thoughts on mortality

I didn't want to start a label called "death" because that'd be creepy but at 48, just had a b'day a couple weeks ago you begin feeling that tug from the other end. I remember in that movie Uncle Buck or something John Candy is in bed and the kid he's in charge of starts talking about The Topic and he goes just think every single second of your life right now, every moment, it's one less second or minute you have left yada yada so the kid finally falls asleep and John Candy is laying awake in bed all night just staring at the ceiling. HELL -- I've gone both ways on this and for most of my adult life didn't really believe in it but lately you can't say everybody makes it and that's the thing. Everybody dies and they're strumming banjoes in Heaven looking down on us and smiling? Whitney Houston dies in a bathtub with coke and other drugs in her system and she's in Heaven?!? Not saying she's in Hell either but why even try to live a good life if we all wind up in the Good Place and right away at that? I don't believe most people go to Hell over sexual sins, I think there has to be something more (gangsters, Mafia yes) and I think the Church over the years has taken private revelations like at Fatima and maybe added stuff like the vast majority of people in Hell are there because they're lovers of the flesh, a kind of anti-sex message. Is there Sex after Death? You'd think there would be for all those times you couldn't get it in real life, would kinda even things out. I think the idea of reincarnation is rather neat since there's so many things I want to do in Life and one lifetime's not enough like be a private investigator. Let's be honest, the job sucks there's no fulfillment there and technically the very first day I can retire I'm doing so and sit on my front porch for the rest of my life and take up gardening:)

Failed business models

Seems like every now and then when I take a little vacation and come back there are some major upheavals and changes on the workfront and it got me to thinking during my walk today. Now I had a bad manager back in the day, may or may not have been a psycho but definitely an asshole and there was alot going on back then, had some health issues which seemed to start around then, blogged about some of them at the time yet Upper Management made a decision to bring him back. Dunno man but I say if somebody is at best a question mark let them be a memory, a part of Back in the Day but all this work stuff got me to thinking about bailouts and such. Now of course the bailouts didn't start with Obama, Bush really got them going but as a general statement I'm against bailouts philosophically and here's why. If you let the free market work as it's supposed to companies that deserve to go under are allowed to do so. It may sound harsh but there's a reason for everything, maybe they don't treat the workers right, maybe there's corruption, whatever but government throws these economic life rafts and blankets out constantly now and it interferes with the whole natural process, a kind of business Darwinism where the undeserving are allowed to fail. The usual rationale is but the people will be out of their jobs but they can always dust themselves off and find new employment with hopefully better companies but they tend to pigeonhole themselves (once a butcher always a butcher). Now let me ask you if a major company goes bankrupt and then has to file some austerity plan on orders of the Bankrupty Court and so then there's a wage reduction and then a wage freeze for years on end and other major gutting of certain bennies and perks hard fought by the Union over the years HOW is such a bailout beneficial to said workers as a whole? That's called Taking It Up The Ass, Thuganomics 101 and there's a certain loss of basic human dignity involved so what good are unions in the first place? Wouldn't it have been much better for the business to simply close up shop like in the old days because they were fiscally and even morally irresponsible throughout the years? That's the beautiful karma of the free-market system at work folks, the workers will dust themselves off and pick up better jobs if not now then down the road. So how is a massive bank or gov't bailout (really the same thing) gonna help change the Peter Principle? Back in the Day if a place went bankrupt there was a reason for it and there was no chance in hell of getting a bailout or recovery loan. Let me put it in more simple terms and we've all done this us men -- you screwed it up with a chick bigtime, that's all your fault and you have the rest of your life to think about it and chew it over but that's called learning from experience and starting over so when was the last time somebody came up to you and said I'm bailing you out with a new chick?

Racial unrest in Florida

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/sanford-city-manager-says-were-barred-arresting-trayvon-134007644.html

Al Sharpton is visiting the Sunshine State today, always a voice of reason and calm but I see this one as having the potential for riots and bearing national repercussions. I don't see how you cut it you can defend this guy Zimmerman, a one-man neighborhood community watchman/vigilante and I think on the merits I agree with the black activists and the black community in general on this one (now when was the last time you heard a conservative say that?). You shouldn't be shot dead if you're a 17-old young black man carrying a bag of Skittles through a probably mostly white gated community so how did this happen? Now I live in a neighborhood where when I look out the window, that's kinda the extent of my community watching here and if I see something dubious or questionable or in any way a gray area and let's face it some of these situations do involve young black men 9 times out of 10 I don't call the police. It's too, how shall I say vague...what do I say when I get the sergeant on the line? I'll call the police on average about one time a year over something happening in the neighborhood but by all accounts Mr. George Zimmerman was the exact opposite, hyper-alert and hyper-observant and probably hyper-imaginative as well. I think his racial adrenaline was flowing heavily juiced on by the reality of black crime is my view. This story has picked up so much steam I had to blog about it. I don't even see how the case justifies as an act of self-defense and he should've been arrested by now but I've had my say. What's your 2 cents?

This eternal social conservative/libertarian war within the GOP (& my solution)

I knew there was a problem many many years ago when I was driving a van for a wholesale flower company. That was back in the day and you really met a garden-variety of people on your routes and one young guy in particular ran a flower shop in the countryside and he made no secret of his strong dislike for the then Democratic president at the time Mr. Bill Clinton and liberals in general. I never really brought up the subject matter at the time, why would I I'm only delivering product but apropos of nothing he complained to me out of the blue one day that abortion within the Republican Party needs to be taken off the table. FF to the present day and you have Patrick M, soapie, Pamela Hart and Malcontent to name but a few righties here who are pro-choice for lack of a better word and would pretty much say the same thing. OK so it's obvious to me this social conservative/libertarian tension-hatred/rift within the GOP goes way back even as far back when Sean Hannity was discussing Hummergate on practically a daily basis and even beyond that to the Barry Goldwater days when in his senior years he started making testy and snarky comments about Jerry Falwell and evangelicals in general. Libertarian-minded conservatives act like they can somehow drive a stake through the heart of social conservatism once and for all, the good guys if you will in an updated political version of Vampire Diaries but you know how that goes, there will always be one of us Originals around and it got me to thinking. The only real solution would be for social conservatives to leave the Republican Party AND for libertarians to leave the GOP as well. Why should one be asked to leave and not the other? Whose mansion is it anyway, can I see the deed? Why do we even need opponents of gay marriage and those who want to legalize angel dust in the same party? Instead of trying to purify your own party from within in whichever direction you happen to be, a never-ending task where there's more agita than rewards have your own party going and go all out with it. The 2-Party System is bankrupt anyway, not much of a choice for the average voter (yes yes I know there's tons of other parties out there to choose from but they're not mainstream in any sense of the word more like political trivia questions). Pat Robertson living in a house with fetal parts backing up the plumbing system, makes no sense to me:)

Thoughts on the Tyler Clementi/Dharun Ravi case

Instead of summarizing this tragic case myself here is the link: http://news.yahoo.com/former-rutgers-student-convicted-webcam-case-155436220.html
Why oh why did Dharun Ravi give up that sweet plea deal? He could eventually be deported to his native India as a result of his conviction on all 15 counts including invasion of privacy a no-brainer and the more gray bias intimidation charge. Even the judge in the case found the NJ statute muddled and I remember Sean Hannity once discussing hate crime laws in general saying how they punish thought. If an obviously gay man is mugged is it because of his orientation or because he just came out of an artsy museum with his boyfriend and this points to some affluence? I have a Non-Opinion in this case, I've read several divergent commentaries and they all sway me to some degree but basically Ravi was convicted of a hate crime here. That's always a difficult thing to do to police somebody's head but then again there were the tweets and the texts although many friends said he harbored no strong anti-gay animus. What if the original tryst were of a heterosexual nature would it have been caught on cam too? You see that's the difficult part at least for me to get inside someone's mental universe although by pretty much universal consensus even among Right and Left Mr. Ravi is some serious species of Jerk. Of course there's the requisite jokes that now Ravi will be raped in prison but the judge will not sentence him to be raped in prison and the whole issue of prison rape needs to be highlighted and not made light of. Is a bad toilet also part of the punishment? There's a strong and I mean strong social conformity bias in Society. Just the other day a woman co-worker asked why I'm not married. I thought it a rude and prying question and I would never think to ask this of another co-worker and while I don't agree I can well understand the genesis of the whole hostile workplace environment construct. Why should you be uncomfortable when you work or go to school, when you're laboring or studying? at a minimum it's very distracting. I'm not gay but the woman after posing her very personal question may as well have stuck a pickle in her cheek and moved it back and forth. The case opens up a much needed national discussion and I'm not sure if it was the right verdict or the wrong one and I know you gotta come down with Instant Opinions these days like Sanka. I'm very big on nuance and intent and am fluid in my thinking and would probably aggravate the other jurors no end, a modern day Henry Fonda keeping everybody from going home. Dharun Ravi was not charged of course with causing Tyler Clementi to jump off the GW Bridge in September of 2010 but let's be honest here that's why the whole case was brought to trial in the first place for closure purposes and a debt to Justice in this young man's death. So chime in here and convince me of your position I'm swayable.

Does the Left hate the Right more than the Right hates the Left?

Browsing through the leftworthy blogs lately you're dealing with a sheer hatred of the Right and all things Rightward. We're talking exorcism-grade hate, pea soup, projectile vomiting, F-carpet-bombing in some cases (ahem), closing one nostril and shooting a booger at the opposition with the other one, an ultra-serious hatred with no humor attached whatsoever after all this is serious business and nobody on the Right can sincerely hold a certain belief ever. Said belief will be meticulously scanned for inconsistencies, who doesn't have those? ok that's fair game but then we get into Motives and those of conservatives are always dark of course. WE HATE WOMEN, we wake up in the morning us white males we do and what inspires us all day is how to hold women down. WE HATE OBAMA because he's black never mind his first three weak years of his first term. WE HATE SEX and we only use it to reproduce ourselves so we can eventually take over the Planet. WE HATE THE POOR, WE HATE THE GODLESS......Personally speaking if we hadn't gone after Bill Clinton with the sheer passion that we did I think our rather strong dislike shall we say of the current president might point to some real flaws in character and policy instead of being chalked up to the usual pathological hatred of any Democrat who occupies the Oval Office, a derangement syndrome and I have to say I was far less harsh on Bill Clinton back in the day and still am than your average conservative and I believe it stands me in good stead to this day. I'll leave the title of this blogpost an open question I'm just wondering why Sarah Palin is a cunt:)

Old Father Time & the Gov't

So why does the Congress still get to decide what time it is? I like my Dad's idea, he said they should change the clocks back one-half hour, kinda split the difference between fall back and spring ahead and just leave it like that and let Nature takes its course. Does it still serve a purpose? I think it had to do with farming at one point. Took me a couple days to adjust to the losing an hour's sleep and I felt rushed all day like some invisible hands pushing me from behind, the clock read 5PM when it should've been really 4:00. I'm only guessing but I think the libertarian POV would be To Leave the Clocks the Hell Alone!

What will an Obama 2nd Term look like?

(Of course the following depends on the makeup of Congress over the next four years)
He'll be a lame duck as Beth has pointed out. This is only a hunch but I think he'll be pushing abortion big-time in a second term. Birth control/contraception now and in the rad-fem universe you can't have the Pill without rampant feticide. Let's remember before he was even elected to his first term he promised Planned Parenthood he'd sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) into law as one of his first acts as president. He kinda reneged on that but it's almost as if the whole Sandra Fluke thing is laying the ideological groundwork and the msm will of course do its usual job of glossing over the real issues and present the issue as one of the moderates vs. the extremists as they always do. There will be more Supreme Court justices and federal judges too in the Elena Kagan/Sonya Sotomayor mold but I would have thought the nation's first black president would have been more of a uniter, a healer rather than a divider and polarizer. Even Bill Clinton was not unresponsive to conservative concerns at times as witness the passage of welfare reform and you still see those workfare signs while driving on the thruways. Granted he had to deal with a Republican Congress led by Newt Gingrich but Dick Morris his chief political strategist was big on what came to be known as Triangulation or splitting the difference between conservative and liberal concerns and issues. President Obama is not a triangulator by any stretch at least I'm not seeing it but rather pure hardcore ideologue and he seems to enjoy kicking around the embers of the Culture Wars. I don't buy the argument for a minute he didn't see the controversy coming that his whole contraceptive mandate would cause religious institutions and since he made time to call Ms. Fluke perhaps he can get around to calling a few war widows too. I make no political prognostication here, he may well win a 2nd term and then a Sandra Fluke clone will appear before a Congressional body on why we need to pass the FOCA now, hell it may well be her again as she's the leader of some campus group called Reproductive Justice or something. Obama's Justice Department under AG Eric Holder has even expressed interest in probing the NYPD's spying on Muslims which really splinters up the whole kind of concerted effort we need to win the War on Terror, just what we need at this time. I could go on but I'm voting for Romney.

Kony 2012:)

The whole taking out Ahmadinejad's nuclear program thing

Obama has said to Bibi I got your back, I think he also said wait 'til after the election. Dealing with Iran - on paper it makes perfect sense but something tells me it's not a good idea. Israel or rumor has it has already taken out at least four Iranian nuclear scientists or those in charge of its burgeoning nuclear program, preferred MO seems to be two guys on a motorbike attach some kind of remote control device to the bad guy's sedan and KABLOOEY like a Jason Bourne movie so Israel seems to be doing a good job all on its own. OK so we'll have a more secure world in the future, maybe, but you think you're paying alot in gas now! Also watch for world markets to destabilize and tumble and an increase in terrorist attacks. WHO will replace Ahmadinejad btw and I think it's safe to assume he'll be part of some overall collateral damage? I mean are there alot of moderates waiting in the wings here, some burning lava lamp of democratic fervor bubbling beneath the Iranian soil? We've had a dubious relationship with our nominal friend and ally Pakistan, if they turn totally rogue do we do them too since they already have the nukes Ahmadinejad has only been dreaming of? Again it's not my call but are any of you getting antsy about this?

The Giggles Layaway Plan or should the Gov't subsidize sex toys 'n' gadgetz?

Now there be some poor folk out there who can't afford some of the finer Giggles products or any Giggles products for that matter, they work hard all day for chump change and so some dumpy frumpy middle-aged housewife with an alcoholic husband is caught filching a dildo and winds up on some poster called Loser of the Month with her name and where she's from for all to see. The sex'chal needs of the Poor, they're not being met. IF there is this overriding societal need out there to prevent conception at all costs, the Senate just ko'd some conscience bill put up by the stuffy Republicans to cancel out Obama's contraceptive mandate, then by the same standard the sex act itself needs to be enhanced, better enjoyed and performed for overall physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. You cannot have one w/o the other, pills and other birth-control devices without the other sexual accoutrements that normally go into a fun and romantic evening. It's time to finally get Government out of the bedroom once and for all by subsidizing sex toys and marital aids, along with the free pills for women insurance can now cover at no rise in premiums of course the other goodies. K-Y is important of course, just saw a commercial for this fine product on primetime mainstream television no less just the other day. Anal beads, butt plugs, masturbation sleeves, cock rings and so on through the catalogue and so as not to discriminate against our gay friends and co-workers the Jelly Fist should be covered at no extra cost. It's enlightened, it's progressive and it just makes good sense. Now this is sure to create a firestorm, a brouhaha, a controversy with a capital C and it's only shocking because the idea is so new. Of course when the first few bills come up it will quickly break down into predictable party lines with the Democrats taking the more permissive position as they can always be counted on to do and the pasty Republicans can then be painted as a club of mostly repressed Puritans, mostly male and white at that, anti-poor folk and anti-the women. What they really want is a Theocracy. By opposing the sex-toy mandate they just want the good ole guv'ment more in your bedroom than ever. Let's get it out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where it belongs:)