At the risk of being upstaged by world events

In terms of blogging material I had nothing today (Libya/Tsunami, been there done that) so I went home before and opened up my mailbag, a daily ritual I hate btw ("URGENT - Open at Once", well can I take a dump first? cat might be hungry) and got one of those Gotcha! pictures in full color and couple of different angles too detailing exactly where I made an illegal right hand turn by not making a complete stop during the red phase of some traffic light even though otherwise you could make a Right on Red there at the intersection of Odell and Nepperhan Ave. The return address on the stub said City of Yonkers Red Light Traffic Safety Program PO Box 742503 Cincinnati OH 45274-2503 (didn't know the city of Cincinnati and the big YO had a connection, hmmm) and the amount of the infraction was 50 bucks. Now I said quite recently that I probably never would blog about a traffic ticket, not the merits of one anyway as you'll always get the dutiful right-winger from the Law Enforcement wing of the party and overall Good Citizen who points out "but Z you deserved that ticket, could've hit some 14-year old Catholic schoolgirl coming home from school" (visions of the bookbag flying) but there was something in the letter...they gave me my own PIN # and a web address where I can view a VIDEO of my moving violation online. Must everything be online these days??? Yeah I know only I can access it but it's weird and creepy in a vague way. Well if my vid can be online so can my commentary. Now I was always in my bones against these traffic light cams as being somehow a violation of Something although I never felt the spirit move me to blog about it (there are always more important things you know) and always felt these tiny encroachments on our liberty and/or privacy would someday amount to some big cumulative nightmare on the spirit of our freedom but the prob here is if you complain let's say that in a couple years you won't be able to get an incandescent light bulb because our friend Bush signed a law doing away with them in favor of the compact fluorescent you risk sounding like Charlie Sheen in a militia uniform so at the risk of sounding hyperdramatical at what point in time can we say (and apply your own special pet peeve here) this and no more? makes me trepidatious. Can we conversate?:)

Things I hate about Twitter

For starters tweeting sounds vaguely gay but that's not the point. Twitter is the stupidest thing on the Internet,

vapid celebrity xyz: "I just took a dump" (later picked up by "E.T." and "Access Hollywood" and talked about during your favorite drive-time morning show the next day when they should be playing music. Scott 'n' Todd, whassup?)

Twitter is the Ego run amok. We're all mini-Sheens now. Young guy at work told me about his Facebook page (Twitter/Facebook, same thing), check it out. Thanx I'll try not to. Now most bloggers have a massive ego that goes beyond healthy (Twitter/Facebook/Blogging, same deal) and the thing with Sheen, I couldn't cap it at first but he has Lucifer Syndrome. "I am the greatest. I fell like lightning from the Sky, I will set up my own Kingdom" and other drug-induced, existentially distorted bullshit). Whatever was gleaned of value in that 20/20 interview he is now reduced to some roving asshole, Dad must be sooooo proud. They say his upcoming city to city comedy tour sold out in a matter of minutes. These are probably, I'm only hazarding a guess here the same folks who wiped out all those potassium iodide tablets from the shelves because some molecule of Strontium-90 or Caesium-137 might float over the East Coast (it's not that they're chem majors but they seem to have an uncanny ability to pick up important info before you do kind of through osmosis, otherwise they're watching Married with Children). Oh well there's always kelp (for now). I remember during one of our major snowstorms this past winter and this was right before the first flakes fell but it got so busy so early I couldn't even set up the showcase, first time that's happened. It was retarded busy and I don't think this culture could make it through the Apocalypse but you can be sure as hell they would have to tweet about it (the combo blogger/tweeter/facebooker: "The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter just broke free and is now hurtling towards the Earth. HOLY SHIT!!!"). I was in Dick's Sporting Goods the other day with my friend, the new one they built in the Danbury Fair Mall and they got these things by Camelbak in the bike section. Basically what it is is it looks like some kind of backpack deal but the idea is you put water in it and there's a tube that goes in your mouth and you suck the water out (as Carlin once pointed out this society seems to feel the need for constant hydration). Then if you buy that you have to buy the cleaning kit that goes along with it of course. My friend seemed interested but that's how they suck you in I said. Now unless you plan on being stranded in the Alaskan wilderness a bottle of BB's overpriced tap water should suffice for your immediate needs when you're simply bicycling, hiking or just jerking off in the woods. Jobs, my friend said every job we've had in our lives has scum in it and you begin to wonder are people really this way? Shellshocked by Life. Nature is acting different too these days. Saw a pigeon the other day soaring, must've thought he was a hawk. The Archie Bunker Talking Alarm Clock: "Get the hell up, geeeez." I have to go home later and bang the crumbs out of my toaster oven, should I tweet about it?:)

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

President Obama gets slammed for throwing our longtime and Israel's ally Hosni Mubarak under the bus but he would've gotten slammed for not throwing Mubarak under the bus and not siding with the protesters. First Tunisia and Egypt now they're saying the next dominoes to fall will be Yemen, Iran and Libya and the concern here is whether this will augur in a new wave of democracy in the Middle East or the rise of the Islamic fundies. The brutal sexual assault against CBS News correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo, this would be like if the civil rights marchers of the '60s then engaged in hooliganism and thereby tarnished their own mark in History. Even from a pragmatic standpoint WHY would you do this unless of course that's WHO you are?

Mankind at its finest

According to a new book those 33 Chilean miners who were heroically rescued on international tv wanted and got pot, pornography and blowup dolls and thought about eating each other. Actually it is my understanding that the last item was denied as they didn't have enough to go around and the guys would've been fighting over her but be that as it may it's amazing to me that in such a situation where you're staring Death in the face one of your first thoughts is Sex. We'll even forget the reefer here but when I was lost in Clarence Fahnestock State Park here in Putnam County for the better part of a day with no food and water and night fast closing in let's just say my immediate thoughts were not of a sexual nature. Folks who seem to go out of their way to fulfill their own stereotypes, blogged about this a couple times back in the day. The Latino Horndog, when sticking your face in the very Jaws of Death jerk off first.

Sad to see Beth's last political blog but I can understand where she's coming from. I've been away from blogging for all of two days now but I'm a'ight. Tuesday I had off with my friend and couldn't hit a library and yesterday went to work after a bad night's sleep and figured just go home after it's all done. Now I don't know if this was a factor but the night before I had some gin and was browsing through the mammoth history classic The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester who also wrote Death of a President. You've heard the name Krupp of course, well the Krupp dynasty goes back centuries and officially ended with the death of head Alfried Krupp in 1967. Turns out Alfried helped bankroll Adolf Hitler and his rise to power and ran concentration camps himself during WW2 as a form of mass slave labor for his steel/iron/armaments industry which in turn greatly helped Hitler's military thuggery around the world. One concentration camp was expressly for children and in another adults were either severely beaten when they couldn't churn out the work product or else put into this tight little cage which was so horrible many inmates opted for the beatings instead. Now Alfried Krupp was finally convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and his entire assets, holdings and property were confiscated. He was released a few years later by U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy who apparently felt bad for one of Europe's leading industrialists if not the leading industrialist of the day. Now the Ole Gray Lady was biased even back then and despite the excellent reportage of one of their women writers they practically buried Alfried's Nuremberg trial which lasted about as long as Adolph Eichmann's but anyway after his release from prison and his livelihood restored back to him he became the leading mover and shaker in the European Common Market. A disturbing, depressing and shocking read but important for the historical record and you might wanna go easy on the gin 'n' tonic here, you won't be sleeping too good. So good luck to Beth but I have a feeling she'll be back and have to say Saty gave me a really good laugh when she said conservatives all hold the same opinions whereas liberals encourage real diversity of thought and I was thinking of all the real liberal diversity of thought over abortion let's say or gun control but I'm gonna have to cap it here:)

The crisis in Egypt and its implications for the geopolitical consortium

(Disclaimer: I don't know WTF I'm talking about here)

Sometimes certain major topical events pose a type of dilemma for the average blogger. I am not an Egyptologist, the Mideast is beyond my pay grade and yet I feel rather compelled to open up the crisis in Egypt for discussion. It's one of those topics you have to google or bing so as to appear semi-literate ("Mubarak's 30-yr rule", "Anwar Sadat assassinated in 1981", "Suleiman for VP", "40% of oil to Europe flowing through the Suez Canal"......) but you'll never rise to the rank of university professor rapping with Jim Lehrer (the reader will note I didn't have much to say on Tunisia of late). It seems to me Mubarak has to go, even his own generals are against him (how am I doing? OG I wish I could blog about Charlie Sheen right now!) but Mubarak kind of reminds me of Pinochet, our kind of dictator about whom we can look the other way at least for a time. Did the looters get to the Pyramids yet? there's a curse on that sort of stuff you know. I have to give my blog some heft with an occasional foray into foreign policy, people are still starving in Niger you know, but as Wikipedia would put it this article can use input from an expert or scholar in the field. BB?:)

The snow/climate change connection & some other Notes

Oh God I was homebound yesterday not because I couldn't go out but I didn't want to lose my parking space, the space I spent a good hour shoveling out (garbage cans are so yesterday). The 7th snowstorm of the season up here in the Northeast, snowiest January on record for Central Park where there was 19" of the white stuff on the ground yesterday. This is the time of year when you browse through large swaths of the conservative blogosphere and you'll see the predictable large-scale photo of the latest blizzard with the title "What Global Warming?" and a few potshots at AlGore so yesterday there was some Japanese scientist on the Today Show saying maybe this all has to do with global warming. Seems there might be more moisture in the Gulf of Mexico these days colliding with that rush of Arctic air coming down from Canada and you really have to love the sheer philosophical tenacity of the global warming crowd, whenever you're theorizing and encounter contrary evidence spin it your way. Now I've been theorizing my whole life about people, things whatever but you're bound to encounter things that don't always support your theory every now and then. Some people become more devoted actually when this happens and have an uncanny ability to work the odd stuff back in but that's not good theorizing imo. It's like with the few people and they're not in the majority by any stretch but when you lose alot of weight your co-workers think you're sick but when you tell 'em two or three times the deal they still stick with the erroneous theory ("Z-man has been losing alot of weight lately. It can't really be all that fish and veggies and exercising, must've been sucking some mean dick. I mean does he ever talk about a girlfriend?" chatter chatter) You know persisting in bad theories is, well just plain bad and can cause all sorts of trouble, a real snowjob you could say. Now I'm more open to theories of climate change than your average conservative but a snowstorm a week beginning the day after Christmas is still a snowstorm a week beginning the day after Christmas and if we had glaciers forming on top of skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan we'd still have the same Japanese scientists blaming it on some jetstream of warm air down south. So temperatures are rising folks but expect more snow. Yeah I thought of doing a blog on Obama's SOTU and his reemergence as a conservative (did he actually say something about unnecessary regulations and parts of the health-care law being bad for Small Business?) but this latest commentary on the winter we've been having up here in the Northeast is just too rich. BTW re this work thing soap feels you should work during a blizzard if you're scheduled to go in and Beth feels in general if you're scheduled X amount of hours during the day you should work those X hours. I just feel you should be able to use your last ten or fifteen minutes to wash up and rap and you have to use your own personal judgement about the weather. My position can best be summed up: in this here 21st Century there should be a more rational way to work. I challenge anybody on this stuff but if you want to talk about the SOTU instead I got no problem. BTW if you're driving in the City and your car gets stuck Bloomberg says you may be towed at your own expense. This guy STILL doesn't get it!!:))

Maybe it's me

but lately I just find people downright insufferable. I ain't blogging that much politically because really, if you get a boner over Boehner I can't help you. The real downside to John McCain losing the presidency is his omnipresence again on the Sunday morning political roundtables, frankly I 'd rather watch Gadget Girlz. I'd sooner do a blog on Buddhism than this current political season. I'm a misanthrope who can't even get off on Politics anymore. God if I read once again about how we can make the Tax Code better for everyone, just chuck the damn thing in the circular file already and be done with it. Can somebody tell me why Kim Kardashian is important? I ain't getting it. You know I mean this in all seriousness, I'd rather read a Field Guide to the Mammals than any of the current political bestsellers out there. A Self-Defense Guide will stand you in better stead than any of the crap churned out by Ann Coulter or James Carville. I'm going to services now, see you tomorrow or Monday:)

I found this fascinating

Woke up this morning and didn't know what to blog about exactly, different thoughts in a kind of formless mass. Since others' loved ones having health issues is a recurring theme I looked up some stuff from an old book I once read to kind of refresh the old memory base and before long I became absolutely absorbed. This is from the book Beyond MS: It's All in the Image by Nancy A. Bent, Ph.D (Brandon House, NY - 1995) and it's from the Introduction by Dr. Akhter Ahsen called "The Art of Restoration":

"...(Eidetic Image Therapy) is meant as a procedure of return to the natural state of health, not as an emphasis on disease...As was said earlier Rembrandt's 'Night Watch' turned out to be a painting not of the night, as was thought, but of the morning, just the opposite. It had so much varnish on it and had accumulated so much dirt over the years that it only looked like a night scene. That is an apt metaphor for what a patient usually is - a night scene...It is the person's own psyche that moves the limbs and not another individual who externally moves around or massages the body muscles because the true knowledge of movement and healing is only procurable when the person deeply initiates the activity from within."

Here, you can read the whole thing at: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-MS-Its-All-Image/dp/0913412848#reader_0913412848

Think about it and it's true, during the course of your day it's your own Mind which moves your limbs and your body in ways that you want without you even thinking about it. I think that is part of the gist of the passage I just quoted and for me points to Rene Descartes' ghost in the machine. The original functioning of the organism according to its DNA blueprint, that is the goal of modern eidetics. The part about Rembrandt's classic Night Watch (1642) is most interesting. Here was a painting that was commissioned by Captain Banning Cocq and several members of his civic guards as a kind of group portrait and was originally 13' X 16' and had 34 figures in it. It had so much dirt and varnish on it over the years as that is the nature of art collecting that only after WWII was it properly restored according to the artist's original vision and became known as Day Watch.

Every now and then we're gonna get a little culture under our belts.

The Existential Blog

The fishbowl known as work, the personal questions. Usually there can't be that much work to do if they're grilling you. My Life is fucked up OK? I don't know how I got here. You embellish your answers which is tricky when you're not ready and haven't rehearsed but lurking underneath is The Judgement and you quickly extricate yourself by making a beeline for the Men's Room. When you lose weight people act strange around you. Friend knows I've been dieting and I told him before I picked him up the other day I just had a McRib but he buys me a cheese danish anyway so I ate it to be polite. When you're shedding the pounds real quick there are counterforces at work, the Counter-Conspiracy so we're eating at Stew Leonard's and I'm by the salad bar getting my tuna and whatever else and he's packing it on at the hot food buffet as if to show me and he goes "I'm not judging you" which is fine but why'd he say I'm not judging you? It's we're either all gonna lose weight together, simultaneous-like or not at all. Obama's extending the Bush tax cuts, good for him. Well absinthe is back on the market, a little Van Gogh/Wormwood action. Now just the other day at work everyone was stupendously happy which is fine but more than a little strange for your typical go-back-to-work Monday and so the woman packs out the blue cheese crumbles in their containers but prices them all as roasted porkloin. Get that thujone rockin' for the Holidays!! Wikipedia -- no fan of Assange but you can't tell me those rape prosecutions aren't politically motivated. Let me play catchup and see what I missed. BTW I cracked the 3rd Secret, we're all going to Hell.

The Overregulators don't see themselves as having a problem

I've been running this through my head yesterday and decided to use it as an analogy of what's been bothering me about this group of benevolent nanny-staters who are pretty much regulating or trying to regulate every area of our lives right now. It's the example I love to use of the Hannityland political forums with its myriad rules and regulations and I'll get to the Crux of the Problem in a minute. Lista has been commenting on blogs that move too fast and she ain't seen nothin' yet. At say the Hannity Forum on Politics let's say you're a little slow or have been away and you see an older thread you think you could constructively contribute to that'll move the topic back to the front page and everyone gets annoyed and complains to a mod there (dunno how many they have at this point but they keep recruiting more) and it becomes a Violation. You see the front page moves so fast that you post a new thread and check in on it after two or three hours and it's already on page two or three. So in our example which is a perfect one btw (not like some Carvel shit) here's the reason why things never get better over there like some overregulated workplace where nobody has any fun anymore.

They don't know they have a problem, that they're overregulating.

It's done with benevolent intentions of course, it's necessary. They can theoretically see that overregulating can be a problem and they'll agree with you but that's just theoretical, they themselves are not overregulating. So you don't want people to buy sugary drinks with food stamps, that's not overregulating (although I have a problem with the original welfare and that's an even bigger crux of a deeper problem but for another day.) No liberal thinks of himself or herself as an overregulator, just perfectly reasonable rules and laws being codified here. It's like Saty sees herself as a socialist but not the kind who wants to run your life for you so it's like a nice positive twist to an old definition that nobody likes anyway (cake/eating it too). If you support drug testing in order to become a deli clerk or a cashier for God's sake that's not overregulation just having a reasonable policy in place because we want to see what people are doing and want to hire the Best. A bicycle helmut is for Your Own Good, it's a reg but not an overreg until we pass the next reg and We Will but that too would not be an overreg...geez what is an overreg anyway? and it's like Pink says, "you're just like a Pill, instead of making me better you're making me ill." It's like alcoholism and denial, we can never become what we're criticized to be. It's like how much masturbation is too much masturbation? One dude masturbates 2X a day and another guy masturbates 5X a day, who is one to criticize the other? If you go to the top Overregulator if there is such a thing he'll just tell you to accept your confinement, it's a perspective thing anyway and what one person views as a cage another will see as a mansion. In short a Liberal can never actually become a Liberal, that's just a dirty word anyway.

In short the moral of our little story is that it's not the Mods at Hannityland who are the Problem, it's YOU. The problem ain't LEE, he's just keeping YOU guys in check. You just have a bad attitude.

Is it more important to win the debate or have a discussion?

Unless you're an amoeba most folks have what's known as a political philosophy but sometimes our so-called inconsistencies are simply the recognition that our philosophy may have a logical absurdity or two if stretched, the Quirk (e.g. brother and sister should not get married). One can be strongly libertarian in spirit but hate abortion and Saty and soap bring up the usual tried-and-true pro-choice angles, really the skip in the record as if we've never heard them before. If we don't agree with Shaw for instance she tends to think we haven't considered her points. Oh no darling we hear you loud and clear we just disagree with you. That's possible ain't it? There's no need to pulverize your opponent, this scorched earth policy (S-Block). I like to think of this place as a coffee klatch, a passionate but friendly cafe. There's no need to break the saucer or piss in the sink.

Debated with Saty at her blog a few months back and for me Michael Schiavo at best was and is a questionable character so we got into a whole medical discussion and before long you reach The Impasse, a ravine or chasm with a shaky footbridge. For me I've reached the end of my walk, may as well turn around and head back to the car. IMO nobody won that one and I'm philosophical about it. It makes for a good Google search and I'm glad I did it. Not her but if people want to hold his water for him I got no problem so long as you don't begrudge me my take. You can even bring your 9/11 Truther movement over here and I won't get personal which reminds me I have to check out Alex Jones' views on the Mosque.

There develops over time if you're a true conservative a certain what I call Conservative Convergence. By this I mean it's ok to question aspects of your own movement from time to time, I've done it many times myself but after awhile you find yourself agreeing more and more with your fellow conservatives and kind of put the old feuds in a shoebox. It's better for society to be pro-life, the GZ mosque, unions are bad, traditional mores should be defended etc. etc. My own definition of being a true conservative is this: libertarianism or maximum liberty but with respect for social mores which many times we get the first part but not that leavening factor. You can be for maximum liberty and still see the wisdom in that it's better off for society to be pro-life for instance and I'm not even talking about the finer points of that debate which have been hammered home time and again (Soapie's Foundry) but the general principle. There's no need for a porn shop to be located within close proximity to a church and angel dust needs to stay banned for reasons of public safety. Many times marijuana is mixed with phencyclidine unbeknownst to the pothead and if you think your local drug dealer has a moral code you're an idiot.

How would you like your coffee?

There's something about Robert Gibbs' comments that have been bothering me

Just because President Obama has apparently managed to piss off the left-wing blogosphere doesn't make him a conservative or even a moderate (Shaw is a notable exception but then again Shaw is Shaw). Gibbs' remarks that they won't be satisfied until we have a Canadian style health care system and Dennis Kucinich as president, well if you deconstruct that that doesn't mean Obama wouldn't prefer to have the public option. Indeed he's on the record as supporting such but basically he saw the political handwriting on the wall and to borrow a page from Patrick M he went with practicality over principle. If I say or do something that pisses off the soapster let's say, I get Mal's knickers in a twist too, hell let's say I got under Beth's skin as well, I just got geeeeeZed and the Zep bloviated on me well that doesn't mean I'm no longer a part of their world. I'm beginning to think this is the whole point and maybe Obama actually welcomes criticism from the left-wing blogosphere as this will make him appear the pragmatic moderate, the realistic centrist by comparison. It's like with the gays, they like him and all but every once in a while they feel he doesn't go far enough. Obama himself likes them but there's always a little pragmatic distance in between, some political breathing room. He's not gonna put the jelly fist in himself or slip on the semen in the boomboom room during a campaign stop. Though he's gotten a 100% positive report card from NARAL on the topic of abortion he's barely spoken and the one time he did he acted the aloof intellectual above it all, maybe even vaguely pro-life in a misty morning sense. I think Gibbs believes his own comments but his boss knows the real deal.

Thoughts on unions

Since I blog about work alot, not the most popular threads since most folks seem to prefer straight politics, I've always had a running concern about how specific to get so I'm usually fairly vague for obvious reasons. Now I've had two jobs in my life that had major unions behind them, the dues always go up of course and there is the endless politicking for Democratic politicians (I'm beginning to think my union is socialist) and so I've come to two conclusions. Unions are corrupt and they don't help you. Now as the story goes back in the day one union for food workers was having trouble with the funds, going under and the very food company they were always at odds with at the negotiation table bailed them out instead of letting them go under......hmmmmmm......Now if you ask most workers do you work in a better workplace environment with good morale because of your union they always hesitate and pretty much the only thing they can come up with are those automatic raises you get even the slackers (and that's ANOTHER problem). Now I've seen folks whom the manager didn't like, he or she is on the firing line for whatever reason (manager ain't getting laid, whatever) and there has to be a union meeting set up of course before they can fire you and the union instead of fighting for the worker practically rubber-stamps the decision of management. As my friend says about unions, priests and lawyers you go to them with a problem or issue and they have this retarded clown look on their face - "I can't help you" - and though I've been pro-union my whole life I'm beginning to think we'd be better off without them. Went to a shop steward once with a legitimate issue and he warned me against pursuing it - "Joe's gonna cut your hours if you do" - but I was only discussing it, hashing it out because, well you're the shop steward buddy. Sure you will always have injustice and unfairness in the workplace but when the union doesn't care or backs up the management side instead of hearing out and fighting for the lowly worker you know something's up, something ain't right and it's a sage piece of advice I proffer to others before pursuing something know what you're dealing with. Hell they might all be having sex with each other and the rightness or wrongness of an issue may be as plain as day to YOU but cha'know. Oh doesn't matter if you're black either, not in the world of thuganomics. You simply want more bang for the buck and you can do without that socialist newsletter you get every month.

What are your thoughts on unions? (soapie must have a few)

A TRUE conservative would......

This is a rhetorical blog and sometimes a liberal on the board will misread (not mentioning any names but it's not the nurse) and so the following does not necessarily represent my own views but how do you feel about the following statement? (I can make a fairly educated guess as to soapie's position):

A true conservative would get rid of --

All welfare and unemployment benefits
Medicaid and Medicare
Social Security
Get rid of all minimum-wage laws
Abolish the Dept. of Education
Abolish the IRS
Ban abortion

and for good measure would also get rid of the Post Office as it currently exists by privatizing it.

OK you get some wiggle room here so if not now then over time. Personally I'd get rid of the IRS in a heartbeat and instead of the cost of a first-class stamp going up practically every year now I'd privatize this racket, open it up to more competition and I would also send abortion back to the states where it belongs. As for the first three, the Big Three, those all began as liberal big-government programs and I daresay it'd be a rare conservative bird indeed who would call for their outright repeal so really everything trends towards liberalism in the end doesn't it? Yanking the Big Three would cause massive social upheaval to put it mildly. Of course liberals would argue banning abortion would also accomplish that but that's for people who have made a habit out of the practice imo but I want to get to something the singer Seal said in 2007 in an interview on A&E's "Private Sessions", in fact it stunned me when I caught a repeat the other night. Now don't get me wrong, I like the man and his music, his haunting vocals, his rich and humanistic lyrics but in the middle of the show he talked about happiness and how you have the right to be happy, have the right to whatever you desire, it's your birthright he emphasized as if this is self-evident and I think without knowing it he really tumbled across the essence, the very marrow of liberalism. You SHOULD be happy, nay you have the RIGHT to be happy (a good job with good wages, a good health-care package, a rock-hard erection, healthy food, great shelter, don't let an unwanted fetus stand in your way etc.). Now Seal didn't say these things of course, he never explained how your very birthright is to be enforced but by contrast conservatives must want you to suffer. "Pick yourself up by your bootstraps young man!" "Show your boss you deserve that raise by working your ass off" "Teach a man how to fish and he'll have food for life" and other nostrums and slogans. All those years of existential angst, if only I realized what Seal realizes I'd be having that poolside Asian massage right now, 'tis my right after all. Added a couple Seal songs to my playlist the other day to show I'm not biased but he really enunciated very well the endgame of liberalism even if he wasn't aware of it.

Just how long do you plan on being out of work anyway?

Certain thoughts form in my head sometimes while watching the news, not nice thoughts either. They kind of come out of the political id somewhere and so I saw a couple days back President Obama at the podium with some well-dressed, poised woman off to his side who was just overjoyed it seemed to me that the bill just passed restoring federal unemployment benefits for about 2 million Americans who've been out of work for more than 26 weeks. House vote 272-152, will add a cool $34 bil to the deficit and debt but hey. The spin: Republicans are being their usual harsh asshole selves. But wait a minute, getting back to that woman by Obama's side the other day she can't find work anywhere? I'm sure there's a deli who would hire her, some department store and so the question needs to be posed to the jobless: are you willing to take a job that you hate? Is it that you really can't find work or you can't find something that you like? Had a department head once, a young guy who felt unemployment insurance was a form of welfare but this other chef was a hardcore Dem and so they got into this political discussion one day and the chef's position was kinda you should plan on using it some day because in his words "I'm paying into it." I was out of work a few months myself back in the day and had credit card and other bills to pay and the reason why I took anything I could get was the simple motivation: FEAR. I never went on welfare or took unemployment bennies precisely because I took some jobs that I hated. All were on the lower end of the pay scale, one I liked but the rest was I had to do what I had to do. This extension is going to foster the culture of dependence on government even more since as was apparent during Obama's press conference the whole stigma of getting a check from the government for doing essentially nothing is pretty much gone.

Finally a word about hatred on the Net. Just yesterday I was glancing over at Pam's blog and for some reason known only to Octopus the subject of Mad Mel brought out all his hatred for bluepitball practically calling blue a wife-beater. While probably not legally actionable it walks right up to the edge. I never got this. I mean I get the passionate, the heated debates but the visceral hatred for your political opposite is just beyond me, over my head and it's not like this is something new. It's been going on for YEARS. You know the funny thing about my Andrew Breitbart/Shirley Sherrod blogs is I think I came out fairly strongly against Breitbart so instead of finding common ground, something libs always say they want if only we conservatives would cooperate, it brought out some issues about ME. It's fucked up.

Nothing else matters

I feel this way about Pro-Life. The idea for this blog has been gnawing at me for some time now and I expressed it once before and it is this: let's say conservatives got everything they ever dreamed of and then some but that abortion and euthanasia were still the law of the land and was to be forevermore for me at least this would be a spiritually empty victory. In fact I feel so strongly about this that it is reason enough for me to stop blogging since what good is talking about all the other stuff if we don't have a pro-life culture first? For me it's as if having a pro-life society would free us up to consider more fully and less distractedly these other important parts of the conservative agenda but without this what good is all the rest? For the record I will continue to blog probably until the day the Good Lord calls me home but am just emphasizing how passionate some of us are about the issue.

Nothing else really matters if you have an event that in pro-life terms is such a tragedy, a kind of moral catastrophe and this may or may not help to explain the mystery of the "retired" bloggers or at least some of them, not everything at your heart's core gets expressed in print, and speaking for myself I've often considered not blogging or retiring from blogging since the pro-life issues are so much on the back-burner these days. I mean how can we even talk about Obama the Socialist let alone concentrate fully on this issue and others like it when as I said there's been so many recent horrors on the pro-life front?

I really think there needs to be something so newsworthy in pro-life terms, some event so positive and of such moral magnitude that it will rock us back to our collective senses, make us rethink our attitudes towards the unborn, the disabled and the elderly, the poor, the downtrodden, the voiceless, the totally vulnerable among us. To continue on this pro-abortion/pro-euthanasia arc is so depressing that what good is all the rest of what we ever dreamed or fantasized about if we still continue down this destructive course?

Today's blog is simply a lament, to explain a thorn that's been in my side for awhile now before I continue to blog about the Other Important Issues of the Day. It's just something for your consideration.

The politics of obesity

They say we conservatives are reactionary by nature, real ornery bastards, player-haters and so because one of our own isn't sitting in the Oval Office we're still pissed even taking it out on Obama's missus. I'm talking of course about her signature issue, her campaign against childhood obesity. Sometimes a person annoys the hell out of you and you don't know why, there's something lurking, taking shape in your id and btw I count myself among the ranks of the annoyed. It's like when you have a boss at work and he's not really bothering you that day, even buys you a cup of coffee but his mere presence still annoys, irritates, rankles. Maybe he's overly into his job so you just look at him, it could be he's a dick and doesn't know it but it's something. So what bothers US about Mrs. Obama's drawing attention to what is a legitimate public-health concern? If I may diagnose the problem here first off it's that despite all the liberal commenters of late on the blogs saying that nobody's brought up the need to get the government involved, quite the opposite your bullshit meter's arrow is in the red zone. OF COURSE they do even if they haven't said it yet. Already in New York State there's a proposed or about to be proposed bill to add tax to soda the whole idea being to deter people from drinking the evil carbonated beverage. Then ya got another politician who has proposed that salt be forbidden in the preparation of foods in all New York State restaurants so your bs-meter is right on target as usual. Yeah but there has to be something ELSE that bothers us about Michelle Obama. Maybe it's this: how important IS this issue of our nation's chubsters anyway? How do you rank it? For me speaking honestly it's nowhere near the top of my list, the husketeers will always be with us and some of them are kind of charming anyway in an Our Gang sort of way, that's what gives society its character and the thought occured why doesn't she just start with Oprah Winfrey? set some type of moral example for the rest of us but the long and the short of it is she just plain annoys the hell out of us and we don't know why. I know I'M annoyed, she's put me in a bad mood like when you have skid marks in your drawers at work and just want to call it a day and go home. Maybe the whole Fat Acceptance Movement has a point, just accept us for who we are and get on with your lives. So we've made the decision in Life that food is more important than sex, what of it? are we bothering you? It's like when you were a kid and you were watching tv and your Mom said it's a nice day why don't you go outside but there was some hot chick on Hee-Haw that you wanted to see first. That's fine when you were a kid but now that you're full grown if you want to keep your pajamas on all day and stay in bed W(ho)TF's business is it of anyways? She wants to raise our kids for us so I guess my Mom and Dad were evil because when they went food shopping every Friday night they brought Devil Dogs home (ok that was Dad's idea). Alot of black women are fat as hell but there's something human and earthy about them, they don't have this NO TRESPASSING sign at the shrine of their pussies like the supermodels do (John Mayer and Leo DiCaprio yes, YOU got a court date buddy).

Please just go away and take up crocheting or something. First ladies and their causes, wouldn't be a bad idea to have a single guy in the Oval Office some day.

Not getting hired because of something you said online

This seems to be one of those rather hot topics that pops up every now and then in the press and the spin is always, well it seems to be that you should never post anything online for fear that it will come back to haunt you in any future job search. Z-man has multiple problems with this not the least of which is Free Speech but here for a typical column offering the typical sagelike advice in this area are some excerpts from conservative Kyle Smith's piece yesterday in the New York Post, Idiocy in the age of Facebook - Why you're not getting that job (2/28):

"A 2009 study concluded that 45% of employers were checking social-networking sites before deciding to hire someone...The news gets worse: of that 45% who bothered to check 80% subsequently decided not to offer a job to someone based on info found on the sites..."

Aren't there enough violations of free speech already? I know I know an employer can technically do this I suppose just like a radio station can fire someone for saying whatever but it's a violation of the spirit of free speech and when you look at it cumulatively we're a less free nation because of it. What you do online is your own creative domain and this is likely to have a chilling effect on bloggers, commenters, MySpacers, Facebookers etc. It's absolutely no business of the employer how much you drank at a party last week let's say or what conspiracy theories you believe in. It might be unwise to post some things but that's for your fellow commenters to point out, to issue TMI Alerts but it still shouldn't invalidate you from further consideration to fill that post. Besides don't these pencil-pushing geeks have anything better to do?

"As an employer you're taking a chance when you hire someone. No one wants to hire a dud. What if someone has a history, say, posting rude sex jokes about women on his Facebook 'wall' and turns out to be much the same around the coffee pot? No sex-harassment lawyer is going to fail to tell the jury that...

OK stop right there!! Time was, in recent memory in fact that most conservatives questioned, criticized the growing field of sexual-harassment law but ever since we learned from Paula Jones that Clinton has a crooked member they got with the program. I'm calling them out on this. Kyle bro you're smarter than this, many people are not going to repeat in the workplace what they say online ("geez Madam can I pour some blueberry syrup on those pancake nipples of yours?"). If there's one thing I hate with a passion it's this fashionable politically correct conservatism, neocon pussies all.

"...The No. 1 reason not to hire someone discovered on social-networking sites, though, is 'provocative or inappropriate photos'."...

Again too much time on their hands, not worried enough about the Bottom Line which may be part of the reason why our economy is in such a shambles. You got time to worry about this shit then pluck your candidates from a convent. Are such images right or wrong? that's purely in the eyes of the beholder but what Kyle doesn't mention is it can surely work in the opposite direction and I'm sure it does. When Tiger retires and runs his own golf equipment company I'm sure he would take it into consideration.

Then there's some crap about divorce lawyers just love Facebook and college admissions offices are getting into the act too. Z-man's position is simple -- if a boss cares this much about your online activity then he or she is probably not worth working for in the first place.

The philosopher class

Lately I've been watching this special on Immanuel Kant on NJN2, some Harvard professor named Michael Sandel giving the lecture. Exciting class, kids all look interested, lots of Asian faces. Like my friend and I were talking, you're in Barnes & Noble and there's some hot Asian chicks in the cafe studying who won't even give you the time of day because their parents have used YOU as an example of what not to wind up to be in Life, you're a walking warning in your Dockers and Reeboks stimulating their studies. There's just something about You, you give off the stench of a low-wage job and don't seem confident. You pass a chick in a department store and your eyes wander and then she notices and buttons up that top button, you must be giving off a stalker vibe or something. Interesting stuff as when we are told that Kant thought it always wrong to lie so if a murderer knocks on your front door and asks if your friend is in there you have to tell him the truth, give up your buddy, something to do with you can't make exceptions to the categorical imperative. Philosophy usually takes weird turns every now and then like when I was in Catholic high school our professor talked about solipsism a Greek word which basically means there's no objective reality outside of your own mind which means that nothing else exists, you just imagined it all which if true then why the hell did I get up to go to work these past 25 years? You can't blame it all on the acid, that didn't come until 1938 but you did have your morning glory seeds, the heavenly blues so don't know if some of the Thinkers accidentally ever swallowed some. I was thinking about the nature of dreams the other day, what are they exactly? Now we all know that dreams ain't real but they do exist on some level otherwise you wouldn't have dreamt. Put another way a dream happened somewhere, it took place in your mind, your imagination which has its own existence so if it makes you feel any better maybe Kim Cattrall really did kiss you au naturel in the kitchen. Arthur Schopenhauer, said to lead the philosophical school of thought known as Pessimism. What I wanna know is did the philosphers ever work a day in their lives? hold down your typical 9-5's or did they just think all day? We've all heard "if a tree falls in a forest and there's nobody around does it make a noise?" and along these lines what's the deal with this tinnitus-type state? I mean the noise is real to me, what am I nuts? Maybe I'm gonna give my two weeks at work and spend the next few years pondering the finer points of Life but getting back to dreams if you work in your dreams as I do shouldn't you get paid for it? Maybe we're all dead. BTW Obama ain't real folks, get over it!!

Obama has plumbed new depths

Now at first blush this is gonna sound grossly unfair to President Obama, you can just picture Bill Moyers using it to illustrate classic right-wing hate in the blogosphere on his Friday night journalfest. Well let me first link up Malcontent's excellent commentary today on the matter:

http://malcontentralphie.blogspot.com/2010/02/this-is-not-joke.html

Glenn Beck talked about it this morning on his radio program and I'm gonna predict this is gonna be a HOT TOPIC in the conservative blogosphere and why shouldn't it be? There was a DNC fundraiser last night in where else? Washington DC and Obama made the point that a national health-care system is still dear to his heart worth fighting for and then he talked about a letter he received concerning a young woman, 41 years old, who worked for his campaign while fighting breast cancer for four years and finally succumbed as he put it. You see she had no health insurance, couldn't afford the tests that could have saved her life but here's the kicker and I'm quoting Obama here: "and she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt."

Malcontent's point, she worked for his campaign so as a campaign worker why didn't they pay for her health insurance thus saving this poor woman's life? Now here's my dark thought and I'm not afraid to express it though I usually don't go down this road: they wanted this young woman to die, hell they could've gotten one of their Hollywood buddies like George Clooney to pick up the tab. It's a kind of variation of Rahm Emanuel's let no crisis go to waste, let no death be in vain when it can be used for political purposes. Does this seem harsh to you my judgement here?? not when you consider that some people deliberately use a moral calculus of let someone or a few people die for the Greater Good, think of all the future lives that could be saved. It's utilitarianism with a Machiavellian spin. It's only one life and think of the tremendous political gain to be reaped!

It's creepy, it's perverted, it's evil but it doesn't surprise in the least. Imagine if Ronald Reagan had said "she's going to be buried in a Ronald Reagan t-shirt", it would have diminished the man and it goes without saying that the liberals would have had a field day. Obama has corrupted rational political discourse in this country which in itself is a feat, the whole thing is shocking in its banality and predictability. It's far worse than anything Bill Clinton ever did while in office imo and that's saying something so shame on the Obama Administration!!!

How much should you criticize your own side?

First off I have to admit I do it on a fairly regular basis myself but then again they make it easy. I mean when you have Savage the other night saying Toyota's current problems were caused by some kind of corporate conspiracy, a sort of war games to do in a competitor something has to be said. Ditto for Rush who had to spin the Haiti relief effort around to it's gonna show Obama to be compassionate and humanitarian and will help him even more among African-Americans. What does this have to do with the price of onions? it'll only get the Oxy talk going again. Then you have your simmering tensions between the SC's and the FC's usually over abortion with the FC's taking offense at the SC's always waving a dead fetus around in everyone's faces but I don't know how you can discuss it otherwise in the end, it'd be kinda like talking about gay marriage and leaving out the anus (oh I know it's so much more but just being a little Aristotelian here). FC's tend to lump all SC's together but there are varying gradations of social conservatism. I myself find gay marriage to be unpleasant whereas I find abortion to be repugnant, a violated sphincter is preferable to a, ok no getting around it, a dead fetus and so...When Judie Brown of the American Life League said that studies show that married couples who once had premarital sex with each other have higher divorce rates than those who didn't well I don't navigate those waters. Same thing when James Dobson of Focus on the Family interviewed Ted Bundy only to "prove" the point that porn makes men into this so I really don't wanna get that far away from land ya know? There is much in the conservative movement not to like and I can't totally refrain from criticism of my own side, that'd be hard. It's like waking up with a woody, you have to go with the moment. The links I've chosen show the full range of conservatism which is why I chose them, agreement not being a prerequisite as it is at alot of blogs to get a link going (Opus Dei - sheesh!). So really the Question Before the Board today is when should we criticize our own side? but also how much is too much? It's not an easy answer or issue for me, there be those who be team players and those who don't even like to be on the same team. For me it has to do with those uncharted waters again. Now all of us are perfectly capable of a brain fart every now and then and if you think you're not believe me we're gonna find something but Pat Robertson has a string of 'em so it makes you wonder. There are uber versions of both Left and Right and everything in between so take it away.