I think the election of the first African-American president was a great historical moment

Too bad he sucks.  Is this a racist statement? I don't think so because I honestly think the election of the first black president was a great historical moment but it's like Tiger Woods the first in his game too, he let us down and deep down it always pains us.  IMO liberals' great great unabated love for Obama goes beyond simply that he's a good liberal Democrat in the best progressive mold, they're still nostalgic for the sheer historicity of that moment so I get it, like Tiger they want to see him make that comeback.  The historical importance of that moment, put it this way unemployment could jump to 20 or even 30% and he could pardon Sandusky and you'd still have the same folks defending him (be honest).  Jimmy Carter isn't black so it's easy for everyone across-the-political-board to render the historical verdict that he sucked whereas in Obama's case I sense some reluctance to do so.  Political Psychoanalysis, I think in this case most of it hinges on Race which is why Cindy Sheehan could protest the Obama White House and the msm won't cover it which is why I learned it from BB in a reply to the Dude, it sure as hell wasn't Brian Williams.  Frank Robinson became the first black Major League Baseball manager, not that long after he was fired.  So yes it's important to make History, I'm kind of a progressive conservative in this regard but it's also important just as or more so to make an objecive analysis, an impartial and fair evaluation after a time and in this regard he suffers.  FDR was handicapped although at the time it was kinda downplayed, been there done that so now I say let's elect the first woman president, then the first gay president (they can be one and the same) but here's a minor sticking point for me, can they at least be good?  Don't just make History, give us a good historical product.   

Thuganomics and the psychology of organized crime

With the passing at 69 of mob turncoat Henry Hill there have been some positive things to say about the fellow from people who should know better.  His main claim to fame/celebrityhood is that he was the main inspiration for the mob classic Goodfellas and the Ray Liotta character yada yada and the eulogies go on.  Hill was a drug trafficker among other things and was involved in the infamous Lufthansa heist at JFK.  You know the rest and I think it's a fair social comment to make that we've romanticized, glorified the life of the gangster and this probably goes back to Mario Puzo and The Godfather book and movie.  By all accounts The Godfather (Parts I and II, forget the 3rd) is a superb film from a cinematic standpoint but my friend had a rather oblique take when he said how many lives taken is the movie responsible for? by which he meant how many joined the Club because the life portrayed in the movie inspired them to?  Actually this may not be that far off the mark as a key member of the now defunct young gangsters known as the Tanglewood Boys in Yonkers admitted to the late NY Daily News columnist Mike McAlary that they watched Goodfellas a number of times and it was sort of their inspiration.  Here's the deal for me though, take any level gangster or thug and let's say he led an independent life of crime, killings, robberies, general mayhem Society would level at him that he's a bad dude, a psycho, a criminal, a mutant, a deviant and needs to be taken off the streets pronto and go to the Big House for a long long time BUT take the same psycho and have him working as part of a GROUP operating in concert for some unified ends, a hierarchy, a criminal bureaucracy so to speak and it's somehow respectable, even glamorous.  Read two cases in the paper recently of a Mafia member putting out a hit on an average non-criminal man for the sole reason of going out with or marrying the mobster's ex-wife, this was two separate situations and let's say he wasn't a member of Cosa Nostra and did the same thing he'd be universally condemned as an obsessed psycho, a stalker yada yada but because he's a member of organized crime there really isn't the usual social and reportorial commentary you'd expect in such a case because hey that's what gangsters do.  Organized psychos is another way of putting it and the usual psycho/anti-social labels are dropped because it's an organization, a group, a conspiracy, a secret society and so it's somehow rational, none of the member's self-esteem will suffer because we're in this thing together and hey we're selective, we ain't bumping off old ladies crossing the street.  Serial killers and rapists bad, gangsters good, that's our social mindset/collective moral philosophy and we simply don't know Right from Wrong anymore, never really did.  The media wants to keep the theme going though with more books from former mob wives down the pike and some new tv shows with mob themes even though it's a passe genre by now, bloodsuckers is where it's at.  We love the desperado but hate the psycho even though they may be one and the same:)

While Obama can certainly win there are Problems

Not the least of which are Syria and those nat'l security leaks.  There's a reason many are accusing the White House itself of taking a leak, all the leaks are positive in Obama's favor and help burnish his image.  Who knew he was engaging in cyberattacks against Iran and every Tuesday shuffles a deck of terrorist playing cards and decides who's gonna get droned that day? but I don't hear the liberals complaining because hey it was quick and they weren't waterboarded like under Bush.  The atrocities continue in Syria on an almost daily basis.  Bashar al-Assad needs to go, everyone on the Planet except Russia and China seem to agree but Syria is fast becoming Obama's Rwanda.  Then there's Barbara Walters who helped get Assad's former press aide and political adviser/spinmeister into Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs because young 22-year old and Playboy material Sheherazad Jaafari helped land her the big interview with Assad, that's not Obama's fault of course but Walters has always annoyed me.  I thought she had a View to do but whatever.  Apparently Putin's Russia is sending the former ophthalmologist and current psycho leader of Syria attack helicopters and we're learning all about Assad's militia the Shabiha, a pack of low-IQ killers on steroids doing his really dirty work like massacreing women and children in the villages.  So who's supplying the 'roids?  The leaks, Assad and the Economy not necessarily in that order but ya just know some highbrow moderator at one of the first prestigious presidential debates is gonna ask him about fat kids and soda:)

Last Tuesday's recall vote in Wisconsin

I didn't blog about it at the time the goings on in Wisconsin when Republican Governor Scott Walker was ripping public-sector unions a new one, I like to go my own way when I blog but as you all know by now Walker won last Tuesday's recall vote 53% to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's 46% this despite practically every major union in the country making an all-out effort there to mete out justice and if you read the fine print about 1/3 of Walker's support came from union households.  His sins? he pretty much put the kabosh on collective-bargaining and public-employee workers now have to chip in more towards their pensions and health care and no more automatic deductions for union dues.  Before all this the recall of the GOP-controlled Senate also failed as did the effort to get rid of a conservative State Supreme Court justice and that was just a warmup for the Walker treatment.  So does this spell the death knell for unions? if there's enough Governors out there like Walker probably but I don't think the country is in as much of a union state of mind as back in the day.  For some reason when I think of unions I think of Jimmy Hoffa.

Over the past several years I worked with at least two young managers both men and it was quite obvious from their remarks they hated unions this despite our jobs in the food industry being heavily unionized.  So what was their #1 complaint?  I know when you talk about labor and politics the subject gets complicated but it was no more complex than when you have a union you can't FIRE somebody and let's face it in most workplaces there are definitely at least a couple of people who need to be shown the door at least this is the way the free market is supposed to work, better for everyone.  I can come up with at least two names myself right off the bat and so this is the #1 complaint even over and above fiscal concerns.  Good God have you been reading about the sexual goings-on between some HS teachers and their students in NYC? that's not even the point, sexuality has always been somewhat warped to begin with but it's existentially difficult to fire the tenured ones because...it gets complicated here.  There's a section on it in Glenn Beck's book Arguing with Idiots and ya gotta collect and collate your evidence first, get your witnesses and present your charges of course to this board or body or that and then all that has to finally go to an arbitrator at least some point down the road into the not-so-foreseeable future and even then the arbitrator for some strange reason often has a soft spot for the more pervy ones.  NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott would like the sole power to fire the truly bad ones but he has to lobby Albany first, that takes time and you know how that goes and the United Federation of Teachers likes the system the way it is after all they fought for it.  I don't recall this going on when I went to school as a young'en but then again we had nuns who'd crack a ruler over a student's knuckles so unless you were seriously into some S&M or a little clothespin action......

Pretty much in my place the only straight up reason you can fire somebody is if they steal something:)