“The Bagel Maven……..”

362 7th Ave., New York NY, 1001 is where this story takes place….”Bagel Maven Café”

I spent nearly a week in New York City helping out Kevin; a young and successful small business owner (Lucy Darling- baby/kids goods) work his booth at the National Stationary Show at the Javits Center. We found this place on day one as we set out for breakfast. It was a few blocks from our hotel and our mission was to find a great bagel (which is not too hard in NYC). This is known as mid-town Manhattan…think Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. We spotted it, jay walked across 7th Avenue and entered to find a line up of typical New Yorkers getting ready to order their take-out breakfast. This is what we saw ……a long counter staffed by a group of guys whose accents and broken English told me that they were from a variety of backgrounds including Hispanic, middle eastern, Indian, etc. They were hard working and doing their best to keep the line moving while making custom bagels and bagel sandwiches for the customers. Think Starbucks Baristas with knives as they went back and forth and around each other to complete each order. As I was bloviating about bagels to Kevin, a customer about 4 people ahead of us ordered an “EVERYTHING BAGEL, TOASTED WITH CREAM CHEESE” in a rather loud and whiney voice. I told Kevin that for a great experience, he should get the same thing because as a bagel purist, there is nothing better than plain cream cheese on a toasted everything  (garlic, onions, rye, sesame, poppy, salt) bagel. I thought twice about telling him about the Yiddish term “schmear” and decided against it.

I noted that the customer who made the order was a twenty something guy who had on teal blue ear buds which he did not remove so that when he spoke he was LOUDER than he needed to be to be heard. I have been told that I sometimes judge people, but I sensed something about this guy. He reminded me of “Pajama Boy”….the millennial used in the ad for Obamacare a few years ago. I figured the bagel customer  was in the 6th year of college going for his BA in Anthropology and Womens’ Studies, after taking off a few semesters  to travel Europe on Mommy and Daddy’s dime and all the while complaining about how rotten the country is and that we all need to “Feel the Bern”. There, I said it. I will call him “Earbud Boy”.

I ordered an everything bagel, toasted with cream cheese and to my surprise, Kevin ordered a toasted everything bagel, cream cheese, eggs and bacon…bypassing my purist pitch. He went straight for the full meal bagel. Oh well.  Then the drama began.

When the bagel maker (a 30 something Hispanic) handed “Earbud Boy” his bagel, without taking out his ear buds, he asked “DOES THIS HAVE VEGETABLE CREAM CHEESE?”. Now, I KNOW he never asked for vegetable cream cheese because I hate it and heard him say just “CREAM CHEESE”.  The bagel maker took back the bagel, wiped off the cream cheese and started to put on vegetable cream cheese. Then, without taking out his teal blue earbuds, “Earbud Boy” asked  “ARE YOU PUTTING ON SALMON CREAM CHEESE…..I WANT VEGETABLE CREAM CHEESE….I DO NOT WANT SALMON CREAM CHEESE”.  Now the bagel maker, in his broken English said “This is what you order”. Without taking out his ear buds, so he could communicate better, “Earbud Boy” said again “I DO NOT WANT SALMON CREAM CHEESE” to which the bagel maker repeated “This is what you order”.  I turned to Kevin and said something like that jerk needs to take out his #!@!”   earbuds. The exasperated bagel maker then picked up the bagel with the vegetable cream cheese, walked up the customer, put it about 2 feet from his face and then threw it in the garbage. I was hoping he would have shoved it in his face. As the bagel maker took out a fresh everything bagel and began slicing it, “Earbud Boy” said “BE SURE THAT IT IS VEGETABLE CREAM CHEESE AND ADD BACON”.

I sometimes reflect on situations and began thinking about the life of the Hispanic bagel maker and his story. How did he get here? How long has he worked at this place? Does he have a family he is supporting?, etc. All I know is that he was working hard and trying his best, while customers like “Earbud Boy” were too self absorbed to notice or even care.

On our last day, Kevin and I went again to “The Bagel Maven Café” for breakfast. By now, I was off bagels and onto yogurt for breakfast. When we went to order, our bagel maker was the one noted in the “Earbud Boy” drama. Kevin ordered an everything bagel with cream cheese, 2 eggs and bacon. He then said to the bagel maker, please give me the jalapeno cream cheese instead. Well, the bagel maker smiled from ear to ear literally. He said “You like it hot”, to which Kevin said “The hotter the better”. The bagel maker kept smiling as he made Kevin’s breakfast bagel. I like to think that perhaps Kevin made his day a little brighter to make up for all the “Earbud Boys” in this world.

 

 

 

 

“It’s a madhouse……..”

Those were the words of exasperated Astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) from the 1968 version of “Planet of the Apes” as he was being fire hosed by the ape jailer named Julius. Taylor and some fellow astronauts crash landed on a planet where apes ruled humans (who could not speak). The others had either been killed or used for brain experiments.  Taylor had slipped through the cracks and was trying to reason with Julius about his need to speak with Dr. Zira ( an ape scientist with whom Taylor had previously spoken). All Julius could shout was “SHUT UP YOU FREAK!” and fire hosed him. In this upside down world where apes ruled humans, Taylor realized that it was a “madhouse”….a place of utter and complete confusion, up was down and down was up  and there was no sense of reality as he knew it to be.

If I mentioned the name “Guccifer”, what would come to mind? Most people would have no idea of who this person is, what he did, and what he said he did.

If I said Taco Bowl Tweet, nearly everyone would, of course, know about the infamous Tweet by Donald Trump and his love of Hispanics because he was eating a Taco salad.

The way the main stream media is treating these two stories gives us insight as to how truly biased they are and what we can look forward to during this election season.

Marcel Lazar a/k/a Guccifer is a Romanian national, arrested months ago in Romania on international computer hacking charges and was recently extradited to the US to face additional hacking charges. What many do not know is that it was in 2013, after “Guccifer” published some e-mails from long time Bill and Hillary confidant Sidney Blumenthal, that the world found out about the private e-mail server of Hillary Clinton. After “Guccifer” hacked Sidney Blumenthal’s computer, he published the e-mails with the “hdr22@clintonemail.com” address.

This is what started the Hillary e-mail investigations because until then, no one knew about the private e-mail server. Questions arose around national security issues because it has been discovered that the  private e-mail server (now in the custody of the FBI)  had confidential, secret, top secret and higher level information on it which by itself appears to be a felony. One question being investigated is whether or not the Clinton server was hacked….here is where it gets real interesting.

Just last week, Fox News published an interview that they had with “Guccifer” while being held in a Federal Prison on computer hacking charges “unrelated” to the Clinton e-mail scandal. During the interview, he implies that he did indeed “hack” the Clinton server and that it was relatively easy. He said he was able to back track via his hack of Sidney Blumenthal’s computer. If this is true, who else could have done the same….China, Russia, ISIS, etc.

Read the article here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/04/romanian-hacker-guccifer-breached-clinton-server-it-was-easy.html

Right after Fox news broke the story, good old NBC News decided to release a story that they had done months ago…they had gone to Romania and actually interviewed “Guccifer” before his extradition to the US. He told them much the same information, but NBC decided it was not worthy to be shared with the public until they were “scooped” by Fox News.

Read the article here:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hacker-guccifer-i-got-inside-hillary-clinton-s-server-n568206

If you “google” something like “Guccifer Clinton e-mails” you will see a few major News Outlet stories-mostly Fox and NBC, not much follow-up from the print media and some mainly conservative Blog stories- nothing like a potential blockbuster story.

Now let’s look at that Trump Tweet. What can I say……it is Trump being Trump.  Look at his smiling face, read his promotion of the Trump Tower Grill and try to figure out if he really thinks that his message conveys “I love Hispanics”. When the RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was asked about the Tweet, his response was “He’s trying”.

OK….is this really news? WELL, if you see the firestorm that it set off, you would think it was bigger than, uh….national security and the possible breaching of America’s secrets on a private e-mail server used exclusively for all government and personal business by a former Secretary of State.

If you “google” something like “Trump Taco Bowl” you will see that all major news outlets, print outlets, local TV news across the country, bloggers galore have for days been covering this as if it was important.

This is the playbook….  marginalize Clinton scandal news and exploit negative Trump news. From now until Election Day, we will be served nothing but negative Trump news, which he makes real easy to generate. The steady drum beat of negativity will impact the average voters this November as in past elections. Trump is currently behind Clinton nationally with double digits. He also has the highest disapproval rating in the history of presidential polling.

When a goofy Tweet gets more attention than a potential national security blockbuster Astronaut Taylor was right….. it’s a “madhouse”.

On a side note:

The ape jailer “Julius” is played by Buck Kartalian. Growing up my siblings and I knew him as Uncle Bucky. He was my dad’s buddy going back to the early 1950’s when they both were “Professional Wrestlers” on TV. Uncle Bucky went on, doing work on TV and Broadway. He moved to California where he did theatre and a lot of TV work. He was on most sitcoms (bit parts) throughout the 60’s and 70’s. He did some feature films such as “Mr. Roberts”, “Cool Hand Luke”, “Planet of the Apes” and many more.

 

 

 

 

 

“Everybody buys soap…….”

These were the first words I heard upon entering the world of multi-level marketing. As a 20 year old college student,  paying my own way with a part-time job, I was being recruited. A friend of mine told me about his cousin who was in business for himself and making a lot of dough. So there I was in his cousin’s new house. I thought it a bit ironic that I was watching him draw circles and talk about dreams while sitting in an aluminum lawn chair in his living room. As a matter of fact, the living room furniture consisted of 3 lawn chairs and a color TV….the kitchen only had a small picnic table and bench. But I put all that aside and got involved in “dreaming”. This guy had his act together and was on his way and I wanted the same.

I bought in….scraped together the funds and purchased the “basic” soap products that everybody buys and began to “build my empire”. Reality struck as soon as I realized that my friends had no money  to join me and “buy” the basic products (nor did they want to) and my relatives just smiled and patted me on the head. Six months later my mom and nice neighbor lady bought the last of my original “basic” product purchase. I was a little older, AND A LOT WISER.

The other day my eye glimpsed an article and all I saw were the words Cruz, sued and  supplements maker. I went back and the New York Times headline was “Ted Cruz’s Father Worked With Supplements Maker Sued by Investors”.

You can read the entire story at this link, but it was a “hit piece” on Cruz’s father. The bottom line— nothing came of his role with this company, which is a publically traded multi-level marketing corporation and still in business. Really, WHO CARES about what Rafael Cruz did; he is not running for President.

Donald Trump, however, is running for President and he too was involved in a multi-level marketing company selling vitamins and supplements. These were  the first products for the “Trump Network” and was pitched as a “recession-proof” opportunity when launched 1n 2009.

From CBS News:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-network-cbs-news-investigation-supplements-multi-level-marketing/

“The Trump Network wants to give millions of people renewed hope and with an exciting plan to opt out of the recession,” Trump said in a promotional video.

A reported 20,000 independent sales representatives bought the Trump Network products and tried to recruit others to sell them too. But within two and a half years, the “recession-proof” business collapsed.

I get it. As a naïve college student it was easy to get “caught up” in the noise, rhetoric and pure emotion of the potential to make some real money. With the great Donald Trump as the pitchman, it seems thousands had no choice but to “buy in”.

Trump was the company’s top recruiter. He traveled the country for two years promoting the scheme, including a 2009 launch in Miami.

Beginner salespeople were told to buy a $497 “starter kit” of Trump products so they could get in on the soon-to-be billion-dollar business, reports CBS News correspondent Julianna Goldman.

In 2011, when the company failed and the 20,000 recruits were left high and dry, Donald Trump was nowhere to be found. As a matter of fact, Trump’s attorney said HE NEVER ENDORSED THE PRODUCTS.

Trump declined our request for an interview. His attorney said he did not own the company or make the products. He also said Trump never endorsed the merchandise despite a letter signed by Trump saying, “I believe in the Trump Network products.”

Trump sold his name and his brand for $1 million, according to a draft of the proposal from court documents.

I KNOW THIS SEEMS NUTS, BUT IT IS THE TRUTH….Trump basically said: Vitamins and supplements?….What vitamins?….What supplements?  I never endorsed any such things!

Watch the first couple of minutes of this video….doesn’t it seem familiar?

I believe that the supporters of Trump are caught up in the emotion of what he says and the image that he projects. When reality hit me and I realized that soap was not going to make me a fortune, I moved on. When reality hits the Trump supporters, will they be able to do the same?

If he gets elected President, I can imagine this happening in January 2019, 2 years into his presidency.

Press question: “Mr. President, your main campaign promise was to “Build a Wall”. You said it would take 2 years.   It has been 2 years since your inauguration.  When is the ribbon cutting ceremony?”

President Trump: “Wall?, What Wall?”………