Monday, June 29, 2009

Sentencing day for Bernie Madoff

Let it be said if I were speaking to the judge I'da said many of Madoff's victims were greedy and stupid themselves, after all how much money do you need to retire? (of course I would have needed heavy security to just go home). I'm living comfortably now, don't need much, I don't have millions to invest anyway (poor Steven Spielberg - boohoo!). So today Manhattan U.S. District Judge Denny Chin sentenced Madoff to the maximum meaning 150 years in prison and everyone cheered and got off but what else could he do? The sentence is an existential absurdity, murderers have gotten out in less time. Oh but it will be pointed out that Madoff's a murderer himself because three of his victims took their own lives but truth be told only weak people kill themselves. Everyone's acting like 150 years is a hell of a long time, does it apply to successive reincarnations? Getting back to MJ......

Friday, June 26, 2009

Maybe Martin Bashir can deliver the eulogy

Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

Was there too much coverage or an overcoverage? yesterday did the msm treat Michael Jackson as God? Were the simulaneous specials on CBS, NBC and ABC an orgy of glorious excess typical of the msm? "ENOUGH ALREADY!!!" I heard some people say. Here's why I say no to all of the above, it was newsworthy and yes even though it made Farrah Fawcett more into a footnote or bookend for the evening except for NBC and ABC it was warranted for two reasons. First his death at the fairly young age of 50 was shocking, when I was driving home after work and heard on the radio that two icons had passed away I already knew about Farrah and thought the other one was Patrick Swayze until Billy Bush told me and I really hadn't expected it. Second despite aspects of his later years he was an enormously talented artist whose work spanned over three decades so that he was given the John Lennon treatment I have no problem with.

Ah yes the scandals. Personally speaking I never believed in the allegations though his conduct was extremely unwise at times to say the least. Hannity spent the better part of some shows devoted to it but on the other side PBS's Frontline once did an indepth analysis of why they felt he was innocent. In his later years the image of a ManChild comes most readily to mind, an idealistic innocence run amok and that made him into an extremely easy target. The Neverland Ranch which was really a combination amusement park/zoo for kids stricken with cancer and other diseases, can't beat it, I wish I had that on my ledger for when I go to meet my Maker.

My Mom said it best but she usually does and so we'll let her have the last word. She said of people like Michael Jackson they become big and famous but then don't give themselves time to deflate (Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Diddy you listening?).

IMO

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Just a screw or two that needs tightening (Phillips or flathead?)

I liked the original version better, that Republican Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford couldn't take his job anymore and without telling anyone just hit the Appalachian Trail to clear his head for a few days, I mean anyone can relate. Turns out though he was getting his skin flute played by some Latin mama down in Argentina. Some poetic e-mails have surfaced, have to say not bad from a literary angle from the usual junk we've been accustomed to (fingertips, soul connection). Having an affair is kind of the norm these days, that and smoking a doobie in your yoot so if you haven't done either you're some kind of weirdo. As the song says so where do we go from here?

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

A campaign spot by Michael Bloomberg you'll never see

This arrogant man got the law changed in New York City so he could run for a third term as Mayor. Just saw on the news last night there have been 32 deaths here in NYC due to the H1N1 virus or Swine Flu. I'm tired of hearing "underlying causes", maybe liberalism is the underlying cause. Thirty-two deaths, that's unacceptable, we're not living in the age of Typhoid Mary after all. He's been running some ads by a state pro-abortion group touting his work on behalf of women's health. Abortion is never mentioned so you can forgive someone for mistaking it for a breast cancer spot. Bloomberg is one of those hardcore pro-aborts, beyond pro-abortion. He's the type that would do them himself if he could ("give me the f****n forceps!"). He called a reporter who questioned him on changing the term-limits law "a disgrace." He's always been just a touch mental, when he walks around he reminds me of that Yul Brynner robot in Westworld. Just glad I don't live in the City just a surrounding suburb safe from this RINO.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Why people are threatened by miracles (or the bias against miracles)

A miracle strongly implies a God, a God in turn we suspect has a moral code for us to follow, a moral code means we have to make a decision in the end for either Heaven or Hell, damnation or salvation. To someone who ain't livin' right they will go to the ends of the earth to disprove the most obvious miracles, he isn't into them and so to be into them means he would have to turn his life around. The next question becomes maybe miracles are more common than we realize but we'd rather not go there so we downplay them or rationalize them away so we can continue with the life we've been accustomed to. If Science can't explain it then that means we have to throw the porn away or the drugs or not get another abortion sometime down the road or be nice to our neighbor or give up our seat on the bus to some elderly woman with a limp. The atheist can't be bothered with Fatima even though it's the most fascinating subject because the implications are disturbing at least for him.

A pet peeve of mine -- Intelligent Design is NOT, I repeat not Creationism. All it says is there is a Prime Mover behind it all, a Creative Imagination but has nothing to do with the literal seven days of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis. I can only think this is a quite deliberation obfuscation among liberals and it's getting old. I DO believe a sublime force made the cosmos, I don't however believe in talking snakes. Get it right!!

Friday, June 19, 2009

ART


How do you define it? Can it be defined? Should it be funded by the taxpayer? What does Art mean to you? Where do you come down on Dali vs. Picasso? (I'm more of a Dali guy myself) Did you know that van Gogh became addicted to absinthe towards the end of his life? What about that famous painting where the nude woman is having a picnic with two fully clothed gentlemen, what's that all about? How the hell is porn art? How are artistic images used in therapy? What makes The Pieta special in an eidetic sense? Are music videos an art form? (I say they can be) Did you know that the late PBS painting instructor Bob Ross served in Vietnam? & last but not least is Cooking a form of Art? (you betcha!)

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Jimmy Carter still thinks he's president

Worked the late shift last night and got home and turned on the tube before going to bed. The Ch. 11 News told me of an assassination plot against Jimmy Carter in Gaza. "Carter has been in the region meeting with all sides of the conflict" Jim Watkins told me. STILL wants to broker that Mideast peace deal and not be remembered for long gas lines and inflation, some kind of syndrome going on here.

This constant and I mean constant push for gay marriage. Even former Republican Majority Leader of the NY State Senate Joseph Bruno has come out for it so it's really only a matter of Time before gay marriage becomes like abortion, people will be queasy about it but used to it. Come to think of it the Anus ain't causing the abortion problem.

DTV, more channels than ever but I'm still BORED OUT OF MY SKULL!!

Saturday, June 13, 2009

POV's, legitimate & otherwise


If there's one political term that's vastly overused these days it's "extremism" and we may as well thrown in its cousin "legitimate viewpoints." I believe the indiscriminate use of these terms amounts to a kind of thought control that leads to a restriction of free speech and in this case the free in question can be self-regulated since the person doesn't want to offend, has to check first with the majority before forming his own opinion. The question arises is an alternative viewpoint necessarily not a legitimate one? Many times they are treated as the same thing but the problem I have with legitimate viewpoints is how do you define it and more importantly WHO gets to define it? Just because a consensus deems a certain viewpoint out of bounds doesn't make it so. I would go further and say you have to prove somehow with a mass of the evidence that the view under discussion is somehow illegitimate so here's how I break it down. Holocaust denial is not a legitimate view BUT some of the various JFK assassination conspiracy theories are. In the Holocaust there is simply too much evidence that this existentially tragic event in human history happened, in JFK you can't really prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the different scenarios are wrong although you may strenuously disagree with them. Killing abortion doctors is not a legitimate viewpoint, it's self-evidently immoral. Of course whether or not something is legitimate or not is often relative, in Communist regimes belief in God is not a valid option. Who knows? someday pro-life thought may be out of bounds and I think the foundation for that is already being laid. The next question, should viewpoints that are not legitimate or deemed so be censored and suppressed? I would say in large part no.

A word about Michael Savage and Michael Moore since their names most often come up in any discussion of extremism. Now Savage is a very interesting case as he says many conservative things on the radio and yet is shunned by the mainstream conservative movement as a whole (or so it appears as it hasn't yet seemed to affect his loyal following of millions of listeners). Now I am making an educated guess here that his views are out of bounds because he sees some type of overarching fascist conspiracy in our U.S. government so is he being illegitimate? After much thought I'd have to go with a no even though I may passionately disagree with him here and on so many other issues. Again it goes beyond sheer numbers for me and proof that he is wrong is what's necessary, nay required before you can judge his viewpoints not legitimate or to put it another way someone's opinion can be wrong but is not necessarily illegitimate. Now Michael Moore, favorite whipping-dog of the Right. For him and I'm summarizing here is his overriding conviction that Bush is evil so is this an illegitimate viewpoint? I'm going to put a very light checkmark in pencil here in the NO box. I disagree with him 120% re Bush but somehow I don't think his view is out of bounds just as I don't think Hannity calling Obama a Marxist is out of bounds. It's not on a par with Holocaust denial or killing an abortion doctor, social ostracism is not called for if that's your thing.

Are the various 9/11 conspiracy theories legitimate or not? In my book not legitimate although there are gradations here, Charlie Sheen and Rosie O'Donnell are not as evil as Holocaust deniers. As a conservative I am somewhat atypical since I am open to at least considering so many different conspiracy theories but at the same time the vast majority of them fall far short and remain unproven which is the real problem with most conspiracy theorists.

Extremism and legitimate viewpoints, it's not that they don't exist but the terms, the labels need to be discussed first, examined and defined to come up with something that's workable and as it stands now I just see their use as polemical weapons. Perhaps it bothers me because I go out of my way to NOT be a moderate. The topic is shaky at best though we often act like if enough people say so-and-so is an extremist with invalid positions it makes it so. With Savage or Moore or anybody else for that matter I want chapter-and-verse and so whoever wants to begin, BB or soapie or some poster protected by the shield of Anonymity take it away.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Some late-night thoughts

The principles that animate me, well I just blogged about one, justice. The other biggie is free speech of course but if you're a true conservative aren't there certain principles out there that animate YOU? As an autobiographical note there are certain actions I took in life that I would say were truly inspired by deeply conservative principles. Many many years ago I persevered and got a pro-life film into the Westchester Library System but I did have a critic or two and it wasn't always from the liberal side. You put this together and that together and this is gonna sound rather prideful but I would say I'm not average, I've done things that I wouldn't consider average and yet I'm rather proud of that fact. I can more than live with it, it's not cause for regret, I'm passionate by nature and so moderation doesn't appeal to me in the least to be perfectly candid here and it got me in trouble at Hannityland once or twice. Another way of putting it is what principles animate the moderate? the average among us? where's the fire in their belly? Elie Wiesel is not average in my book, neither is John Walsh imo. George H.W. Bush was average, so was Gerald Ford. Think about it some more and you'll see what I mean. I also intend on not being average for the foreseeable future.

A thought out of nowhere but something I read once. Pick your average vicious criminal or psycho perp and you'll see what I mean. I don't know how else to put this so chalk it up to a poorly constructed thought but there are people out there who should commit suicide but who don't. One never reads about Charlie Manson offing himself for instance or bin Laden and studies show that those in prison or the criminal type in general have an excess of self-esteem, too much of it if that's possible, an overabundance of the good stuff and so maybe this is a fruit of the whole self-esteem movement, the bleeding-heart crowd, dunno. You keep asking yourself when is the guilt gonna kick in and be too much for these guys - "OMG, WTF did I do?!?". We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging brought to you by the Christian Brothers, VSOP.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Justice as a value

Elie Wiesel, after his visit with Obama to the Buchenwald concentration camp, had this to say: "I think he (Obama) has a sense of humor but I'm not so sure he has a sense of justice yet." Early concepts of justice could be understood to be inside or outside the bounds of the law. Hamlet is rife with the most primitive and elemental concepts of justice and only in later years could you say that in Western civilization to find justice solely within the law is the only way to go, that vigilante justice is immoral. This blog takes that position as it is Mr. Wiesel's position but his comment is very very interesting, somewhat enigmatic regarding President Obama. What does he mean? what was he trying to say? it's pregnant with Meaning.

How many times are we counseled to just look the other way re various injustices, to let it go, is it really worth pursuing? and such, to be careful etc. Stephen Pagones pursuing a civil case against the Rev. Al Sharpton over the Tawany Brawley hoax apparently destroyed his marriage. He was the Assistant in the District Attorney's office up there in Dutchess County NY who was falsely accused with others of raping the young black girl Tawana Brawley in Wappingers Falls and Sharpton, the lawyers Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason led the charge. Some would say why did he pursue it so many years after the fact? everyone knows it was a big-time hoax, it embarrassed Cosby and the case is so old, so yesterday but I agree with him. In many cases to not pursue Justice, to listen to the pragmatic counselers of indifference, well it might be unfair to call it a kind of liberalism but it ain't conservative. Justice is right up there with freedom and personal responsibility and lower taxes and smaller government in the conservative View of the Universe. Even on a much smaller scale justice is important. As I blogged the other day about the misfortune that my cat met last Sunday morning, basically her skull was crushed in and she was left in a puddle of her own blood on the side of the road, that is also an issue of justice on a personal scale and I'm sure there are legions who would disagree. Inside the parameters of the law yes, of course but when you're a true conservative whether the issue is big or small you don't question for a moment the value of justice, any other way tends towards liberalism.

There is also the civil and criminal case against a group of Yonkers firefighters coming up. Basically it is alleged that a few of them would dose some of their fellow firefighters with acid or LSD and in one particularly vicious case while their victim began to hallucinate they screamed obscenities at the top of their lungs in his ears. It is also charged that they have harassed some of their victims for having decided to pursue the case against them. There is also the alleged coverup of the bloodwork by the City. These incidents all go back ten years at least but there has been a culture of corruption in City government for quite some time or so it's been said. Now again I'm sure there are many many people who would say why pursue such a case? it happened so long ago, the chemicals have long since passed everyone's brains and it's so dangerous to go up against a group of alleged psychos, don't you watch the movies? Ah yes but this is NOT the conservative position, not the true one anyway, and to not pursue justice in certain cases sets a very bad precedent indeed, it's defining deviancy down to quote the famous phrase from the late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Justice is also cathartic, it serves a basic emotional human need for closure. Justice is so many things to so many people but I am bothered about Elie Wiesel's observation, have we lost a sense of justice in our culture? That liberals seem overly concerned with the rights of criminals and these days terrorists, there's more than a grain of truth to that. Their concerns are not unimportant but I too get the sense that Obama would rather just talk it out with the bad guys rather than do the right thing. To be taken to task by a noted Nobel Peace Prize winner however politely worded, that's a hell of alot of blogworthy material right there!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Adam Lambert & Clay Aiken

USUALLY and I'm just sayin' when someone disses the other like Clay did recently and the other responded in kind it really means they have a secret crush on each other. Sounds like they like each other, do I see a teabag in their future?

David Carradine - Even if I were bored out of my skull which is most Sunday nights I wouldn't auto-erotically-asphyxiate myself. I'd sooner read the tube of Crest or bang the crumbs out of the toaster. BB take it away.

Any subjects not covered so far? I can't think of any.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Getting bogged down by false issues

In Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn NY there's a Holocaust Memorial honoring ALL the victims of the Hitler regime. New York City owns it and it's located at Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard so that's your summary. Assemblyman Dov Hikind has a problem though, well read on from Hikind: Jews Only - Holocaust-memorial flap by Edmund DeMarche and Leonard Greene in the June 8th issue of the New York Post:

"Hikind said even though 5 million people from other groups - including gays, the disabled and Jehovah's Witnesses - were killed along with 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust, the memorial in Sheepshead Bay should be for Jews only.

'To include these other groups diminishes their memory,' said Hikind...These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust,' Hikind said following a press conference at the memorial. 'It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims'...

...'There's no doubt that most of the atrocities at the Holocaust were done upon Jewish people,' said Council Speaker Christine Quinn. 'But it goes against history and their memory to not commemorate all groups that were persecuted by the Nazis'...

...'The Holocaust memorial means you memorialize anyone who died in the Holocaust,' said Theresa Scavo, president of Community Board 15, who lobbied for the additional recognition. 'It doesn't matter what color or sexual orientation you were.' "


File this one under the need to have a problem. Even if we magically got rid of all our problems, issues and controversies tomorrow people would still make up more. So we have 5 million non-Jewish victims vs. 6 million Jewish victims, those are shattering numbers either way. The news will never be at a loss, there will always be news even if we have to make it up.

Saturday, June 06, 2009

The vast right-wing corporate media conspiracy (or VRWCMC)

Watched Bill Moyer's Journal last night which sometimes I do on slow Friday evenings. I'm not out clubbing which shows my age but anyway if you can paint with a broad brush here IMO most of his guests tend to be liberal although they don't seem to like that word so let's go with not conservative. Many of them tend to be anti-military for lack of a better word with the occasional poet thrown in for a little culture action. E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post recently wrote a column which ties into the theme here and that is that Newt and Rush and Sean control the mainstream media, they give Bob Schieffer his talking points! Let them spell it out for you 'cause most of us are too dense and have suffered under the delusion all these years that the msm has a very pronounced liberal bias. The media, the corporate media as they call it actually tilts heavily to the Right......excuse me for a minute I'm laughing so hard my ribs hurt, I think I'm gonna die......Last I heard this argument it was Eric Alterman making it and he even wrote a book about it and so......oh God it hurts!! Now the names of Moyers' guests always elude me by next morning, I disagree with much of what they have to say but they are so damn interesting and speak well. They are so convinced of their parallel universe, of their own alternate reality To Explain Things that you can't hate them, you want to believe these folks they're so sincere but my computations come in differently than theirs. To hear Dionne and Moyers (or the guests who speak for him) tell it Obama's a moderate not living up to the conservative caricature of him, that frustrating bastardo! Hey guys it's early yet, that remains to be seen. You feel more than a little weird and confused after watching his show like how could you be so stupid all these years and not see The Bigger Picture?? come out of your brain fog dude and smell the fresh air and let Rush go hibernate in his cave. Newt and Sean and Rush, 'tis a right wing media machine all along, who knew?

Friday, June 05, 2009

The world's most controversial issue

Frankly I'm more than a little tired of this whole Israeli/Palestinian issue. It consumes so much time, energy and attention of each succeeding administration. Since I was a kid I didn't even follow politics but I knew the names -- Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, Camp David. Give the Palestinians a homeland, their own state and be done with it. Maybe Obama should speak more to the point and say the issue doesn't concern us anymore, we're done, we're moving on -- Darfur, Tibet, Haiti. Wasn't Bibi PM once before? How is this possible? It'd be like Bill Clinton becoming president again. The Middle East, the Never-Ending Story.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

The roots of violence

Here's what it is in a nutshell, moral relativism and it even applies to the man who shot abortionist George Tiller to death. As I said at Kris's Elephant blog when you condone the killing of even late-term unborn babies you set up yet another exception to Thou Shalt Not Kill and then someone might decide the next exception is YOU, it's moral relativism turned on itself. Man as a rational creature (don't laugh) cannot choose evil for evil's sake, it has to be rationalized first as a good and in the case of violence the person doing the violence feels he is enforcing a moral code. Enforcement of a moral code is at the roots of modern-day violence and the person doing the killing feels the moral code being enforced is about absolute Right and Wrong. When Boston lawyer Tom Capano killed his lover Anne Marie Fahey who wanted to break it off with him he killed her and is now awaiting the death sentence (see the bestseller And Never Let Her Go by Ann Rule). Here's how he can more than live with himself and bide his time in prison, he believes in his heart of hearts she deserved her fate, by spurning him she was violating some type of moral code, a kind of absolute and universal code of we should be together forever and in the case of true sociopaths like Capano and O.J. Simpson it's not enough to believe in this moral code which many of us may believe in too but here's the difference. Most of us might accept the moral code of don't break my heart or it's wrong to kill unborn babies but in the mind of the socio this moral code needs to be enforced, it's a kind of karmic necessity, a cosmic balancing of the Scales of Justice so no matter that Tiller's killer believed in the absolute moral code of it's wrong to take the life of the unborn, he acted like a relativist for acting this out. You can't go there, it is what it is and only God can judge Tiller. For me anyway this is not debateable and one of my cardinal rules is once you throw up something for debate over time it will become morally defensible, we don't debate the pros and cons of rape for instance. Kind of a disturbing beginning of the week all around.

HELL


Subject's come up recently. Worked with a bakery manager once and she said everyone goes to Heaven and I said even Hitler? and she said YUP. Origen, an early Doctor of the Church taught that everyone goes in the end even the Devil but lately my pastor has been pressing the issue almost raising to the level of dogma that not everyone resides in Paradise, careful there skipper! On the other hand many modern churches now act like it doesn't matter what you do in Life we're all gonna end up in the same place anyway (and where might that be?). God as Cosmic Avenger or Cosmic Santa Claus, take your pick. Pondering these lines from the First Secret of Fatima for all you Fatima aficionados out there: BVM: "You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. In order to save them God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart." But who might "them" be? Is this reference to poor sinners in general or specifically to those who now reside in the nether regions? Ah sweet nuance! sometimes it takes an eternity to see the error of our ways. Gotta watch out for all those non-Sola Scriptura texts out there, God knows it got Mel Gibson in trouble but The Mystical City of God by the Ven. Mary of Agreda would have it that God's Mercy even extends to the souls in Hell, even the devils have certain limitations placed on them as to what they can do. The great conclusion to the mystical poem Manhunt in the Desert has God declaring "I lead you to my Justice in order to lead you to my Mercy" and "My Judgement is my Mercy." The 18th century Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg wrote that those in Hell want to be there, they love its darkness and would find Heaven an intolerable burden. Saw a bumper sticker recently "if you live your life as if there is no God you'd better be right." Everyone has an opinion. BB who once confessed to having the spirituality of a codfish, throw your quarter into the fountain buddy.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Teddy and the Ruff Ryders

It crops up every now and then, this anti-blogging bias and when it comes to newspaper columnists and talking heads in general it seems to cut across party lines. It's kind of undefined but there's a real animus out there towards YOU the blogger, George Will resented YOU being chosen as its Person of the Year a few years back and most recently New York Post commentator Kyle Smith sees blogs as being so much vapor. Here's the way I see it, the average person can now voice opinions on a worldwide stage and I think that's wonderful, what's wrong with it? and to the trained opinion professionals like Will and Smith what makes you think we never get tired of reading you? yeah, I can't get enough of you talking heads. So gone are the days we only got to read newspaper columnists and whatever guests Tim Russert had on Meet the Press but WHY does it bother you guys so much?

Send complaints to...

OK so Beth has weighed in on the murder of abortionist George Tiller and yes technically she is correct but I also agree with Daniel who posted there he thought Tiller was an evil man. The real issue is this: not the rare act of violence by an anti-abortionist but why are the late-term abortions that Tiller specialized in even legally allowed in this country? Killing Tiller, besides being wrong also has the consequence of making somebody into a martyr who doesn't deserve to be. You had to be a psycho to do the work he did for thirty long years which also begs the question of what kind of late-term patients these women were who sought his services in earnest. That the man apparently was a regular churchgoer boggles the mind and it's one reason I'm not overly keen on eulogies, many times they don't do justice to the character of a man. That the mainstream pro-choice movement never saw the necessity of ostracizing him at the least speaks volumes of THEM and that includes Obama's new Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and so that's that.