stress @ work

It's one of those hypocritical issues stress at work because while practically everybody says it's bad for you, studies show it's a killer when push comes to shove nobody really cares about it or does anything about it. Boss (holding general meeting of staff at 9AM): "I realize workplace stress is an important issue to address so if there's anything I can do to make your day go better please let me know." Well no, certain work has to be done and done in a timely fashion, other work has to be completed not tomorrow but today. The honchos are coming in later, the suits are gonna go over everything with a fine toothcomb and this is your typical average American workday. When stress is addressed again we realize it's A Bad Thing but the problem is most likely YOU, don't let it get to you and btw you don't have to come in at 6:30AM anymore because we realize you also require so many hours of sleep again for reasons of health. The modern paradox, we all realize one's health is extremely important but it's the nature of the business world that nothing can really be done about it and if it leads to an early grave you can always be replaced. The wake information will be posted of course but the show must go on. When was the last time the issue was addressed at your place? No, put your political gavel down for a minute and think about it, Herman Cain and Ron Paul and Mitt Romney can wait. It's not so much my stress at work but I feel as if through osmosis the stress of others, that tense vibe going through the place and I'm thinking it doesn't have to be that way but it is. Health and Work, two worlds apart:)

Not voting as an act of conscience

NONE OF THE ABOVE is a valid option. Besides Jack Kemp is dead.

What is the purpose of the IQ test?

seriously

The GOP Establishment wooing of Chris Christie, why they're always out of touch

You'd think he's the best the GOP can throw up against Obama next year, NJ Governor Chris Christie. Brash, plain-spoken, fiscally restrained or just a dickhead. I ain't voting for the guy and here's the reason. In one of my threads about the red-light traffic cams in the city of Yonkers a commenter posted a link about Gov. Christie wanting to double the number of towns in New Jersey that use red-light cams (http://njtoday.net/2011/04/14/scutari-criticizes-christie-administration-push-to-double-number-of-towns-using-red-light-cameras/). That ain't limited government, that's Big Brotherism, Basic Thuganomics 101. So that's it, that's my reason and that's the sheer beauty of our voting process. I can go into that booth, oh I forgot it's not a booth anymore. I can stand at that there table and fill those little oval circles on that scansheet and pull the lever, I mean hand it in, bascially vote for or against someone for whatever reason that tingles my ball that day. I care not one whit whether others think my reasons stupid, that's between Me, Myself and I. Maybe I don't like it that I think he's had too many Krispy Kremes and is therefore a poor role model for our youth. So the Supreme Court in New Jersey said he has to spend millions and millions of dollars on the poor school districts in that state, he criticized the court for telling him how to spend the state's money but will comply anyway. Well whoop-dee-doo!!! he's still for those red-light cams and I've gotten four of those in Yonkers to date. Didn't get anymore for a few weeks now since I now totally avoid the area where I got 'em, I treat it as practically a nuke zone but at the time I couldn't write out a check to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York for their annual fundraising appeal. I usually give a hundred, built up my checking account again and sent my check in the mail just this morning so charity has to wait at times so as cash-strapped cities, towns and municipalities who don't know how to handle money in the first place can rape the American taxpayer. The GOP wooing of Chris Christie, God help us!!! Obama will go into the next election with he killed something that may have been bin Laden, had the body chucked into the ocean after several hours so we'll never know for sure but the public has seemed to accept it as they always do and it is now a part of our collective socio-politico mythology (who can forget that iconic picture in the Situation Room?) and they've already moved on to Sex and Eschatology and all we get is the Republican establishment wooing faux libertarians/tea partiers. Michelle Bachmann who voted to extend certain provisions of the Patriot Act, same deal honey. Don't tell me what conservatism is. I know it in my gut and these folks ain't conservative:)

Fresh from the bin Laden kill Bam thinks he can solve the Mideast Crisis

Every president has to give it a shot, it's the irresistible political version of Rubik's Cube. President Obama has told Bibi to go back to Israel's pre-1967 borders before the Six-Day War. This apparently didn't go over too well, guess Obama has more important votes to get than the Jewish bloc. WHY do we have to spend so much time on this subject? Don't other parts of the world merit attention? I mean yeah they get covered like the Ivory Coast but they don't turn into foreign policy obsessions. Immigration reform and the Mideast, Obama put alot on his plate just now. Why not wait 'til a second term unless, unless...you don't think the World is ending soon do you?

The world will end not with a bang but a whimper

I hardly noticed, I mean the seamless transition was so smooth. The phrase comes from poet T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" and I'm gonna make a bold prediction here. The world will end when the Sun runs out of fuel. I haven't worked on the calculations yet but it involves literally millions of years. According to 89-year old preacher Harold Camping the World As We Know It was supposed to end this past Saturday at 6PM. Went to work the next day and the place was unusually slow for a Sunday afternoon in a food place so I says to a co-worker you know why it's slow right? All the good folk have been Raptured up and you're always going to Giggles (you have to be around these parts to get the joke). He said to me "you have five months." Yeah go through your hardcore I said and start throwing the shit out, softcore too buddy before the angels with the flaming swords start knocking on people's doors. I'm not against the world ending, it should but you have to be a fool to predict when. One of the readings this past Sunday had to do with only the Father knows when the world is going to end, apparently He didn't share this info with the Son. That's interesting and one of the curiouser passages from Scripture along with those unforgiveable sins against the Holy Spirit. Of course the world doesn't have to end per se, more likely humanity might just kill itself off by then. Think Charlton Heston in front of the Statue of Liberty (fave line from that movie: "you damn dirty ape!"). Our Lady of La Salette said "in the Last Days Rome itself will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist" and then the Three Days of Darkness and the earth will renew itself and mankind will start over basically with the unrepentant in "the everlasting chasms of Hell." I think the Protestants especially the evangelical crowd take the End Times more seriously than the Catholics, Catholics only care if they can get a last game of Bingo in. As I said everything after bin Laden is anti-climax, we have to have something to fill the weekly newscycle. Religion and Sex lately:)

The Sperminator

Already I'm hearing the cluck-clucking of the tongues but c'mon, we love the story! ADMIT IT. I always look at these stories first and foremost as is it interesting to read? You're darn tootin'! Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger are filing for divorce because he had a love child with the hired help, compared to what Strauss-Kahn is alleged to have done it's a generic scandal, no more no less. What's not to enjoy? So what is this moral clacking? after bin Laden everything else is anti-climax anyway.

I'm really not getting anything out of all this bin Laden coverage

Everyday it's something new. A diary, bin Laden porn and you don't even know if it's all true or not. Long Island Congressman Peter King has said he saw those pictures. Apparently there's some small cell of a room select Senators and Congresspeople go into and it's like the Third Secret of Fatima. You have to leave your cell phone outside so you can't send an image to the outside world. Mr. King said part of bin Laden's forehead was blown off which begs the question how can we positively identify him now? not that anybody's tallying all the contradictions. Then there's all the versions of the Story. Please can we settle on one positive official White House version of the Events for all posterity even if it is wrong? Let's say he was reaching for a strap-on harness and they thought it was an AK-47 ya know?

Will the bin Laden execution anger Obama's base?

Yes and No. Actually there are two left-wing bases we're talking about here, there's the base and then there's the base-base. The first base, maybe the majority are what I call the liberal pragmatists despite their various moral intonations from time to time and I include several prominent bloggers here. So long as Obama supports gay marriage or rights, health care reform, economic and social justice, whatever their issues are then the dubious and murky events in that compound in Abbottabad don't bother them in the least. In fact they're happy about it, will use it to their advantage and will quite joyfully point out that it was their man Obama and not the hated Bush who finally got the bastard and meted out justice. I used to think most liberals were alike but many of them will show the same bloodthirstiness they often bemoan conservatives as having. Conservatives may be pro-war but the more traditional ones from the Old School anyway are also pro-the laws of war meaning you don't kill an unarmed man no matter how bad. It's just the way it is as my Dad who served in the Navy during WW2 and who is as far from a liberal as you can get explained to me. Now the base-base, I think they're smaller than the pragmatists but they do take their principles very seriously and while they are all for the gay marriage, health care reform, economic and social justice and all the rest of the first group with which you can agree or disagree to your heart's content but they also have a certain moral compass that doesn't waver, one that eschews violence whenever possible and may even tend strongly towards pacifism re war and foreign policy in general. I know how we all feel about Michael Moore but he's mad about what Obama did. Say what you will he's consistent. Finally about the Event itself I've come to this conclusion: the government is probably telling the truth that bin Laden was killed, is dead. I choose to believe it and yet I can't fault those who don't or who at least question it and here's why. They got rid of the body so damn quickly, put it on the USS Carl Vinson, said something in Arabic we're told after wrapping him in a white sheet and then dumping him overboard. Basically what we have here is the government or those acting on the government's behalf telling us that bin Laden was shot to death but the evidence, namely the cadaver is gone so that no independent entity or more objective group of observers can verify that this is indeed what happened. You can make fun all you want, knock yourself out with your pejorative of choice and be clever but in the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of truth this is no small problem. Surprised nobody foresaw this. So who's on first?:)

Why Bush didn't go to Ground Zero

He knows something ain't right. Bill Clinton another one, scheduling conflict. Chatter at work and wherever I go, something weird went down. There's a surreal vibe in the air, visions of Eric Holder under oath, a Congressional investigation? IMO President Obama authorized this kill mission to boost his poll numbers and to seal his reelection, to give his presidency a certain historical gravitas that has been sorely lacking until now. Spokesman Jay Carney who is a joke at this point called it a "legal kill." What are we on safari here hunting lions on the Serengeti? Speaks volumes but listening to Rush Limbaugh's childish commentary yesterday afternoon reminded me of why I don't listen to the man anymore. His take: liberals (his fave word) saw him as a kind of faculty lounge wuss and the Osama kill made a man out of him. Whatever, a more incisive commentary would have been government is corrupt and Obama who campaigned as a fresh moral voice in Washington has lost his innocence as they all do. Osama's death, like curing cancer sure it helps humanity but it also helps you and many times we make moral decisions out of supposedly altruistic reasons but the hidden moral calculus is how it really benefits us. I Killed Osama will be a kind of unspoken campaign slogan next year, may as well say that in response to each question in the presidential debates but folks are starting to ask questions and word on the street is he won't win reelection ("I don't think he's gonna make it" one woman said to me). This is not a transparent government, which government is? Final Word: Bush would have done it differently:)

The reluctant conspiracy theorist (an abridged reader)

Although to be sure there are inconsistencies. Now unless the unarmed Osama at 6'6" was a mystical Bruce Lee figure who could pull off some fancy Matrix moves there's nothing those Navy SEAL hunks in that room couldn't have handled with a little Krav Maga action? Did one of the SEALS lose his cool the way Magnum P.I. once shot that Nazi at the end of that classic episode? Worked a little late last night and on the drive home tuned into Mark Levin, wasn't gonna listen but it turned out to be a fascinating discussion. A former Navy SEAL called in and said are we to believe that AG Eric Holder would let them just walk in and kill a man in front of his whole family? The burial-at-sea, as one commentator wrote this was a mistake and gave the impression that Osama was a good and practicing Muslim being buried according to Muslim law and we might add why so quick to make him shark bait? Obama has told Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes" that they've made the official decision to not release any of the Osama death photos (ahem), cadaver images even though CIA head Leon Panetta said just the other day he wouldn't be surprised if a photo emerges. They're afraid of inflaming the Muslim world but here's the thing. Obama is exhibiting a pronounced anti-Muslim bias here, most are bad and can't handle the pics goes the thinking but somehow they can stream live videos of actual beheadings and we get those put on on right-wing websites like Savage. The Administration now has an image problem which begs the question HOW do you exactly fuck up a good thing?