Just a spritz of paranoia

Woman and I were discussing this. When we grow up we're taught to trust each other, that people are basically good but that paranoia or suspicion or what have you is a bad thing but you may be at a disadvantage later on in life. She brought up crime writer Ann Rule's books and one intro in particular where Rule says the people who are most often prey are the honest as being honest they think everyone else is. People who lie and do so skillfully, the honest never even suspect they're being had. These are very apropos insights especially in light of the Bernard Madoff scandal and now this Stanford guy. IF it doesn't add up it's not always paranoia at work, it could be your sixth sense or what Lista calls that still small inner voice. Shakespeare knew it, in King Lear the virtuous Edgar has no idea his evil brother Edmund is scheming for his land. There's been events in my own life that don't always add up, bad characters who for some strange reason remain popular whom everybody else trusts but you can see right through them. It always amazes me that these Madoff guys can get away with this stuff for years before the truth finally surfaces, maybe it has to do with the way we're brought up? Politicians we know are corrupt but we still elect them. Perhaps we need to apply a bit of the soapster's wisdom here who once said he tends to think the worst of people until they prove themselves otherwise. I might add ESPECIALLY when $$$$$$ is involved.

Rx against Porkulus

I only caught a small part of his don't mess with Joe speech last night. I can only take this stuff in very small doses, I'd rather watch them sell a banjo on Home Shopping Network. It's easy to lose focus and see the problem as OBAMA but it ain't this per se. Eliminate the income tax!!! Yes, when you have people's hard-earned money rolling in the temptation is just too overwhelming to use it for this reason and for that reason and I don't care what party you belong to. Get rid of the income tax and you can use it for no reason.

In one ear and out the other

Pope dresses down Nancy Pelosi on abortion.

Impressions of Obama

He might be a moderate or a pragmatist or a healer or a reconciler or a torchbearer of peace to all mankind, all kinds of yummy ingredients blended together into one heavenly decadent sinful dessert but to me he's a liberal automaton, a kind of political cyborg sent back through Time to sign liberal bill after liberal bill. The order to close Gitmo, the new pretty-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top interrogation rules on terror suspects, that Hummer of a stimulus package barreling down the street and now lifting of the ban on embryonic stem-cell research and let's see, it's only February the 17th. The cyborg always has a mission, never to be troubled by afterthoughts or doubts or followup questions there is a job to be done, undo every thing Bush, reverse conservative gains, have liberal clones in place when any of the Supremes decide to call it quits. Let it not be said that he is the President who does Nothing, don't put that left-handed bill-signing hand on ice quite yet. Just throwing the practice pitches until FOCA, I'm getting depressed but I sure hope helping some guy with genital warts somehow stimulates the economy and as a diversion we get the Octomommy and homicidal chimps and a 24 season that doesn't quite make sense. It is a surreal moment, tell me I'm dreaming.

Moral Instruction

I've read in different Catholic Church bulletins that when a couple want to use the sacrament of marriage they usually have to inform the parish at least one year in advance. Struck me as way too long a wait, what if they want a small affair and not all the hoopla and they want to do it three months from now? What if there's already a bun in the oven? Basically a large part of the wait has to do with the requirement of those Pre-Cana classes, marriage preparation courses designed to strengthen their future conjugal life together. I found myself being alternately annoyed and offended by this, it's my libertarian streak coming through I guess and doesn't the Church already have too many rules and regulations to begin with (be sorry for your sins but don't confess them to a priest and you go to Hell, your basic control issue)? So I came up with the root of my displeasure here and it's this: you either believe in the sanctity of marriage, the seriousness of the marriage covenant or you don't, it's not teachable, it's not trainable. Now moral education makes perfect sense, is even necessary when raising kids. At such an impressionable age they're perfectly amenable to notions of Right and Wrong, well some of them anyway but when dealing with adults...it'd be like if your Dad came over your apartment, you're 37 now and found a porno under your bed and yelled at you about it. Dad might be perfectly right about the bad nature of the stuff but...regarding morality you either have it or you don't, it is what it is. Now to tie together two of my recurring themes here, abortion and drugs - since the fetus is human it should be protected by law, since drugs pose a public-safety issue that's the primary reason they should be illegal. Going over some of my most recent blogs on these two matters it's become obvious moral instruction doesn't work, moral education is a waste of time. I've articulated the old tried-and-true reasons for being against abortion and threw in some new and original points I hope on the matter. Same deal with drugs especially as relates to the psychedelics but it's almost as if people don't read the stuff or read it but don't absorb it. They're passionately for abortion or at least pro-choice as they say and the folks who are for narcotics seem to be really for them, the scare tactics only make them more curious and aggresive in their defense of them. So perhaps the pedagogic (or teaching) aspect of my blogging is coming to an end now, gave it my best shot and the thought occured to me if I feel this way about Pre-Cana why not the rest? In a morally relative universe to say you have all the answers or at least some of them, we prefer to revel in our ambiguity, our ambivalence and we've made the quest of not knowing or not striving to know a gospel. In the olde days Truth was our beacon, today truth is controversial. I still hold the same positions I've always did, I'm simply giving the chalk and the eraser and the pointer a rest for now.

Kind of an apocalyptic assessment from the msm

Patiently waiting my turn to use the computer at my local library after work the other day and browsed the magazine rack to kill time. First Newsweek caught my interest with its cover of 2/16 - We Are All Socialists Now - The Perils and Promise of the New Era of Big Government, I didn't know I was a socialist but thanx for enlightening me boys and then my eye caught The New Republic of 2/18 with its breathless Conservatism is Dead - An Intellectual Autopsy of the Movement by Sam Tanenhaus. I always knew TNR was liberal in political orientation but somehow I thought they had shaded themselves towards moderation over the years, wasn't quite The Nation know what I'm saying? Now all this because Bam was elected? A movement that's been around since like forever and is simply the collective mass reaction to the dominant liberalism of the day is no more? In this sense conservatism is largely reactionary by definition since as a movement it never really gets to call the shots at least in academia, the mainstream media (ok there's FOX), the judiciary and you name it. Liberalism is pretty much public policy these days, there's still a good chance you can get a welfare check but I didn't know Obama had such power that he wiped conservatism off the face of the map. The msm inhabits a rather weird universe, it's almost, oh I don't know, psychedelic?

If it's not the social issues what unites us as conservatives?

Is it the theme of less government? The fiscal conservatives (FC's) would say no, if anything they're the true conservatives. With my heavy abortion blogging a few months ago to my more recent drug tangent it's become apparent we're not all on the same page. Throw in gay marriage and I would hazard a guess too that they don't get all that bent out of shape if a sex shop opens next door to a church and a playground which segues nicely into

economic policy? Well if this is all there is that's kind of thin gruel. Most conservatives favor lower taxes but what about those of us who favor no income tax at all? I almost said "and less spending" but true to form when they get into office even they throw the money around. OK, so the libertarian position of no income taxation to the more mainstream conservative view of lower taxes, well that's a bit of a ravine but we can still wave comfortably to each other from each side of the bridge. So does it all revolve around the dinars? Then there's

military excursions. Surprisingly I would've expected more diversity here, when those phantom WMD's in Iraq failed to materialize I would've expected conservatives to debate more the loss of life there, we're not pacifists by any stretch but remaking the Middle East? OK, Pat Buchanan had a problem with this but he's Pat Buchanan, the rest of us referred to it as Bush-bashing.

$$$$$$ and War.....hmmmmm.....and oh yes, Alec Baldwin is a dick.

Take social issues off the table and what do we have? Are there still common threads? Do we still have A common thread? I don't quite have the answer anymore but I don't think liberals debate what liberalism means to them, if they're not always on the same page at least they're reading the same book.

Channel-surfing last night

NO I didn't watch the whole thing, merely dipped my finger in that liberal dip from time to time, get that aftertaste going in the mouth. Obama's very first news conference. As expected he pretty much touted the important role of government in Life and lectured us on the conservatives didn't like FDR and the New Deal, "but they're fighting old battles" he said. I didn't know that if a battle is old it's no longer philosophically valid so after that I kind of drifted off into Home Shopping Network land, did a little Globetrekker which was interesting because I learned all about the Yangtze River in China and swung back to catch his thoughts on Iran still being a member of the international community or something, checked out what's on the CW and then caught the very informal and brusque "thank you guys" at the end at exactly 9:02PM as if he had to catch 24.

Credibility issues with 24

Sangala Colonel Ike Dubaku, right-hand man to the Juma Regime responsible for untold genocide against their own people. Our first woman president Allison Taylor has decided to militarily invade this fictitious African country to stop the atrocity but Col. Dubaku has corrupted vast swaths of the U.S. government with diamonds and since Plan A with the now destroyed CIP device has failed he has kidnapped the First Man or Gentleman Henry Taylor who's already been through hell and back, through the mill as they say, and personally calls the White House to tell her to back off and withdraw the U.S. fleet from the coast of Sangala, all this time operating from various safehouses in America. So why exactly did Dubaku under the assumed name Samuel cultivate a persoal relationship with an African-American woman and get himself into all kinds of personal distractions with her mother who rung up his cell on last night's episode to tell him to break up with her? I'm sure someone of his military stature when the need comes to get his rocks off has a 'ho or two in his back pocket and ALSO he roams about freely on subways and sidewalks and but NOBODY seems to recognize him. Now I'm perfectly aware of a good part of the Taylor government has been bought off but you'd think at least some part of the CIA, the still good part would be looking for the man. Maybe he figured it's true what they say, we all look alike but it's still a compelling season on 24, just stretches it a tad you might say.

A new credo?

Had a young manager once and was mulling over in my head while channel-surfing last night what he offered me once as his own personal wisdom for the workplace (I'm sorry Obama but I wasn't paying strict attention). "Don't do for them until they do for you." It might sound cynical and negative but when you think about it it makes sense. How many times at your job have you come in on your day off to help out 'cause somebody else called out sick or else stayed late too many times to count? Did you rack up any brownie points by doing so? Have they kept track of your good deeds and will duly reward you in the end? Not likely so rock on brother!

Are we outnumbered?

This is kind of a spinoff to my most recent blog The hippy lobby never seems to die as I am concerned and I've shared this with Beth. That particular post dealt specifically with studies being done right now purporting to show the health benefits of lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD but I'm broadening the subject here to narcotics in general especially in light of the recent Michael Phelps bong show. Now as I expressed to Beth I had thought there was some kind of societal consensus finally evolving that illegal drugs are bad for you, even that hedonist Hef reportedly doesn't allow them in the Mansion but then reviewing the most recent blogs out there the number of people who see nothing at all wrong with using at least some of these drugs, put it this way, I find this counterconsensus if you will disturbing. To say that there is irresponsible drug use and then responsible drug use is like saying there's also responsible adultery which many people hold to also. Now getting back to my hippy blog even the heavy hardcore hallucinogens, otherwise reasonable people who should know better seem at least curious about them. There's an intellectual curiosity here and they defend it by saying that this normally political desire for moderation be applied here too. Now as positive a thing as moderation can be I say it doesn't always apply across the board this being one of those cases, it's a common error in moral reasoning to say moderation in all things. I find these thoughts mesmerizing in a bad way and so this hippy blog companion piece.

Why conservatives want Obama to fail

Now ask yourself this question: As a conservative you are rightly concerned about some of Obama's policies or stated positions in the past, it could be FOCA or the stimulus package, it could be the closing of Gitmo in one year, whatever but do you want to see a failed presidency over the next four years? I would say that RUSH does in spades and here's why, it would show the world yet again the bankruptcy of liberalism, the damage it causes, a textbook case to be used come '012. That's f****d up, as conservatives we can and should fight Obama whenever the issue is important enough, we have to hold the line on fiscal extravagance for instance when it comes to "stimulating" the economy but as I said in my last blog partisanship has been sharpened since his election, this is not good. Now many of my own views may happen to fall along partisan lines but there's a difference between this and seeing yourself as a member of a Team, Us vs. Them, criticizing Obama's proposed infrastructure program for example as Karl Rove has done early on instead of saying yes, our roads and bridges and tunnels are in great need of upgrading and basic repair. This is tweaking and it is petty, it doesn't rise to the level of a FOCA and it shows the sorry state of conservatism that we'd rather he fail to give us a leg up in the next big one. I hope he doesn't push FOCA, I hope he gets a healthy dose of fiscal sanity, I hope he's good in the War on Terror and keeps us safe, I hope this and I hope that. His very early going out of his way to seek out Republican views and ideas bodes well which brings up the question: IF his turns out to be a good or even fair presidency will we give him due credit? There's a fine line between pushing your views and hoping somebody falls flat on his face to "prove" the correctness of your views which is why I haven't listened at all to conservative talk radio since the election. Savage is still harping on Obama's middle name and my brother says Sean has this high-pitched wail of a voice like we're in the middle of a world war. I don't know what this all means, whether conservative talk radio will see a rejuvenation or its own demise but frankly I'm tired of everyone at this point.

Obamafest

I was surfing the regular nightly news broadcasts last night and there for the first ten minutes on CBS, NBC and ABC was Obama being interviewed mainly about Sen. Tom Daschle's withdrawal as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson all doing their thing and Williams ending his broadcast by affectionately saying "Obama had a bad day at the office." Now I realize that this is the nature of the beast, that at least 90% of the news you see every night revolves around Washington, it would be quite easy to defend this practice journalistically but I'm bored. This is one thing I like about watching the BBC News or the French News, there's a world beyond Washington and you learn about things happening in the world you had no idea about. Now l'affaire Daschle is fairly interesting at best that is for a day or two but I'm not going to judge Obama's whole presidency on it. Laura Ingraham had some valid points to make on the Today show this morning but is it really that important? Obama's election has sharpened our partisanship but lest we forget when Linda Chavez and Bernie Kerik were nominated for important posts we all know how that turned out. Obama muffed it, he said so, let's move on.

I'm not a fan of the Goracle by any stretch

it's just that here where I live in New York State we haven't had ice-skating in a decade at least. It's now received conservative orthodoxy to give no quarter to AlGore, I only remember when Boyd Corners Reservoir in Carmel NY had three feet of ice but that's years before I even knew what a blog was. Them were the days, went into a local bait and tackle store run by some heavy older gentleman with diabetic toes and we asked where is he one day and the guy at the counter says he's still upstairs having sex with some male college student. Now that's going way back, before Giggles (why not?) sprouted up everywhere up here. There was a market for ice cleats because there was a need for them back then. Anyways went fishing with some guy once and he told me to slow the car down which I did, the window was rolled down most of the way and he says to me in a rather loud voice "HEY, look at the midget!!" Poor guy, probably just came out of 5 years of intensive psychotherapy to be socially accepted...same guy said when we were fishing for bullheads during their spring run in the Hudson, if a condom came up during high tide he called 'em Coney Island Whites. I wanna see people ice-skating is all and not at some artificial rink where you can't skate backwards, freezing your little cherry balls off up at Woodlands Lake, that's what it's all about. The disproving of the Theory will take some time, the counter-evidence ain't exactly rolling in.

A philosophy of work

Here's the common thread of what's wrong with so many jobs these days, there's no reward system in place, no forward progress. It could be as simple as you've been at the same place for ten years and can't even get the shift or hours you want. The reward system would say you deserve some accomodation based on your length of service but I've seen the same people doing the exact same thing they were doing when they started the job. I've also seen many people whose true talents aren't being utilized in the right way. The category is most often referred to as soul-sucking jobs or dead-end jobs but it doesn't have to be this way. Problem is at far too many places there's no organization, no philosophy, WHAT'S THE PLAN HERE? Maybe that's why our economy is hurting, nobody knows how to make money anymore. It's all mundane, no imagination, where's the pride? People in the know have told me think tanks come up with this stuff, to keep the average worker behind the 8-ball and when you do feel hopeful at times that's a false optimism. Working, since we all have to do it it could be so much better in this country, not so much a mandatory component of your whole life experience but something you actually enjoy. It ain't so much the stimulus it's what are we doing?

What recession?

Or is the bad economy being overstated to sell a political agenda, to ram through more government regulations and stimulus packages? "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste" so said Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Now here's what I'm getting at, it's by now incontrovertible wisdom that this period we're now in is second only to the Great Depression in the scope of its seriousness but I will submit there is a rather large chunk of people right now who are not the least bit affected by the Bad Economy. I've been in stores that are constantly raising the prices of their cold cuts but I've noticed the same lines of regulars getting their usual cuts of meat, same amounts too. If the bad times are affecting everyone I've failed to notice. These people probably paid their mortgage off or are heading well in that direction, they are living responsibly, well within their means and so why should the wrong decisions of the fiscally irresponsible among us affect them? I consider myself to belong to this group, paid all my credit cards off long ago and operate well within my budget. Nothing's changed for me despite the players getting hit hard, I still spend the usual amount I've always spent. Never even went near a mortgage, ACORN could have approached me and I would have smelled a swindle a mile away. I've always swung the rent and managed. I've never lost a job or been laid off but I'm hearing this economic melodrama every night on the evening news and how our President says we have to do something and do it now, time's a-wastin' So how come the same people keep buying a pound of Ovengold?

My impression of Idol this season

First off it's a weird one and I'm not even talking about the contestants. The judges are acting goofy but it's an annoying goofy, like somebody at work who insists he's funny until someone smacks him inside the head. People can be functionally insane and still report to work in the morning (NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg) but the other thing is the calibration of the judging seems to be way way off especially Simon's. A bunch of chicks'll get up to sing, maybe not bad voices but something's off, maybe the timbre of their voices or their presence and they all go YES YES YES with nary a word of constructive criticism offered their way but then some guy with a great voice'll come on and maybe Randy will say NO and Simon will come up with something out of left field. It's not just me, I've heard others say this when discussing last night's Idol and for most of the show's existence I could find myself agreeing with Simon even if his sarcasm was over the top or uncalled for. I probably won't be watching most of it this time, the panelists have made it way too laborious and how successful are the ones who win in the end anyway? A for instance, after some singer auditioned Kara offered her critique and said something like "that's giving you a real solid." Like trying to be hip and coin her own expressions but what the hell's a solid? Maybe the FRINGE team needs to investigate.