Should the penny become obsolete?

What I used to do with all those coins collected down through the years, mostly pennies, is wrap 'em up in those coin folders and take 'em to the bank. Now that's too tedious a chore so nowadays I just give 'em away in dribs and drabs to various charities. Ronald McDonald House for instance although even here you'd like to put more coins in the slot but you'd be holding up the line. Now as a pro-lifer giving to charity in any form ties in with helping the born, no I can't explain it but what is a penny's true worth these days? are they worth having around? I used to collect those older wheatstalk pennies or wheaties as we called them but they're not really worth anything so why bother? Even your average Indian head you may find in your backyard ain't worth snot even after you've given it a good vinegar bath. Wanna stimulate the economy get rid of the penny.

The Stimulus Bill. So how does spending millions of dollars to fight STDs help boost our economy? STDs are a public health issue plain and simple, not unimportant by any stretch and money needs to be spent in this area but as part of a stimulus package to get our economy back on track? I can't figure it and all these proposed millions for side isses dear to liberals they ain't gonna help us get out from under. Some skank down the block wants an IUD, how does that put food on my table? Malkin just wrote a column detailing how if the stimulus bill gets passed in its current form it'll mean a real windfall for ACORN, can it get any more depressing? Obama has called this the "era of responsibility" so how's this for sacrifice? let's all turn our pennies in, I'm tired of the little copper buggers.

I can't warm up to this guy

Obama says we should stop listening to Rush or that top GOP leaders should stop listening to Rush. Maybe this is just a foretaste of the upcoming Fairness Doctrine but there's a strong swirl of arrogance here. It's not just that the issue is so unimportant to even comment on, I haven't really listened to Rush in quite some time now so for me who listens to Rush and what he's saying doesn't bog my day down. I was brought up on the philosophy of it's all good along with it is what it is, throw it all into the mix or as Lionel once said "I want to hear EVERYTHING." You know liberals are funny. I worked in a library once and was getting ready to put the Village Voice on the stick when I commented about some of the ads on the back page, a mere voicing of an opinion and a woman librarian shot back "I see we have a censor here!" Huh? Well if I may apply her sentiment to Obama why does he care so much? Ah yes, from today's Drudge Report, Pelosi says birth control will help the economy. Why don't we pay for some fat lady's dildo while we're at it? I think we're right on the cusp of

The Heyday of Liberalism,

it's all gonna come out in some funky colors now, it's all gonna seem so surreal you'll think when it's all over you dreamed the whole thing. Every liberal fantasy, every exotic notion will now be placed on Obama's plate, the hipster will be signing some heavy legislation in the years to come but to hear the sound of it Rush and Sean should be very happy, it's Clinton II and their careers probably needed some juice anyway.

it is what it is;)

The next chapter in defining deviancy down

Kate Winslet plays a former SS guard who has as her lover a 15-year old boy in The Reader and the reviews are just fabulous. Movie critics are a weird lot anyway but folks statutory rape is the next to go. Ms. Winslet is nude on numerous occasions so you got yourselves a hit right off the bat. Showing married conjugals in the movies must be the new perversion.

Went to Piermont in Rockland County NY the other day with my friend, quaint town with a nice peninsula where you can walk right out to the Hudson River. He said this is the perfect place to cure you of what he called a weird depression usually brought on by work. He explained to me what crabbing means. Ever watch a bucketful of crabs and one's trying to climb to the top and escape? seems the other crabs pull him down, alot like the workplace. So how do some people get the weekends off? hey buddy does it taste like chicken?

There's a strange traffic pattern in my very residential neighborhood. Theoretically there shouldn't be that much traffic at all, all it is is just a bunch of side roads nobody should be interested in but there's a heavy flow of cars nonetheless especially it seems when I'm trying to back into a space at the end of the day which leads me to believe there's either a drug dealer or a 'ho in the neighborhood OR both.

Had a $20 plate of sea scallops the other day and they were rubbery and chewy which usually happens to your scallop when you overcook it. Where is Gordon Ramsay when you need him?

Is personally opposed really that personally opposed?

It's quite fashionable these days to say you're personally opposed to abortion, wouldn't have one or be a party to one yourself, your personal position so to speak but then say the government has to stay out of the Woman's Decision, your political position. Here's why I don't believe these people and it has to do with the psychological aspect of human emotion. ThruMyEyes recently commented at my own blog that she is against abortion herself on a moral level but then engaged in your typical pro-abortion argumentation and pushed the line that women's lives would be at stake if abortion were made illegal again. So here's where it gets questionable and murky at least for me, there seems to be no feeling or real passion behind their "personally opposed" position, it's more a technical line you'd find in a DVD manual otherwise why adopt the talking points of the abortion lobby? TAO does this too all the time but this begs the question if they feel as they say that abortion is the taking of an innocent human life then what does it matter if the taking of that life be done in a safe and legal manner or not (safe for whom?)? I remember years ago when the godfather of this argument, former NY Governor Mario Cuomo, appeared at some pro-abortion conference or other and stated from the podium "everyone here knows my position" but this begs the other question if pro-life has any emotional or spiritual resonance with you from a purely psychological standpoint why would you even associate with such people? This is not the same thing as judging them or getting personal but it'd be like if I as a pro-lifer were seen hobnobbing with the choicers at some Planned Parenthood conference having scones and tea people would question it and with good reason, I'd be on PageSix for cryin' out loud.

Today is strictly a no TV day for me, I'd sooner meditate on the grease spot on the ceiling. OK, I get the coverage today but all day yesterday too on the Eve? They finally pulled that plane up from the Hudson River and so I popped on the Today show yesterday before heading out to work but it was all about the Preparations. I don't think any other president in recent memory got this kind of treatment. Since I have today off they asked me at work would I watch the coverage and so I gave a polite answer which was basically no, I'm not a stay-at-home person anyway. Come to think of it I have to get a pack of gum in Poughkeepsie.

How laws are made in this country

Now here's my beef and I'm not crapping out on the digital TV transfer to take place on Feb. the 17th. I along with millions of other Americans probably had no idea this was even coming but we shouldn't be at all surprised as that's the way most laws are passed in this country these days. There really is no input from the public who put these rascals in office, they legislate everything under the sun often in the dead of night and I just want to be able to put my two cents in before they pass the next batch of laws is all. NO, they just go ahead and do it anyway. In a fully-functioning prime democracy the way it would have went is send letters out to your constituents first explaining why analog sucks or whatever and so then we can give our input in shaping the very laws that effect our everyday lives. THAT'S ALL, is that too much to ask?

The case might be made...

...that divorce is more damaging to the social fabric than abortion in this sense. Abortion imo effects our views on things like the sanctity of human life and it's safe to say it's pretty polarizing but with divorce it's, you know, put it this way, conservatives get divorced probably at roughly the same rate as liberals. Most folks might say it's

a bad thing

but I lost track, Rush might soon be nipping at Larry King's heels in this dept. You can make the case that divorce is more damaging to the social fabric because by its very nature it's more insidious than abortion, it's subtle though but far more folks rationalize it than abortion, there are many people who'd sooner see a divorce lawyer than be a party to an abortion. A word on the gay marriage. Advocates most often bring up how does legalizing gay marriage pose a threat to hetero-marriage but they're missing the mark imo. It doesn't of course but what we are talking about is our cultural preferences being democratically written into our laws at least until recently before the Judiciary became the supreme branch of government. I still remember my history class at Mt. St. Michael in the Bronx and right there in black and white it said there are three, count 'em three, co-equal branches of government - the judicial charged with interpreting our laws, the executive charged with enforcing our laws and the legislative branch whose job is to make those laws.

You might even make the case that divorce is a more sensitive issue than abortion since so many conservatives partake going all the way back to Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman. IMO it's as bad a social trend as abortion so if I've ruffled any feathers you can send any complaints to.....Beth, lol.

Sully rocks!

Should be a postage stamp after the guy but I was thinking. I'm no aviation expert so I'm sure there's someone out there to shoot down my idea but the way things are going why not have a few inflatable life rafts on board next to the fire extinguishers? In my view it was a kind of a miracle and since everyone else is using that term I'd be hard-pressed to go the other way and how ironic since this was a theme of mine of late. New York definitely needed a counter-9/11, a shot in the arm and their police/fire/rescue services are second-to-none imo. Now it's been said the guy is humble so he probably wouldn't go along with this but if I were Obama I'd instruct the IRS in no uncertain terms to lay off this guy's ass for the rest of his aviation career.

Lifestyle choices

or why maybe Dan Quayle had a point

It's kind of a basic tenet of modern-day social liberalism that everybody has the freedom and right to make their own lifestyle choices. OK, this is true as far as it goes but it's also not true that people's lifestyle choices never impinge on others. Out-of-wedlock births, now let me be very specific here. I'm talking about a social trend I've picked up on beginning many years ago, not the woman who finds herself in the dilemma of an unplanned pregnancy but those young women who either plan it or else expect that it can happen and so no big deal being a single mom. The situation I've narrowed down here because I need to be careful as a pro-life advocate but I have heard of this Murphy Brown-type lifestyle choice if you will and seen it firsthand. I worked with one young woman many years ago who had two kids this way, pretty much planned the whole thing or else didn't really care about taking the proper precautions to the point where she didn't care that it happened (the two are somewhat interchangeable in my mind) and so this woman got offended when someone suggested she marry her boyfriend of longstanding: "I'm not going to let society dictate my life." So here's where the imposition of one's lifestyle choice has an effect, right there in the workplace. They call out sick a lot, come in late a lot and generally throw a wrench into the whole workday because everything revolves around their own personal schedule which in turn is dictated by finding a babysitter and other social issues relevant to them, their agenda. So the other workers tend to get annoyed and resentful over time, there's no real search or need for a man in her life (modern-day feminism, who needs a man?) and so while the gay man can come to work everyday and really pump it out (poor choice of words, lol) some lifestyle choices pose a bigger burden on others. OK, I'm sure I've offended someone out there.

thoughts on 24

Watched the first two two-hour installments of the new season of "24" and it seems back on track but am kind of surprised it's become the big right-wing hit it is, after all it's heavy on the government conspiracy theories especially this season. Maybe in addition to a God gene we have a conspiracy gene and the conservatives can secretly indulge themselves here when they're not reading books "disproving" the various JFK conspiracy theories, chalk it up to a guilty pleasure and besides conspiracies make for good drama on TV. O'Reilly recently blasted Matt Damon and "Bourne Ultimatum" in a column because in his view it put down {gasp} our own CIA, NEVER!!! so why is "24" OK? I've said this before vis-a-vis Charlie Sheen and Rosie O'Donnell, conspiracies give our lives a sense of adventure, mystery and meaning and if every once in a while one happens to be true so much the better. Jack Bauer, we'll see where it goes.

The msm, at best they're annoying

I was working yesterday so I only heard about this. I have an elderly neighbor and she was watching "The Price is Right", it was about 10 after 11 in the morning and in comes Breaking News, A Special Report and so your first reaction is a building just fell, a bomb hit, Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place was found, O.J. pulled a prison break. Seems our Savior was giving some major speech on the economy at some college and ALL the major stations did the same thing. Now when this story was first relayed to me my first comment was "he ain't even president yet" and turns out my neighbor said the exact same thing. Imagine this with any other president, let's say the media broke into regularly scheduled programming to report what George Bush just said even before his first inauguration, why Al Franken would be hog-tied, Julia Roberts would demand equal time. Don't get me wrong, the msm, they're not biased, they just seem that way. Their bias is an illusion but a good one, it's all in your head just don't get too involved in Judge Judy or House is all I'm saying.

Why aren't there more miracles?

I kept nodding off at around 9:30 last night but I really wanted to stay up. I persevered and caught the first half of the Patrick Swayze interview and whenever I hear these things in the news I say a prayer of course like everyone else. I believe in God but I'm curious about Him, He seems so laidback. Let's say you're God and so naturally you have the divine power to cure people if you choose but in the vast majority of cases you decide not to, WHY? Just look at the history of the power of prayer and you wonder at the aloofness of it all. Now there are cases compiled by the Church, documented miracles but these seem to be blue-moon moments and why them and nobody else? if nothing else more miracles would certainly mean a revitalization and reinvigoration of faith no?

OR is this a false criticism of God, a false reading?

Why is everything so gangster in this country?

I'm really getting into the dining experience of late. Yesterday hit this place in the sticks with my friend and we got this real old friendly waitress, real Lauren Bacall smokey voice like she might wind up in a casket in two weeks, it was definitely something out of a movie, oldtimers rapping about Obama and the economy and the fact that they were out of seafood even added a nice touch, it was all so human but anyway noted a couple things at some diners recently. One I've gone to a few times now and don't get me wrong I like speedy service but your food comes out way too quick. Say you order their big breakfast the waitress gives you USA Today or something to read and you see that Bill Richardson just withdrew his nomination and out she comes with your sunnyside eggs, whole wheat toast, sausage, Canadian bacon and hashed up potatoes the way I like 'em all IN 5 F'N MINUTES, no less even so what do they do nuke everything? They must have the components already as soon as you walk in the door but you like to think that at least your eggs are cracked fresh, hell I can do that at home. Then at another diner the food was ok, 1/2 a chicken but I could tell what kind of gravy was on the mashed potatoes, some chef who obviously hates his job poured a jar of Boston Market on top and didn't even bother to heat it up like he didn't want to go to work that day, didn't feel well that morning, didn't wipe enough and he's gliding and sliding all day but that ain't my problem. Basic Thuganomics. PAGING GORDON RAMSAY!!!

This begs the question

I was waiting for my friend yesterday and got talking to his brother, big Irish family, very churchgoing and I mentioned that at our parish they eliminated the 5PM Mass on Sunday, convenient for me anyway since I work Saturday and usually part of Sunday. So he goes "what are priests doing that they can't say the 5:00 Mass?" Are they going to a club? Went to a baptism recently and they now do them in groups, the ceremony's longer too as a result but that's ok, I can swing with the times but at this baptism a deacon baptized the kids so my question is what was the pastor doing at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon that he couldn't do it himself? He doesn't have a woman in his life, at least not theoretically, God is their life so is one too many Masses or sacraments too much of an effort for them? Technically speaking priests don't have to even take a vow of poverty. When I was a kid growing up our pastor owned condos in Florida but imo this goes against the image of a man devoted to God. Had to help move things in the convent once and the sisters had this huge stereo TV system for starters, I never even had that and my Mom and Dad busted their humps their whole life. Whassup guys?

Anyone care to discuss Gaza?

I really don't see how Israel is doing anything wrong in trying to obliterate Hamas, a country has the right to defend herself. It's a choicy kind of subject so feel free.