Rant #2,015: Bits and Pieces

Yes, here is another edition of Bits and Pieces, where we look at stories that perhaps do not deserve full Rant status, but deserve some coverage, anyway.

Here goes--

Astros Win First World Series: Look, I am personally not going to get as excited about this as some will, because the Houston Astros beat my team, the New York Yankees, to get into the World Series, but I am not sad that the upstart Astros beat the favored Los Angeles Dodgers to win their first championship in their 56th year of existence.

The Astros were gritty, tough and hungry, a young team--think George Springer, Jose Altuve--with some even tougher veterans--Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann, both former Yankees--that simply were not going to be denied this year.

In the process, they became the first American League team that started out as a National League franchise to win the World Series.

And way, way back at the beginning of the season, I predicted that the Astros and the Washington Nationals would play each other in the World Series, so while I got it half right, the Astros got it all right.

Congratulations to them--they knocked Hurricane Harvey out of the minds of Houston, at least for a little while, and this city, with all it has put up with because of that storm, deserves some happiness right now.

Terror Episode in New York City: Once again, someone has taken it upon himself to decide whether people live or die, all in the name of ISIS.

The latest episode happened on Halloween evening, Tuesday night, and the difference with this latest attack--where the perpetrator used a rented truck to wreak his carnage--is that the brave officer who stopped this individual in his tracks did not kill him, only wounded him.

This is important, because this suspect is very talkative, and has basically determined his own future with his babble.

He admitted to planning the attack a year ago, deciding on Halloween because the most people would be out and about that day, and he chose a particular busy place to do his dastardly deed.

He has also said that he thought about hanging an ISIS flag after his "victory," one which he said he was quite happy with.

He killed eight innocent people, several of them visitors to New York City from Argentina.

The bottom line is that the suspect came to this country through a specific immigration program, another outdated offshoot of America as the "land of the free."

This program, and all immigrant programs like it, must be either rewritten or done away with.

This is not 1990, this is not 2000, this is 2017, and unfortunately, as other laws of the land must change to adapt to current sensibilities, so should these immigration laws, policies and programs to fit 2017 standards.

We are learning the hard way that we cannot simply allow anyone into this country, and if we are targeting certain groups, so be it.

What is more important--the protection of Americans, or harboring who knows what from who know where?

Sorry, Americans come first, and those who knock our President for trying to do something about it are being sticks in the mud, living in the past, and simply do not understand, or more to the point, refuse to understand, why we have to close the door right now.

It simply has to be for national security's sake.

Kevin Spacey Cited Again: Another individual has come forward to say that actor Kevin Spacey "groomed him" for a homosexual tryst some years ago.

This is, of course, disturbing on several levels, and you have to wonder how many others will come out and say that Spacey had his eye on them?

Of course, talk is cheap, and while I won't defend Spacey's actions at all, at this point, since the actions allegedly took place years ago, it is basically a "he said, she said" series of events, with no proof that these things actually ever happened.

But if these individuals said that they did happen, then these episodes are taken at face value, and everyone believes what they say, without a shred of evidence, killing Spacey's career in its tracks.

Based on this series of events, really anyone can come out against somebody famous, say similar things, and right away, kill someone's career--without a shred of evidence to support any of the allegations.

On the other hand, Spacey does seem to be complicit, so in this case, whatever is being said probably did happen, and he deserves the backlash he is getting.

But his fellow Hollywood thespians--the most shallow group on the planet--have generally not knocked him for his pedophile tendencies, but have taken him to task for coming out as gay "at the wrong time."

To me, nobody cares if he is gay--we are way beyond that point.

But we are never going to be beyond the point of accepting that some adults go after underage children in a sexual manner, but Hollywood seems to ignore this.

Then again, the have ignored Roman Polanski's trysts for decades and even before that, they ignored Charlie Chaplin's underage preferences, so I guess one can say that their reaction was expected.

What a bunch of horrific people this Hollywood bunch is, and they have the nerve to tell us how we should live, while they live in their ivory towers?

That is it for now. Speak to you tomorrow.