The Politics of Dad

Over my Dad's the other day and he's watching the news and His Eminence New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan was giving his first Mass at St. Pat's after being elevated to cardinal by Pope Benedict and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was sitting in the front row of course with NY Senator Charles Schumer and the Governor of the State of New York Andrew Cuomo and the old man goes "all those politicians sitting in the front row what a bunch of jerks!" That about sums it up:)

That old hobgoblin of Religion

I've encountered people in my own life and in the blogosphere of course especially lately who whenever you however remotely mention the whole subject of religion or faith have an overwhelmingly negative view of religion as a whole, the institutions of course and many individual adherents. They never see its positive side in that it inspires people, often helps them through individual and group crises and then there's the massive charitable works people of faith engage in. Now the usual suspects are gonna chime in and the underlying theme is always or seems to be religion poses some kind of ever-present and existential threat to Politics. Sometimes it can but I think the case is often overstated. I've always felt religion and religious people just like anything else should not be immune to criticism of any sort but to flip the same coin politics often poses a threat to religion as we've been discussing. Instead of dwelling on the negative though I prefer to see the wonderful religious infrastructure in this country everything from religious hospitals and universities, orphanages and social-service organizations to the of course stellar Catholic educational system in this country and for you snide ones out there at least put it up against the flagging public schools. So why this reflexive reaction against religion? it's like the most negative subject out there for some folks:)

Why the social issues ARE important

I'm getting the distinct impression from recent comments from BB, Dave Miller and Shaw that President Obama should not be judged on the poor state of the economy. That's just my take but if we are not to judge a president on the economy because there are certain economic forces beyond the control of his Administration, a kind of theory of economic fatalism if you will then by this standard Jimmy Carter was a great president. BTW I think Saty and Shaw keep coming back here because they like the challenge and even when Saty was recently seriously ill and had to rest in the living room before making her way to the kitchen feebly clutching the drawer and knocking all the silverware over while sucking on a bag of ice chips she still found the time to visit the site. OK so all we hear about these days, the new conventional political wisdom even among many conservatives is take the social issues totally off the table so as to better focus on the economic theme which seems to be the only thing of interest to them. This is certainly BB, Dave Miller's and soapie's position but can anyone tell why this analysis is so dead wrong exactly, way off the mark? Think for a minute, no you still don't get it?...well it's because everyone's narrowly defining the social issues as being only about abortion and gay marriage but oh there's so much more, a real treasure trove of social concerns out there. The very phrase "social issues" has the word social in it, we're a Society right? Drug abuse is a social issue, an important one so is broken homes and families, divorce. Gang violence while largely a law-enforcement issue is also a social issue as is crime in general as read about any 82-year old grandmother killed by a stray bullet in the Bronx. Say a porn store wants to open up shop next to a church and a school well there's your social issue right there and it ain't even related to abortion or gay marriage and if you're a local politician you'll be forced to take a stand no matter how much you may want to talk about the economy and chances are very good you'll come out against the porn shop. How can you NOT discuss the social issues? Obama despite running as a uniter has divided the country more than ever and well maybe because some folks believe the economy is beyond his control anyway he can afford to lay back and throw another log into the fire of the culture wars on things like birth control (been there discussed that). As for soapie's legendary consistency, apparently a part of his sexual charisma for Shaw and Saty that oozes out of his every pore I say you have the right to be inconsistent. As I see it there's a certain stridency to his philosophy which may be off-putting to many readers, it's one worldview his and Ron Paul's and if you don't agree apparently you're part of the same Cosmic Problem the growth of Leviathan and the loss of Liberty. Oh yeah smoking is a social issue too, a biggie. In fact if I listed all the social issues of relevance today it'd take up the whole page and maybe the better part of Page 2 so just wondering why liberals see everything through the prism of abortion and gay marriage. It ain't an evangelical thing you know:)

Look Death happens

For the best perspective yet on the tragic demise of Whitney Houston it's our man Bill O'Reilly:

http://www.billoreilly.com/column;jsessionid=E5791B76D2239868188A0BD5266670?pid=35777

Obama - more concerned about birth control than rising gas prices

It'd be like if JFK were more worried about fat kids during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Obama's Political Understanding of Sex: Get Involved. Do you really want government in the bedroom though telling insurance companies they have to pay for contraceptives for women? Now to me Sex is a private affair and I wouldn't think of walking around White Plains all day begging for a handout to pay for some rubbers and a tube of Astroglide but they're saying now gas is gonna hit some kind of record this summer, might reach $5/gallon and this of course has to do with Iran (many say oil speculators - http://weblogs.wpix.com/news/larrymendte/2011/05/wall_street_does_it_again.html). Now you'll notice once Khadafy bit the dust the price of regular began to dip ever so slightly but Jim Cramer of Mad Money said this morning on the Today Show that as long as Iran has its nuclear program gas will be a problem, oh God you mean 'til the End Times!?! True Iran only exports about 2.5% of its oil to the US but the bulk of it goes to Europe and then there's the critical Strait of Hormuz to consider which Iran has threatened to cut off. So what does Obama do? he grabs the horns of the Catholic Church over an issue formerly understood and settled, Don't Go There. Pick a fight with the RC Church in an election year with gas set to hit $5/gal - WTG!!! your political advisers must hate you. BTW congrats to His Eminence from NY Cardinal Dolan. I was reading in the paper the other day that David Brock of Media Matters is literally spending millions of dollars to get more favorable media coverage of Obama (HUH?). They'll be more than happy to do it for free David with Brian Williams sucking on his left nut and Rachel Maddow directing the jizm onto a poster of Rick Santorum. Just read on Drudge the European Union has just approved a whopping $172B bailout for Greece. Of course there has to be some deep cuts and oversight......hey Obama are you following any of this? Now I realize many of the Kool-Aid drinkers out there still see Obama as some kind of Savior but even as Messiahs go he's pretty weak. I think Dolan sucked all his charisma out of him and I just know he has a big old cold one on tap if Obama goes down to defeat.

Honesty (not so much)

I'm gonna have to take my car in for an oil change perhaps next week. Now every mechanic you ask will tell you have your oil changed every 3,000 miles (don't believe me go do a survey) but when I was reading my Honda Civic manual a few weeks ago it said every 5,000 miles. Hmmmmmm. Your doctor tells you to drop the weight and we'll take you off the blood-pressure meds, it was ALOT of hard work with constantly reinforced social pressure at places like work to not lose that much weight and not only that but you shed 5-10 bonus pounds just for good measure and your doctor still keeps you on the pills and you politely remind him of this. Does he have stock in the pharmaceutical industry? perhaps the Vytorin tissue box in the waiting room is an indication. Older married woman at work with an autistic son, kinda uses her personal situation for leverage to get the hours she wants and to get out of jury duty. It's not like she's a single mom and he's at home alone and can hurt himself and autism is the thing these days anyway, they get by. Look I have a couple of autistic cats. Those high school girls in upstate NY you may have heard in a town you probably never heard of by the name of Le Roy, they mysteriously came down with Tourette's-like symptoms but the authorities and experts and resident psychologists are chalking it up to, you guessed it Anxiety. Look there's alot of free-floating anxiety in the air these days, God knows I've been dealing with it my whole life but I never twitched or cursed somebody out because of it. What a bunch of bullshit and I don't think even the paid shrinks believe one word of it. Turns out that according to one local newscast here there was once some sort of toxic train wreck once in Le Roy's history and Erin Brockovich has gotten involved not that anybody's not telling the Truth here. It's like at work with the weird psychedelics in the water, well if you're not feeling well one day they'll always chalk it up to you're known to partake of the adult beverages on a fairly regular basis, you may have made the mistake of letting this slip in loose conversation perhaps in a humorous vein and he has been dieting recently (read: starving himself). You see Truth these days is like the Constitution, it's elastic. It's not outright dishonesty or lying, it's a shading, a stretching, selecting the best elements of truth out there that most strike your fancy like those Le Roy girls probably do have some anxiety (who doesn't?) hence ~~~ or since most new cars do require a more frequent oil change well a car's a car or yeah you lost over 60 lbs. and we did say weight is a major factor but your blood pressure's still too close to 140 (actually maybe it was 132 over 84 that day and that was right after work) and well you can never be too careful (read: lawsuits), it's your health after all. Honesty, now don't be a glutton now:)

Would libertarians have gone to war against Hitler?

I was pondering this thought today and I think not. The fact that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust would have been deemed an internal affair by the libertarian/isolationist mind and in this thought experiment I have to kind of leave out Japan and Pearl Harbor since even Ron Paul I believe would go to war if our country were directly attacked. What's up with China and Russia these days, are they some sort of evil Axis or something? Maybe there's some truth to the various evangelical/ultra-traditional Catholic apocalyptic scenarios that they're gonna be two very heavy players in the End Times and not in a good way. Syria's Bashar al-Assad continues to kill innocent Syrian anti-government protesters practically on a daily basis now, the UN finally gets some gumption to at least condemn his tyranny and to call for regime change but China and Russia shoot it down by exercising their vetoes. In fact some Russian minister explained the decision by saying the proposed UN resolution amounts to a call for regime change, well DUH!!! The guy's a despot and mass murderer in the best mold and then President Obama who has finally gotten somewhat heated over the situation says a military option is off the table. That would be grudgingly respectable had he not gone after Col. Moammar Khadafy but consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds as they say. I do agree with Ron Paul on a number of things, turns out the Bunny Ranch in Nevada is enthusiastically supporting his candidacy because he's for states' rights and has said you can't legislate virtue. I'm not so sure if I'd want the 'hos and potheads behind me though but he's ultimately unelectable imo and I believe that is due to his extreme isolationism and the Hitler question proposed at the top there would be an excellent excellent question to pose to him in debate again leaving out the whole Hirohito angle and truthfully I don't think the Jewish issue was why we went to war in the first place. Hitler did in fact pose a grave threat to the entire world if you understand your History but the salient point here is even if a libertarian were to say it was right to go to war against Germany the Jews would not enter into the equation and that's what I'm getting at which brings up the whole other issue of anti-Semitism. Apartheid in South Africa and the government killing of anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, was that our concern too? Rwanda? Yes for me at least but a libertarian is apt to say no so that brings up that whole other can of worms regarding Race. I'll let soapie sort out the fine print, I'm only posing the Questions.