?

[JimHow]

While they may be poor they're not ignorant of Maryland politics.

see this is where I have a problem with the story.
I deal with homeless people every day.
They barely know their names.
They barely know who the president is.
They certainly don't know the vice president.
Let alone who their local senators are.
Let alone who the Republican nominee in a senate race is.
Let alone what a senator even is.
The homeless I deal with are wondering where their lunch is going to come from.
This is why this story just doesn't ring true to me.
It has no resemblance to the homeless I see every day in court, dealing with the daily terror of life.
The last thing on their mind is who is running for Congress in some election that is a universe away from their drugs and alcohol and violence and hunger and desperation.
I don't believe the story.

[DavidG]

What you say makes some sense, but I think there is a broader range of awareness among the homeless. They are not all as mentally challenged as you suggest. Some are, and maybe that segment that ends up needing a criminal defense attorney is typically that out of it. But there are those who are just dirt poor but smart enough or principled enough not to end up in jail.