The guy has a first name you know

The weird part about the Anthony Weiner scandal is he didn't actually have sex with any of these women so it's like a kind of pseudo-scandal, it'd be like going to hell for masturbation and where in hell does Bill Clinton get off being mad at him? Now if you're name is Weiner and you do decide to engage in this type of behavior wouldn't you go with a legal name change first? You know there's a side street over by Cross County in Yonkers called "Hiscock Place" and it'd be like if Mr. Hiscock ran for office and got embroiled in some big gay sex scandal you might wanna dot your i's and cross your t's first is all I'm sayin'. The existential coldness of Anthony Weiner's situation, even his own party wants to throw him overboard. Maybe he didn't push abortion enough, dunno but Slick Willie got away with more, far more and it made him stronger. Been meaning to pose this: so who do conservatives hate more, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama? You remember back in the day you couldn't live through 24 hours without hearing of Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey or even Juanita Broaddrick, dead teenagers on the Arkansas train tracks and drug-running at the Mena Airport, Whitewater, Lewinsky, those 500 or was it 900 FBI files? Ken Starr, Chinagate, impeachment, last-minute pardons......we don't even talk about that anymore, that's like a Three's Company or Sanford and Son rerun but the void has been filled by one Barack Hussein Obama. I must caution the Republicans if they're buying tickets to board the big old PhallusShip into the next election. An overindulgence in Weiner minutiae is not gonna get you there but with Huma being pregnant and all this throws a curve into normal conservative thinking. Mr. Weiner doesn't even have a business or law degree to fall back on like some of the others, what's he gonna be a deli clerk? and you wouldn't want those economic pressures to lead to a bad decision here. BTW some rich guy is gonna scuba-dive for bin Laden's corpse in the North Arabian Sea next month and our corporate media is wasting no time in calling him an eccentric.

The Sperminator

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

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

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

Why Bush didn't go to Ground Zero

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

The reluctant conspiracy theorist (an abridged reader)

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

The World's Biggest Egotists

Now it's good to have a healthy sense of self-esteem but these outsized egos are out of all proportion to their actual contributions (can you Supersize that?), I mean none of them have cured Cancer. They see themselves as so integral to the Progress of Civilization, so pivotal to the Race of Man, well here's a partial list by no means exhaustive: Hugh Hefner - actually let's throw in Charlie Sheen here too since together they form a kind of hybrid creature called Don't You Wanna Be Like ME? which even if you thought that would you say it? Now Hef sees himself as a kind of cultural icon/hero who helped Society break off from the iron shackles of sexual repression (the World didn't enjoy Sex until He came along) but the culture would have gone whichever way with or without his help. They say Charlie Sheen is actually a crystal methhead in which case he's a goner, just sayin'. Glenn Beck - makes the list only for pro-forma reasons, so many people think he should be there although I'm not sure how many egotists (or is that egoists?) talk about their past alcoholism and how they messed up their lives. For me Bill O'Reilly looks like he has the bigger ego the type that would give the deli clerk a hard time ("I said THINNNNN!!!"). Then there's Keith Olbermann - never got those lists of his, THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. One week it was Rush Limbaugh. You don't have to like the guy, I really don't care but Worst Person on the Third Planet from the Sun Keith? that'd probably be Moammar Khadafy with Robert Mugabe running a close second. Barack Obama of course with his messianic complex. Has a bug up his ass about the rich, he sees it more as the problem of wealth and it's been bothering him his whole life but you're somehow an extremist if you don't see him as a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist. His Saviorhood has been somewhat tarnished by his rather dismal performance in office thus far but as a Kool-Aid drinker at work told me the other day give him some time, he only got his feet wet. Donald Trump - probably heads anybody's list but I'd still vote for the guy, actually I'd vote for Ryan Seacrest if he ran against Obama. Diddy (past names Puff Daddy, real name Sean Combs) - actually most rap stars but YOU made it that way, all those white suburban kids who somehow gravitated away from Rock over the years. Once arrested on a gun charge they become semi-respectabalized as time goes by, look for Fitty to be doing Eugene O'Neill on Broadway. Egotism is like a weird drug trip and to me never made any sense. I mean I've done so many dickheaded things in my life it'd be hard to be that way. Doesn't seem like the natural state this overinflated self-deified condition but that's just me. The Lady Gaga - Here's how it works. In Madonna's case she was like a monkey swinging from the trees, she discovered Morality and now she's swinging from the trees again. Look for Gaga to have a moral arc somewhere in the middle, settle down, have a couple kids and then go back in the jungle again. Gaga's talents which I will concede are eclipsed by her antics and I like what my friend said once. We were in a Target store looking at the magazines and we seemed to be in the young adult section, Miley Cyrus on the cover over here, the pale guy from Twilight over there, Avril Lavigne, whoever and he takes one look at them and says to me they're all full of shit:)

Would you vote for Donald Trump?

He's tapping all the right buttons. Wants to bring jobs back to America, has been stroking the seniors over Medicare and has even told Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network that he's done a conversion and is now pro-life. Sounds serious about reducing our debt and deficit but on foreign policy looks a little weak, kind of bullshitting his way through. I look at it this way, if he doesn't work out we can always fire him. If it came down to Trump vs. Obama would I vote for the guy? brief and to the point, YES.

Did Glenn Beck get too hot too fast?

His syndicated radio show on WWOR has been yanked here in New York and the Fox News no longer has his show. The usual explanations have some validity of course, a show needs sponsors to survive and Mal thinks his new religious side turned off alot of people. I know he's a Mormon but Mal will have to fill me in on his latest spiritual quirk as I'm not up to speed. Now the classic liberal, more a dinosaur these days that belongs in a museum used to say things like "I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it" but today they behave as if censorship and suppression of speech they find offensive is a more important value and way to go which to me makes no sense since the stuff just goes underground anyway where it just bubbles and percolates, simmers so may as well address it seems to me. For my own taste I always found Beck entertaining and informative but somewhat confusing, his thread. One day he's practically saying we're on the verge of uncovering some monstrous conspiracy with Obama at the apex, plans have been drawn up to put political dissidents in concentration camps and a couple days later he's putting down those parents who are suspicious of the government vaccinating their children against Swine Flu. I have to agree with soapie though, he only goes so far. It's like a half-finished dramatic movie with no resolution or overarching theme and he doesn't connect the dots the way Alex Jones does. For me I'm seeing more and more of Life as a vast control issue, people who want to control others but that's just me. He doesn't seem to put Things in an ultimate framework the way Jones does, what I call the Matrix of Politics. The real offense is not that he's offensive but he's afraid of saying certain things, leads you on and then pulls back. I'd say Alex Jones gives certain matters more weight than Glenn Beck let's put it that way and take any thread at random from my own blog and there are interconnecting themes and that's by design, it's the way to go and you have to tie it all together in the end instead of meandering sputterings but free speech? sure the guy should still be on the air:)

Obama and the birthers

I think he's just messin' with 'em. He probably has his birth certificate in his back pocket but if they wanna think I'm a spearchucker from Kenya so be it. Trump is kinda reviving the whole birther thing with his quasi-bid for president. He was rapping with Meredith Vieira this morning, always entertaining. The other thing is Obama honoring Sharpton and his National Action Network in Harlem the other day does not and will not appeal to the White Voter next time around, just seeing Sharpton's face in the paper gets my Dad upset. That YouTube video of that kid screaming he wants to be governor of New Jersey, NOT funny. Annoying, irritating in a white suburban kind of way and please don't give it the time of day. There's a 300+ pound black NYC Councilman who wants to ban toys from McDonald's Happy Meals. You see here's the thing, people who pass too many laws don't think they're passing too many laws and that's the root of the problem. I was doing some research on feral cats the other day and came across "Glendale CA woman evicted from apartment for feeding feral cats". Dunno why but animals seem to be a polarizing topic for alot of folks, people seem to either love 'em or hate 'em. Andrea Peyser of the New York Post, she's a great writer otherwise and don't know why but she's firmly in the latter category. So we gotta cover everything in the Law these days, stray cats, Happy Meals, pissing in the woods ("no human excreta may be deposited within 500 feet of any marsh, spring or watercourse...," see I still remember my fishing license handbook after all these years). I think what Trump is saying is we got a feral president, probably eats caterpillars and digs ball bugs from the barks of trees when he's not putting plates in his mouth:)

If it's a covert operation why are we talking about it?

Caught Chuck Todd this morning on Today in between making the coffee and feeding the cat and generally getting ready for work. Word on the street, CIA operatives on the ground in Libya getting a feel for the rebels with the whole aim of arming them the better to overthrow the Mad Dog. Congress would have fairly tight control with the funding and the whole thing affords the White House legal deniability. Now I can just picture Khadafy eating his palm dates in the morning with a cup of goat milk, a little couscous or tabbouleh on the side going over the early edition of the Ole Gray Lady. What's this a map with who doing what? how many U.S. G-men? they're talkin' smack with who? what kind of weapons, state of the art? turns on the Today show and gets filled in on the rest from Mr. Todd of what Obama's gonna do -- who what where when and how. Again why are we talking about it? why am I even blogging about it? They say the Italian media don't say shit, they talk about the Jersey Shore. Maybe there's a value in pop ephemera after all. Somebody please hit the Sheen Button!!!:)

The arc of the commentary regarding Obama and Libya

Early on when the uprising in Libya began and the rebels took some cities but then Khadafy's forces were closing in the criticism then was Obama wasn't doing enough, dithering, taking too long to decide to try to stop a massacre. Hillary was seen as the real powerbroker behind the scenes who eventually persuaded the boss to do something. She was seen as being stronger than him, probably would've been a better president and I remember a New York Post editorial or two saying c'mon Obama let's get with an official Libyan policy already or was that just my imagination? Now their editorials tend to be more critical and questioning of the Libyan situation or is that just my imagination too? So that was the arc of the commentary early on (c'mon, admit it) and now that he has an official Libyan policy and is acting on it the arc of the commentary has now changed to why Libya? what is our national interest there? do we intervene militarily everywhere where dictators oppress their people? and related questions and subissues. I'm sorry but where I come from that's known as a mindfuck. In this case criticizing him early on for not doing something and not having a coherent Libyan policy in place but then the same people criticizing him when he finally does take action with some kind of Obama Doctrine taking shape. I take it these same people would say Bill Clinton did the right thing in not doing more in preventing the Rwandan genocide. There's something in that ancient classic The Art of War by Sun Tzu about the virtue of changing positions, you see it in the workplace alot. Apparently the Rwandan non-intervention is the model to follow since the whole thing hinges on our national interest anyway. So one day Obama is criticized for not putting the U.S. front and center in a leadership role in dealing with Khadafy and practically two days later criticized for putting the U.S. there at all. One can make the case that Obama initially launched those missiles due heavily in part to the earlier criticism of his apparent indifference to the crisis and is now explaining himself in front of the nation and not too well either I might add due in large part to the criticism that came later but that's what the mindfuck does, gets you to act in mutually contradictory ways due to the influence of the critics who change their views on an almost daily basis as events unfold and you're left to fend for yourself and your critics write another column or publish another blog. I try to aim for consistency here and can't fault the president for his humanitarian instincts, a humanitarianism that is apparently irrelevant if it isn't tied in with our national security interests:)

Thoughts on radiation/cancer and the Japanese nuclear crisis

With a possibility of a looming Japanese nuclear meltdown I had this thought that I'm gonna throw out there with the complete foreknowledge that this thread will be easily proven wrong by the more learned medical folks here but this blog is more in the style of thinking out loud and so there is something I can't wrap my head around exactly. With the evacuations in certain sectors of Japan and the threat of some type of radioactive cloud drifting towards the West Coast with the Surgeon General telling us to take precautions (I don't know what this means) here it is: we use radiation to treat cancer. In one instance radiation is obviously bad for you and in the other it's the preferred mode of treatment combined with chemo. Now I know Saty will say it's the amounts or some such thing, we don't exactly nuke cancer patients but just the same many of them do look like Auschwitz survivors but this is to be expected whereas in other instances we're told in no uncertain terms to evacuate. I saw a few nights back on a news program how they are now trying to attack cancer cells in the brain with electromagnetism. It was Katie Couric's show and the initial results were promising and they showed one brave soul with his wife and he has been undergoing this experimental treatment for some time now but the reporter stressed that this treatment has to be combined with the more traditional chemo/radiation regimen and my question is why if the electromagnetism is doing a great job on its own? So why in one situation do we run away from radiation and in another embrace it? I thought it was always bad all the time but anyway there you have it:)

emotional judo, mind masturbation & other techniques of the ancient fighting skills

Channel-surfing last night and on came this commercial about animal cruelty, some animal group which does good work but I always change the channel. I'm sensitive to this stuff so it begins with some hungry and tired dog walking the sidewalk with the caption "when will I eat?" The thought occured why doesn't the cameraman or whoever is filming this give the dog a bowl of Alpo and some water? Watch me suffer to make a political point - the former abortionist turned pro-life activist Dr. Bernard Nathanson passed away Feb. 21 at his home in Manhattan. The Silent Scream, basically he was friends with an abortionist, Dr. Jay Kelinson in New York City and since the procedure was gonna be done anyway it was shot in ultrasound and the rest is history. I would have done without the title though, slightly Elvira-ish. So I was watching this NOVA/National Geographic special couple weeks back about venomous critters and they showed some guy suffering in a Vietnamese hospital after getting bit by a poisonous snake known as a krait. Seems antivenin is rather expensive there and most folks can't afford it so they hooked him up to a respirator instead so he could breathe and it takes a few weeks for the venom to run its course this way and, I don't know it's fucked up.

Does Obama care more about gay marriage than Libya? I really don't care how he's evolving, Rodan the Thinking Man. Just do Something, about Libya that is. He's the kind of person if he worked in a deli he'd be farting around in the kitchen making a seafood pastry puff and you'd have to kick him in the ass to help with the line up front.

I caught Joe Scarborough on the Today Show this morning and it reminded me once again of why I never liked the guy. He said Newt Gingrich is unelectable as president because in the past he has called Obama a socialist among other things. Joe has made a fetish out of pointing out when he feels other conservatives are being a little extreme, think McCain's daughter but less stupid. I even question whether the guy is a real conservative but if Newt's policies are good for the country I don't see a problem. At some time it was decided that it's a Bad Thing to call Obama a socialist, it's a control issue between liberals and elite conservatives like David Brooks to kind of fence us in, the whole argument from intimidation thing. It's a I Want to be Popular at Manhattan Cocktail Parties brand of conservatism, it's hip to be hip, the whole moderation is sexy thing until I'm so dull maybe I don't stand for anything anymore. BTW you can't say the work "cocktail" at Hannityland, discovered that once otherwise it'll be cut off. Reminds me of why I don't miss the place:)

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!!:))

American Idol - Season 10

I liked it, it worked. The new team of Randy Jackson, J-Lo and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler proves that a show doesn't have to be cruel to be interesting. Not having Simon is like getting out from under the yoke of a bad boss and the proceedings were much more pleasant this time around. Got the impression they let a few more go through to Hollywood than were warranted and imo a few were let through because of their compelling personal stories alone which kind of made up for their less than special renditions but whatever (you gonna say no to the guy whose Dad just survived throat cancer or the young Kosovar girl?). That 17-yr. old from somewhere in Jersey had me fooled, didn't look the part but crooned his heart out like Frank Sinatra. Benson somebody and I think the judges agreed he was the best so far, look for him to go a long way in this competition. That overemotional chick who works in a shopping mall who they had pegged only for Broadway they let through after she begged and pleaded, a decent enough voice but she definitely needs to reign it in. There was the 16 yr. old girl chock full of Personality and a good voice for her young age who said "yo yo dawg" to Randy and overall I enjoyed the evening. I'm sure you're gonna get your tv critics to nitpick the thing (Linda Stasi) but I have to say it was a'ight:)

On the shooting

In the tragic wake of the shooting last Saturday in Arizona where Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded you could almost have written the msm's script for them (actually strike the word "almost"). Channel-surfing last night and stopped to browse a little at "Meet the Press" (but only a little as I can't take much of this stuff lately) and caught key words like Tea Party (what did they have to do with it?), free speech, we have to watch the words we use, Sarah Palin (but of course!) etc. etc. This is the usual framing of the issue by the msm after such a tragic event and follows the narrative arc set by the George Tiller murder which is basically that right-wing rhetoric is ultimately responsible for these happenings. The young shooter, Jared Loughner is known to be anti-government and as soon as I read that in my morning paper the day after the massacre I already knew what the media spin would be. Now many people and groups have been "anti-government" down through the ages and many were lauded by the Left (e.g. Vietnam) so when did all of a sudden being against the government or anti-government if you will become

a bad thing?

Used to work with a Jamaican chef back in the day, always struck me as being very intelligent and he felt AIDS was invented by the U.S. government which when you stop to think about it why should there be a new disease? You had the CIA's MK-ULTRA's social experiment dosing unsuspecting citizens with the mind-altering LSD, a documented conspiracy so who's to say where one's grasp on reality ends and paranoia begins? At any rate the Moral of the Story is that assholes exist, have always existed and will always exist. It is said the Columbine shooters were obsessed with the movie The Matrix, does that mean the movie should never have been made or we can't enjoy it (although the sequels were existentially painful)? So to kind of drive the Point home here the Tea Party ain't the real problem or Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or O'Reilly or Sarah Palin or your right-wing mailman......the simple fact of the matter is the existence of the asshole a problem eternally perplexing to Mankind that dates back to the Stone Age. I don't know what makes the Asshole tick and they can wreak all kinds of havoc but if Leviathan Government uses the case of the asshole who takes matters into his own hands to say you shouldn't criticize Leviathan Government and if the media backs them up then I see that as kind of a bigger problem and I think that's the whole point actually of the predictable media commentary (I almost said coverage, 'twould be nice if the msm could just get back to coverage). It's using such tragedies for political ends and then the second point after they're done bashing conservatives becomes Gun Control. It's really why I've been reading field guides to mammals lately:)

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:)

2010 - a strange year

but Happy Holidays just the same. So I pretty much have thrown off those few extra remaining pounds so am pretty much ending the diet thing today but got to thinking about our nation's obesity epidemic and here's why it won't get any better: we get contradictory medical and social advice. Now this really should be one of the happiest times of my life, I set a goal for myself and reached it but little did I know at the time but it would also be one of the most annoying times of my life and that's because Folks-at-Large don't know how to think about this issue, they get spooky. So the country's obese among us are counseled to lose weight sooner rather than later but ALSO make sure you eat enough since running parallel to this Important Issue in the msm for the past few years has been eating disorders like anorexia and so you're a porker getting these contradictory signals and so the human mind is naturally going to still err on the side of eating a little too much and then you'll bitch about how hard it is to lose weight but not to worry because Dr. OZ tells you to nosh all day and so the cycle just repeats itself because you can't think for yourself or God forbid out-of-the-box (what's that?). What the fuck is with all the crime shows on TV? I mean you always gotta have a couple and if I were to choose I'd go with Hawaii Five-O but it's everywhere, serial killers eating Cap'n Crunch out of skulls and I hear the UMA stalker has been arrested again for bothering her. What I don't get about the whole celebrity stalking craze is where in hell is the attraction to these vapid celebrities in the first place?? I blame E.T. and Access Hollywood. Mean People Suck, you know the type, always prepared with the cutting remark like a nail file or hanky to be whipped out at a moment's notice. It's reflexive like on my first job. You know when you and a person walking from the other way don't know how to pass each other? who knows why it happens but you feel awkward and so I try to pass this old crank coming into the lounge from the other way and she goes "I sure hope you don't drive" (shooooooppp, social dart firmly embedded in neck, thank you). It's weird but you'll remember this stuff years later usually when you're drinking. I already mentioned I lost all this weight but you feel like you did something wrong. I think we're an overmedicated country right now and so you have to put up with your bipolar boss every day because she has the right to be that way. Just give me a good Charles Bronson movie at night and I'm good. Have a good one and may the New Year be even stranger.