Our inept Department of Homeland Security

They've just ended the search for any real survivors in that tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis when our own Dept. of Homeland Security sent word out that it doesn't appear to be an act of terror. Excuse me but isn't it way too early to be making these assessments either one way or the other? Why not just say it's being investigated and here's another thought, how do we know there aren't terrorists amongst us who are construction workers and bridge repairers and working with steampipes underground of major metropolises who are deliberately weakening our infrastructure or others who are tainting our food supply? Even if this were the case political correctness would be our own undoing and we'd never get to the bottom of anything, don't like working with that Muslim Con-Ed guy? you racist pig you.

The tragic I-85W bridge in Minnesota, not saying it is but what's up with our Dept. of Homeland Security making such impromptu announcements? Why does Bush even keep this Chertoff guy on, this guy who shortchanged New York City of much-needed anti-terror funds even though everyone knows Gotham is at the top of Al-qaeda targets? It's a little sketchy to me.

Big write-up in yesterday's Post about Elisabeth Hasselbeck

Written by New York Post writer Maureen Callahan it took up the better of two pages. The article, "The Survivor", points out that she has lasted longer than most of her View co-hosts, Meredith Vieira, the original Star Jones and Rosie of course. Liberalism has become so accepted these days at least in certain quarters that getting abortions and committing adultery is now considered normative, small wonder that conservative Hasselbeck comes across as an oddball for saying such erstwhile traditional things as adulterers make bad parents. Sarah D. Bunting, co-editor in chief of the website Television without Pity, has a very popular forum on "The View" in which people sound off on, it seems, mostly Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Bunting: "If I were one of the women on this show I would just be tired of her at this point. Joy Behar, I think, is even done trying with her." Funny but I find Behar's political views, or the expression of them, to be downright obnoxious with her own rigid and overly broad characterizations of conservatives (and btw most female comics are not the least bit funny). Geez, you'd think this was some supermarket job and Elisabeth was some seafood manager not pulling her weight so seriously do some people take this show. Why its continuance is basic to the survival of the Republic escapes me. Of course two of her former "Survivor" co-stars have nothing but bad things to say about her (where are they now?) and even the Donald chimes in with she is "one of the dumber people on TV and an imbecile" (pot-kettle-black). Last season "Law and Order" even had an episode where a victim of rape and murder was named Elisabeth Hassenbeck.

It's only a show, it's like she's getting the Dan Quayle treatment or something. As the libs like to say don't like it change the friggin' channel.

Chelsea Clinton for President in 2016

Keep the Dynasty of Socialism going.

Hillary clearly has Barack beat on foreign policy issues. The latest, re Monday night's YouTube/CNN debate, or is that the CNN/YouTube debate?, Hillary said he would be naive to meet with the leaders of rogue nations like Iranian putzhead Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korean madman Kim Jong Il, Syrian leader Assad and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. Hillary is clearly coming across as more manly than the rest of the bunch, she's coming across as so militaristic of late that Rudy or Whomever better think twice before going down the all leftwingers are pussies on foreign policy road. Barack though seems to be developing a John Mayer kind of foreign policy waiting on the world to change. Even though I was against the war from the start this song has always annoyed me, it's all too typical of the naive and sappy left-wing idealism of celebrities these days and I also hate him because he has lived first-hand your body is a wonderland with Jessica Simpson. As a kind of afterthought if Reagan had a MySpace page and answered a question about global warming from a talking snowman it would have lacked a certain gravitas but there we are, you might as well throw in a question on Lindsay Lohan too. The Repubs, by not participating in any of these "fun" debates (or were they even asked?) come across as the Boredom Brigade, they probably even stopped having sex years ago. I mean who can beat Obama Girl?

Pro-lifers are single-issue people? Would that were the case

The more pro-life conservatives expound on other issues the more I wish they would just stick to pro-life. Dr. Laura, a stalwart pro-life conservative woman on the radio giving traditional moral advice to the confused until one day she wrote that women should look at a man's bank account prior to making a decision to go out with him, in short the moral case for golddigging, and now where is she? I mean why sour your base with a materialistic crapshoot of a point, and then there's National Review's Rich Lowry, more useful than she but who never met a Big Business practice he didn't like and then there's that hot Asian babe, the Malkin chick, who pretty much thinks the whole anti-war movement is about giving Michael Moore a rimjob. Laura Ingraham, same deal. Now Malkin, Lowry and Ingraham are the best in the pro-life biz as far as I'm concerned, their argumentation is fresh and vital to a debate that George Will considers stale but it's the other stuff, like Laura once pooh-poohing studies that show Americans are in a blue funk mood because they're overworked and don't have enough leisure time.

Should conservatives help Obama's campaign?

He says he's a fresh face who wants to end the partisanship in Washington and solve problems, sounds good but behind his moderate mask is a doctrinaire liberal who reflexively criticizes recent conservative Supreme Court rulings having to do with affirmative action and late-term abortion. The question before the Board today - should conservatives help his campaign anyway in order to defeat Hillary? This is purely a pragmatic calculation and it's been done before, support a liberal against another liberal because you like that liberal even less, and even if Obama is the Democratic nominee any Republican contender worth his weight should make short shrift of his inexperience in the Congress and his naivete regarding foreign policy. And he's not all bad, he talks about blacks taking on personal responsibility which sounds like he has Coz as a campaign advisor, that's more than can be said for Hillary who just this past March took money from a rapper who used the n-word at least 20 times in a song. A Hillary presidency would definitely revive Rush's radio career which, let's face it, has been in the doldrums of late. Though he denies it to this day Bill launched his career and Hillary can ripen it but what's in it for the rest of us?

The New York Times has noted a small but fledgling movement of young Republican conservatives who have decided to help Obama and says it may be a harbinger of things to come. I think these people are attracted to his character not his policies, they would agree that Bill's recent condemnation of Bush's "pardoning" Scooter Libby only shows how arrogant this Washington power couple still is despite them living with the owls in Chappaqua. Barack is like opening the window to some moldy and cobwebbed attic and letting the sunshine and fresh air in, that musty old yearbook of the Clinton scandals lying in the corner, just put it on the sidewalk with the rest of the recyclables.

So please help the brother. Make checks payable to Barack Obama.....

The weight of the evidence

We've all been brought up to believe that stereotypes are

a bad thing

and so we go through life and come across situations that seem to bear out their truth at least to a degree but we know this is

a bad thought

and so we put it out of our heads until you're a chef let's say and your new black co-worker comes in everyday and the first thing on her mind is "did you make the fried chicken yet?" and you say "I saved a piece for you" and then you're frying some chicken tenders just to give them some color before you shoot them in the oven but she's bothering you again and you say "they're still raw, just wait 10 or 15 minutes."

I've heard many chefs say that Jewish customers in restaurants kvetch all the time. Jackie Mason even jokes about this, they complain about EVERYTHING even the salt and pepper shakers. Now this ain't a prejudiced thing 'cause I hear even politically liberal chefs say the same thing or

Spanish guys and their libidos which never seems to take a holiday.

Gays never talk effeminate of course or have limp wrists,

feminists are all fun and games of course and just love men in between all the heavy politicking. Just don't follow them around or have your florist send them a bouquet.

It's just the weight of the evidence, know what I'm saying?

I know I'm supposed to blog about Scooter Libby

this is what some talking head said last night on "The Jim Lehrer Newshour", that the blogosphere would be going wild, rightie bloggers and liberal bloggers shootout at the OK Corral, but I'm an independent blogger, ok? Bush did the right thing by commuting Libby's 2 1/2 year prison sentence and so let's put it to bed. If this is the sexiest thing the blogosphere can come up with these days then I'll go elsewhere for my kicks. I really think Bob Novak rocks though.

Here's the deal. If electing a woman president is so important why don't the other male Democratic candidates get out of the race altogether, and that includes you Barack, and throw their weight and resources behind Hillary? No primary, ok, just achieve the last crowning achievement of the women's rights movement and put her in the Oval Office already or maybe this is just paying lip service to feminism. It's like step aside guys and put into practice what you've been saying all these years. Why does Hillary even have any male competition? This is so sexist. It's like Barack saying he's all for a "woman's right to choose" even to the point of partial-birth and then he picks up the abortion instruments and says "I can't do this, you're killing me."

How 'bout the Republicans putting up Condi Rice and making the race a real catfight? Rudy's face looks like that skull and crossbones emblem you used to see on the bottle of rat poison under your Mom's sink that used to scare you as a kid. We can do better than this and we must. Jungle fever, make it a chick thing is all I'm saying.

Affirmative action

As a conservative I'm naturally against it but a better deal for everyone would be if, instead of a government program based on race we had an informal system based on economic need this way poor whites on welfare would benefit as well as blacks and Hispanics. At any rate one of the unintended consequences of affirmative action as it is today is that, on occasion, you do get someone who totally does not belong in that job, everyone knows it and at first you're mystified that nobody seems to talk about it and that nothing is done, it's a classic elephant in the living room moment. This is not the goal of the proponents of race-based hiring but I've seen it on at least a few occasions and that's when your Peter Principle kicks in.

Isaiah Washington, the black actor on "Grey's Anatomy" who made the gay slur against co-actor T.R. Knight, has been fired from the show and the man is angry, said he did everything they told him to re atoning and that they now want to have Knight's character as a centerpiece of the show so this is interesting, apparently gay men trump African-American men in the victim stakes only it took a while longer to fire Washington than CBS Radio did in canning the I-man, well he was just a rickety old white cowboy anyway. If T.R. had responded in kind and called Washington the n-word it would have had a kind of karmic cancelling effect or something and would have confounded and stunned the whole pc crowd, what to do? two members of historic and time-honored victim groups have engaged in name-calling! do we fire them both and so not have a tv series at all or send them both off for reprogramming? Barring that maybe all T.R. has to do is question global warming and become pro-life and he can join the growing ranks of the damned.

If Hillary wins it all you can thank Ken Starr

Had he done a better job with Whitewater and how Hillary made 200G on cattle futures instead of issuing a report on Blowjob-gate I don't even think she'd be pursuing the Grand Prize right now and yet conservatives still refuse to admit this, that it was wrong to impeach Bill Clinton for lying in a sexual harassment case when they haven't been big fans of sexual harassment law all along ever since the days of Anita Hill (neither have I but z is a very consistent writer). Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate, any other 'gate would have done fine except for Sexgate. Makes you wonder a little about Ken Starr, was he really on their team all along? Memo to conservatives, if you haven't noticed the mores of this country have changed drastically over even the last decade. Going after a sitting president solely on a sex charge (sorry Sean, I know, lying about sex) elicits more sympathy from the voting public these days than it would have in the past. There is a reason why the GOP keeps staying the Stupid Party.

The Sean Bell shooting case should come to trial soon. He was the 23-year old black man who was shot to death on Nov. 25, 2006 by cops in Queens NY after a bachelor party at the seedy Kalua strip bar, a gun, drug and prostitute-infested joint. He was to be married that same day. Two of his friends who were also in the car with him that morning were shot but survived and two of the four officers who fired some of the 50 bullets were indicted by a grand jury. I submit this - you're minding your own business and walking down the street, you're not breaking any laws, your chances of being shot and killed by a cop are infinitesmal at best, there's a better chance of Yoko Ono putting out a good album. There's also the ambience of crime in poor black urban areas to consider and cops are on edge, an angle the black activists never focus on. NYPD guidelines say a police officer cannot fire his weapon at a moving vehicle even if it is being used as a deadly weapon. The same guidelines don't say what a cop can do to save his life in such a situation. Careerwise I would not like to be a cop, a pimp gets more respect.

I'm the Sea Captain of my porno ship

Christopher Hitchens is all the rage right now with his atheist chic called God is Not Great but he doesn't offer a workable alternative to the world's faith systems maybe because there is none. The religion of Man teaches that Work is the main purpose of Life, the true Christian would say you were not born to be a drone. This is why it disturbs me that conservatives are ballyhooing the election of French President Nicholas Sarkozy with his promise to abolish the 35-hour workweek, the cons, if they haven't forgotten their social conservative roots, would say a work state is a godless state. Man, as well, has not be able to cure the Big One yet, cancer, and so Hitchens' philosophy of secular humanism doesn't work for me, why would I put on a pedestal a creature that overworks his fellow creatures and has stopped curing the ailments that afflict them? He's entitled to his opinions, it's just a poor substitute is all.

The work state leads to that tempting voice of nihilism, that shadowy figure on a sunny day that whispers in your ear until you agree that life's a bitch and then you die. So how do atheists like Hitch give meaning to it all? The grand theme of my blog - life is to be enjoyed and not just endured - is, in this sinner's humble view, more to be fulfilled in a balanced Christian life than in any secular system. I would submit that a person who enjoys sex more than he works understands the Meaning of it All better than some executive who works late and then has perfunctory sex when he goes home. These corporations have meetings - "ok, put him in charge of cheese" - and then you're like a mouse in a maze, "go find the cheese." Tantra or Kama-Sutra doesn't interest them, how can it if you don't have time to read or watch your kid's Little League game?

I was driving through the country the other day and noticed a little cultural trendoid, porn shops sprouting up next to places of worship, schools and parks where mothers take their kids. Used to be you had to put on a raincoat and head towards the wharf past the opium dens for your jollies but there he was, the big young blond manager of his very own porn emporium, the Proud Captain, a product of a system endorsed by Hitch that shows no deference whatsoever to Christian sensibilities.

The Sea Captain, standing tall, standing proud.

Bloomy the RINO

So now the erstwhile Republican Mayor of Gotham, Michael Bloomberg, has become an Independent so he can make the run in an already crowded field. It's not just that he echoes the Cinderella morality of today's blog title that I'd never vote for the guy, he's also living proof of the eternal truth of the Peter Principle. Take his latest, his traffic congestion pricing plan. From 6AM-6PM anyone who drives a motor vehicle into Manhattan below 86th Street gets slapped with a fine, $8 for cars and $21 for trucks, and this applies every day! Now trucks need to make deliveries to businesses during these hours and his plan, if implemented, would adversely affect business. NJ Governor Jon Corzine is being polite about it all and pointing out the pitfalls from his point of view but nobody seems willing to call the guy NUTSO and so I'm watching all the pundits on the morning shows today and they're all jazzed up about this guy who doesn't even know how to manage a large metropolis.

Hill and Bill's Sopranos video, I'd be really grasping to have a problem with this. We definitely need more humor in our political process and in life in general. I give it a thumbs up, two snaps and a circle.

The mouth is the best form of birth control

(get your mind out of the gutter) Within the past few years I've worked with 2 or 3 women, they're not unattractive by any stretch, and I thought to myself why can't I fantasize about them? It all reminds me of that old Henny Youngman quip, "I know you have to be somebody but why do you have to be you?" There are too many nice looking women with bad personalities out there, you're like how the hell did you come to be you? I am now convinced it all has to be part of the Master Plan, the Divine Cosmology, to give less comely women a fighting chance.

Bad sex leads to bad choices, this is my working theory to account for our high abortion rates. It's like when you have too much Scotch on a hot summer evening and then have weird dreams all night and then wake up in the morning all out of sorts or, if you're a man, you break down and rent a porno made by some retard, which pretty much describes over 90% of porn anyway, and so now you're angry at the producer, more angry at the video store manager who buys anything, and most of all you're angry at yourself,

where is the judgement?

For me good sex should not lead to the destruction of a fetus. I cannot separate the two, they are inextricably linked, the idea of potential feticide would just kill the mood for me and I've heard many other men from all shades of the political spectrum on the issue say the same thing. It's just not

sexy

now write an article about THAT Cosmo!

The Dark Cave of the Past - 1961 was a very bad year

From the New York Post TV Week for 6/12-23, Prime Time Adam Buckman, "TV jukebox pumps up summer shows":

"...'Mad Men' is the best new show of the summer. This series depicts the world of Madison Avenue advertising in 1961...For 'Mad Men', which premieres July 19, they have recreated the chauvinistic (emphasis mine) world of mid-town Manhattan at the dawn of the 1960s. People smoke all over the place - at their desks, in restaurants, even in elevators. Electric typewriters and push-button phones are considered the latest in 'new technology.' Everybody drinks, even during the day, and the men shamelessly harass their female co-workers, none of whom are co-equals."

So there you have it, the pc view of the Past as unmitigated Evil (the only thing missing from Buckman's commentary is back-alley abortions). This is the way men behaved when left to their own devices in those days without our current progressive legislation, new laws always being a necessity of course. Men of the Past being gentlemen was all a big hoax after all like Loch Ness. Puritanism is definitely the way to go, I mean smoking and drinking and flirtation in the office?? Call Mayor Bloomberg!! You can't come up with anything good about the Past you pc'ers? like, oh I don't know, intact families and low crime rates?

and why is the New York Post, widely considered the only truly conservative paper around these days, throwing around liberal buzzwords like homophobic (if homophobic means analphobic I plead guilty, got a problem with that)? And what's up with the word "preggers" now peppering Page Six, I mean that is sooooo gay. Just the other day some gay guy was reading about the latest celeb being preggers and said "that's way too gay for me."

Today's blog

Sometimes I wish I were a recluse with money.

People who don't go to the doctors all the time only when they really really really have to have quietly accepted their mortality and come to terms. It is the secular humanists who have to protect their health at all costs, after all after this life what is there? There was once a book called The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker which had as its working thesis that practically everything we do in our culture is a denial of this very brute fact of our existence. People who die young because of bad habits like smoking and heavy drinking, is this tragic or merely unfortunate? Depends on how you view eternity I guess.

Mental disorders, are they always bad? Yes, judging by all those corny health textbooks we had to read in high school but I submit a person with OCD is a better and more efficient worker and if he runs any kind of food establishment and the health inspector is due the next day the chances are very high his business will pass. I know a chef who admits he's been hyper with ADHD ever since he was a kid and he says it helps him in the kitchen. Mental aberrations, make them work for you (caveat - though not in the Pugach sense!).

The National Review, every time some left-leaning literary figure dies they always seem to underrate his work (or is this just my overly active imagination?). Happened with the late playwright Arthur Miller of Death of a Salesman fame, he was no better than a high-school playwright at best according to an NR contributor, and now with the passing of novelist Kurt Vonnegut. I guess according to NR you can't be a great writer if you lean too far to the left so what are we to have, only right-wing lit? Don't bash greed, better to write about nothing, certainly not your own passionate convictions.

Young male Spanish deli managers - they're on top of you, they're behind you, they're humping you, you're taking a dump and they're paging you. Is this how they are in bed?

RE Today's Blog, to quote Dennis Miller, "of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" (it's a blog after all).

Memorial Day

OK, pet peeve time.

Put the memorial back into Memorial Day. Stores like Macy's started this a long time ago with their Memorial Day sales events and then we started celebrating the day not where it fell on the calendar but stuck it on a Monday so as our spoiled culture could enjoy long weekends and then crowd the beaches like a bunch of sardines and not even swim in the water because it's still too cold. In a word, fun.

They did this with Washington and Lincoln, attached it to Saturday and Sunday and then just whitewashed the whole thing by calling it President's Day. Um, excuse me but we shouldn't honor all presidents like this, most of all Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. It's like they wanna break everything down from its original meaning. Kind of like a, ahem.....

conspiracy

(calling Robodoon)

Who will be the next poor mofo sent up sh*t's creek without a paddle?

Mel Gibson
Michael Richards
Isaiah Washington (almost up the creek if he does the right thing, if you know what I mean)
Don Imus

we're due

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is safe, and that includes our beloved Bob Newhart (careful Bob).

The man was definitely controversial, no question about that

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007, RIP

If you're controversial this simply means that not everyone agrees with you so in this sense all of us are controversial to a degree. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority made it his business to add his very passionate voice regarding issues of life and death, porn and gay "rights", so it's only logical that many many people would take issue with this just the same way that a person who advocates for the things he was against is also by definition controversial since many people will disagree with him but, for the msm, it's as if controversy only cuts one way. A conservative is always controversial but a liberal never is. Got it now? libs are by nature non-ideological peacemakers and conservatives are polarizing figures. Now I never agreed with everything Falwell stood for, I think boycotts of tv shows smack of censorship and draw needless attention to otherwise worthless products, but he never did anything outside the law here, boycotts are our constitutional right as the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are always calling for them when it suits their own political liberal agendas.

Just my .02 on the Rev. Falwell's passing.

Is it all just a case of bad karma?

See, this is why I could never be an atheist/secular humanist, is THIS all there is? This is definitely not IT. Secular humanism promises a paradise on earth so unless you feel that grabbing your lunchpail at 5:30 in the morning and catching the bus to work is what IT's all about you're missing the BIGGER PICTURE. This ain't IT and all the major world faith systems understand this.

Someday someone will explain it all to us. Some guy'll be in the mall and some strange and enigmatic figure will approach him and they'll sit at a table in the food court and talk. "Do you know why your job sucks and you can't get a woman?" The poor slob is all ears now as for years he's been searching for a workable theory to explain it all. "It's because in a former life you were (a) Ghengis Khan, (b)Attila the Hun, or (c)a lowly guard at Auschwitz." You feel better now and go off to the cineplex to catch "Spider-Man 3" or some other escapist flick. It's at least more tolerable now to know that you're in the flip-side to The Secret and in your next life you'll be getting that poolside massage by that Asian whore...sorry, Asian beauty, never mind, it's hard to think in a pc world but you get the point.

However, if, on the other hand, you wake up in the morning and go to the bathroom and have a clean break you just know it's going to be a good day.

Conservatives are now fully Sarkazmic

Nicknamed "Sarko" by the Right, Nicolas Sarkozy won the French presidential election Sunday night over socialist Segolene Royal. In today's New York Post Ralph Peters writes: "Nicolas Sarkozy, the president the people defiantly chose, is the most inspiring French leader since Charles de Gaulle's fall from power 40 years ago." Um Ralph, inspiring French leader? I thought he was still president-elect but no matter, the Right has a full-blown case of Sarkastic Priapism (you know, it won't go down in 4 hours so see a doctor). Peters then quotes Sarko and this chestnut: "It is hard to exaggerate the damage done to France by the 35-hour work week. How can anyone think that you're going to create wealth and jobs by working less?" Almost echoing this verbatim the Post editorial itself (May 8) says: "He (Sarko) says, rightly, that France's 35-hour work week has devastated the economy - producing a nation of slouchers" (emphasis mine). So, if you decide to work 9-4:30 everyday, that's seven hours of work minus, say, a half hour for lunch, for five days out of seven, you're a sloucher ruining your nation's economy. You see Beth, it's not just conspiratorial thinking on my part, Republicans really do get off on work and invalidate those, like their more religious-minded conservative brethren, who rightly point out that overwork is now the leading cause of divorce in the U.S. The materialistic secular conservatives, whom Bill O'Reilly never mentions, now rule the party and the more social conservatives are the only members of their own party that take that Darn Book too seriously, that work is a punishment from God for the original defiance of Adam, and you're not supposed to enjoy it that much, it's a little weird and not normal.

Beth, the more I listen to the Right these days the less I like the Right. I'm moving out of the Macabre House on the Right, maybe become a political recluse who never votes. Where do I belong?

Everybody jumps the shark sooner or later

It's the natural progression of things as in

"24" - it's always the same, Jack in a bind, Jack working outside the playbook, "your first priority is to arrest Jack and bring him back to CTU", the Big Dilemma - "Jack, this is Chloe, the president's head is going to explode and you have exactly 30 seconds before it does Jack" all the while he's on top of some train about to go through a dark tunnel, an archvillain who somehow escapes the tightest security at CTU, but this season's there's a twist, Jack's bro and Dad turned out to be evil working behind the scenes with the terrorists, Jack even tortured his own sibling and Pops murdered him with an IV injection 'cos he felt he was gonna spill the beans. Even the two executive producers now confess this season sucks.

Bill O'Reilly - insinuated in not so subtle terms that Rosie should be fired from "The View" instead of taking the earthy view that free speech sometimes comes with a small price tag and so move on.

Rosie - can't seem to settle down at any one gig. Maybe add ADHD to her depressive state as gets bored easily and can't stick with one job. Not the best judgement either, leaves "The View" shortly after her famous feud with Trump and so gives the illusion of his omnipotence. After her announcement he went home and Melania caught him grinding into the bed.

WCBS News in NY - last night had on "5 Sex Tips to Save Your Sex Life", it must be hard on the anchorperson who thinks he/she may have landed a serious journalistic job and then is forced to make cutsie-poo jokes after the report airs, "harharhar, get that Barry White music out." 5 Sex Tips you can read about in any Cosmo, #4 will give him a heart attack.

Any Matrix sequels

Sean Hannity - there are other subjects besides the war, take suggestions and stop acting like anyone who disagrees with you is evil.

...to be continued...

The average person is clueless, put it that way

I've had people say to me over the years I'm very smart, intelligent. You get this at work sometimes, ooh he's a really bright boy but I am convinced that most of us use only about 10% of our minds as they say. I would say that on my brightest days I rise to the mid-level on the intelligence scale but maybe I come across as a genius, an intellectual supernova because the rest of the people I come across are so dumb. I know this can be seen as a hubristic blog but I don't know how else to put it. I'm no George Will but people continually put me on some kind of pedestal. It's like the person at work who asks you a simple question, "how do you spell cat?" - well, kat of course. Maybe it's all the mind-numbing porn out there. On its May 1st broadcast the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" had a segment on all the millions of men out there who are addicted to Internet porn. Now the real problem for me is not that there are millions of men out there surfing Web porn but that they have no aesthetic standards at all to judge the stuff, they are addicted to the mindless. At least an obsessed devotee of Marilyn Monroe has a loftier ideal in place, him I can talk and relate to.

Lucifer playing chess with a bunch of idiots, that's how I see the world at the moment. We had a recent tragic case in NY where a man who was to go on trial for rape killed the woman who was to testify against him. The logic of a psycho, of course it never dawned on our wronged man that rape is wrong in the first place but now to prevent his rape trial he is now going on trial for murder. Or Muslim radicals blowing themselves up when their leaders never do. It's like Lucifer going on "Jeopardy" with the clueless and blowing them all away.

Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here.

I am a solipsistic, self-absorbed, self-pitying, narcissistic and vindictive gay American

I am so not on Jim McGreevey's side in his nasty custody battle with ex-wife Dina Matos McGreevey regarding their young daughter Jacqueline. McGreevey, former Democratic governor of New Jersey, resigned the statehouse in August 2004 when scandal swirled when he, um, tapped his lover Golan Cipel for the job of Director of the NJ Dept. of Homeland Security. He wrote a coming out book about it all called simply The Confession in which he admits that, even when he was acting governor, he had quickie and anonymous gay sex at various rest stops along the Interstate. His ex-wife has now come out with her own version of their marriage, Silent Partner. McG wants little Jackie to spend at least half her time with him and his male lover, Australian money manager Mark O'Donnell, and in court papers filed he says her intent to block this shows her "irrational fears of his sexuality" (or perhaps all too rational fears). Quoth he:

"She is in deep denial. Why would she question what I have made clear? To try and lessen my gayness by making me bisexual is a clear form of homophobia." So now calling someone a bisexual is some kind of slur? and how did he have sex with her all those years?

What is going on in this guy's head?

How to push people right or left, political mind games

Rush bashing liberals, the liberals say we're not like that and so even they get pulled rightward instead of saying everything he says about us is true. The more they insist they are not pro-abortion the more obvious it is they are but they get sucked into Rush's rightward vortex and will say things like abortion is a bad thing, I don't know anyone who is for abortion, do you? never met the guy, must be a psycho or something to be for feticide. So you go against the criticism by moving in the direction of the critic and the same thing happens to the conservatives, the more the libs paint them as rabid anti-abortionists the more reasonable, dare I say, liberal they become, "oh no, even if Roe is overturned tomorrow rest assured most states will still allow the procedure and the whole country was moving in the direction of, em, reform on abortion policy, wait a minute, did I just say reform."

Beth is the only one I understand.

The masculine/feminine culture debate revisited

I blogged about this not too long ago but it has resurfaced in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Conservatives Michelle Malkin and Jay Nordlinger and now libertarian Neil Boortz are saying that when a group of people are threatened by one long gunman you're going to die anyway and so the best course of action would be to rush the guy and thus limit the carnage. Makes sense to me but Lionel, who recently said that he wants to hear and read EVERYTHING, said this is beneath contempt. Maybe his point has to do with how Malkin, Nordlinger and Boortz presented their argument as somehow blaming the victim or what he called "the wussification of America" but I sure hope he's not actually criticizing the validity of their point. It's true fear is a great paralyzer in such a situation and you almost need a telepathic consensus to pull this thing off, hey wait a minute, that happened on Flight 93 that was headed straight to Washington on 9/11, the heroes on board all gave up their lives but a far greater tragedy was averted (hard to see it this way in the context of the other similar events of that day). In a way we have become a nation of victims and I don't mean this disparagingly in any way, it's simply a statement of fact whether Malkin and company present it politely or not. So why is pushing people to defend themselves more so controversial? Why can't schools hold classes in how to defend yourself and others in such a situation? This is another reason why I much prefer a masculine to a feminine culture.

What's wrong with building a little mystery?

Since the subject of the loner is once again in the news here's another case where the past is considered a bad thing. The loner of the past was a mysterious individual but in a more positive and romantic sense than today, sexy even, in the movies he is the rugged individualist, the drifter through town. But when you get rid of the past you get rid of its poetry, its magic. So while it is important to talk about this national tragedy in terms of failures of security and whatnot let's clear the ground first of all media bias and debris against the past, let's rid ourselves of hostility against whole groups of people who aren't really bothering anyone. What the man lacked who did this terrible thing was a universal and objective moral code to live by which is why people with all types of grievances against society don't commit these acts.

The real issue is Right and Wrong.

Should we criminalize the past?

just like in 1984 and Brave New World

The past was about real romance, not match.com. The past had a breadth and depth to it that the modernists don't know they're doing away with. The past climate that is said to have produced an Imus is said to be bad and the past, pre-Clarence Thomas, that encouraged men to ask the same woman out more than once was bad too. Conservatives are about preserving the past and liberals want to change it. Why is the past bad?

From the New York Times for April the 14th, "Shock Talk Without Apologies", by Robert Wright. He's all for political correctness and feels Ann Coulter should be held to the same standard as Don Imus but the liberals of a bygone era said free speech means nothing if it doesn't protect the ugly and offensive. If people like Mr. Wright had their way things would be, well, perfectly boring. Anyway he makes this rather common but flawed point when he says:

"If social harmony is the goal sanctions should be focused along the ethnic fault lines that are most precarious. The black-white boundary is such a line given both the history of oppression and ongoing economic disparities between blacks and whites" (emphasis z's). I've lived close to a public housing project for much of my life and have noticed just as many poor whites living there as blacks. I myself, white as snow, have never lived high on the hog, most of the time I struggle like the rest of us. I wish I had a little more economic disparity to boast about, I would't have had to sell my used fishing boat a few years back because it was like having two cars.

Abandoning the past is not progress.

Finally some good writing on TV for a change

I've only sampled a few episodes of "30 Rock" on NBC, starring SNL's Tina Fey and actor Alec Baldwin, but the script crackles and pops with some bold writing. The show is about the goings on and inner workings at some sketch comedy show. The Tina character doesn't get along with some black guy and the guy says "you don't like me because I'm black" to which she replies "no, it's because you're a jerk. Why can't we all just not get along?" In another episode she falls madly in love with some guy she saw at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting who spills every secret in his life to his group and she later says she was faking alcoholism to meet him, "ok, I'm a real nut-Anne Heche job". Then to make it up to him she spills some of her own secrets like "come next election I'm going to tell my friends I'm voting for Barack Obama but secretly vote for McCain."

anything politically incorrect is dear to z's heart.

That other 9-11 conspiracy theory

Though for the record it can be said the Bush Administration never officially said the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein planned or had anything to do with 9/11 the idea that our campaign in Iraq was to avenge the events of that fateful day somehow took firm root in the popular conservative mind. A co-worker of mine, from the time the war started, said good, we're finally doing something about bin-Laden! On the other hand Bush never cleared the air on the matter and let the conspiracist notion float to the point where today we still think we're fighting a War against Terror that is connected to al-Qaeda and 9/11. It's a War against Terror in the sense that it's far better to have another democracy in the Middle East besides Israel but this is in a general sense. A real test for whether you are a true neocon - if you had to choose (and you can't choose both) which would you prefer, that we did what we did and captured Saddam and that the Iraqis hanged him or that OBL face ultimate justice?

conspiracy theories - and we make fun of Charlie Sheen. Now Rosie is a dope, she has demonstrated this well, of that there is no longer any doubt, but Bill O'Reilly is strongly hinting that she should lose her job over her saying that the U.S. government planned 9/11. This is very dangerous to a free country, that only those who think inside the box like O'Reilly should have full unabridged free speech rights, I mean where would the z-man be? This is very selfish Bill, very selfish.

I mean it's one thing to be a little edgy

Leftie commentator Christopher Hitchens has just published a new book damning all the world's religions, yeah, he's that same Hitchens guy who once wrote a book bashing Mother Theresa in The Missionary Position. Being edgy without being charming is an unpardonable mannerism of style, you're just a hater, you may as well just flush yourself down the toilet. I mean is there anyone or anything this man likes? He's like Dante's Lucifer in his Inferno in the innermost core of hell encased not in fire but in a block of ice. You'd hate to bring such a guy to see your aging father in some nursing home - "yeah, when I get in that condition I'll tell ya what, you all can have some fun and have a game throwing peanuts in my mouth." Nice guy.

When celebrities bitch and moan it ain't the same thing

"Today" show co-host Meredith Vieira is now complaining that she has to get up at 3 in the morning every weekday and be driven into Manhattan at 4:30 to do her show. She calls it sleep deprivation but I ain't feeling her pain. I too get up early every day but I don't have my lack of sleep compensated by millions of dollars a year. Celebs also court fame but hate the paparazzi. I ain't defending them but stop acting like Britney and Lindsay and Paris in public, be low-key and operate under the radar. I don't recall seeing too many stories and photos about Danny Aiello.

24 is starting to resemble a bad comic book

Milo has taken an interest in Nadia. Now they both have very important jobs to do at CTU preventing the End of the World As We Know It but somehow Milo sees himself as God's gift to the female species and cornered this Islamic hottie last week and planted a nice wet one on her face and she seemed to like it. I found the whole thing annoying, it's not the z-man's style, and then there's President Wayne Palmer who has been working diligently to foil Vice President Noah Daniels' plan to nuke the Middle East. Palmer keeps asking his doctor for adrenaline shots to keep him from lapsing back into a coma and letting Daniels take charge of foreign policy even though this is raising his blood pressure through the roof. Palmer didn't like Daniels calling him weak and decided to launch the nuke strike anyway to prove what a man he is. This Oval Office definitely needs a Dr. Phil type. The show is just jumping the shark every week and it wouldn't surprise me if this is 24's last real season. It's more a graphic novel now than a drama, wrap it up and call it a season, put it on DVD and put something else on next January.

Some people got upset because they lost their jobs

Travelgate was of course the nefarious work of the VRWC but today's AG scandal just bores me no end, I DON'T CARE, watching the news these days is like prison boredom. Most of the msm are now owned or run by corporations and so it's all the same product. The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, for example, reports uncritically on anything coming out of that formidable monolith known as the cancer industry. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer is the most objective, nonbiased mainstream organ of the press out there today precisely because PBS is not beholden to corporations, it is run by the public so to speak although for some reason you get alot of queen stuff on this channel at which time I surf on over to the Home Shopping Network.

The more modern a society becomes the more laws we pass. We like to feel nurtured and protected by the State especially women which is why they vote so heavily Democratic as compared to men. There's nothing like getting that ripe government teat overflowing with milk and honey. Laws are commonly passed of which we have no knowledge and what would be our views on burgeoning legislation are not always solicited. Congress has to relevant at all times in every nook and corner of our lives. We'll never get back what we lost, that original vision of the Founding Fathers of minimal government, our loss.

Secular Humanism - man is a god

A god, given thirty years starting when President Nixon declared an all-out war on cancer, would have cured it by now. This is not to put down all those sincere scientists diligently working for a cure but to make the case that secular humanism, or what Bill O'Reilly calls the secular-progressive movement, exalts and celebrates man but does not acknowledge his limitations (and also by extension his propensity for evil). This is brought to mind by the recent news that the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has a return of her breast cancer and now White House spokesman Tony Snow also has a return of the very cancer he had thought he beat a few years ago.

It's time to turn the page on the chemo and the radiation. I've known a few people who've had cancer and passed away and it seems that once they go for the conventional "treatment" it's pretty much a death sentence, the pattern is always the same, they have hope of improvement but in a few weeks time at best they are gone. Now a more conspiratorial-minded person might see this all as a subtle form of euthanasia but as for myself I open up the question - in such cases does the original cancer kill the patient or is it the "therapy"? This is why I don't give any money to the various cancer societies, I feel that one day chemo/radiation will be seen in the same light that electro-shock therapy is today, an attempt to do good because we really don't have all the answers and are desperate but barbaric nonetheless.

We now know that we all have genes in our bodies that can cause cancer to develop, such genes are called proto-oncogenes. Science is looking for the triggers but one theory goes that once a person wants to die the body breaks down. It's like the brain is a computer and sends out a program for everything to self-destruct. Perhaps this is a more holistic and philosophical approach but it doesn't bode well for the secular-progressives that the last dread disease we were really able to do something about was polio.

Man is a wonder in many ways but I'm with the Rev. Pat Robertson on this one, I can't worship such a creature and the movement based on it. We need something outside of ourselves and that something is usually called God. Man has an apparently limitless supply of opportunities for letting you down.

Broward County ME Joshua Perper's Sylvia Browne moment

Though she died of a drug cocktail of no less than nine (!) different prescription drugs including chloral hydrate and methadone the coroner assures us that foul play was not involved in the tragic Anna Nicole Smith case, not only that it wasn't even suicide which end a reasonable person might draw. Seminole tribal Police Chief Charlie Tiger seconds the motion and says no cause for concern here (would twenty prescription drugs in a person's system be the barest minimum for concern?). In the wake of the controversial Schiavo case it is now the politically correct thing to do to go out of our way not to demonize people even if this means we should ask far more questions than we do or even that justice has to take a back seat to sensitivities. To this day we don't really know with any metaphysical certitude what caused Terri to collapse on that fateful morning of Feb. 25, 1990 and likewise we cannot state with any metaphysical certitude, as Broward County ME Joshua Perper has done, that Anna Nicole's death at such a young age was purely an accident. Is our legal and justice system no longer intellectually curious anymore? Is enabling a person's drug dependency no longer a crime? Is it just easier these days to let the dead rest with their secrets? WHY must I rely on sources like the National Enquirer for really vital new information in the case?

What of Howard K. Stern?

The prisons are full of innocent people

I've never gotten greed. I mean I can understand lust but greed is well over my head, if I had 1/20 or even 1/30 of the salary of ex-Tyco chief Dennis Koslowski in his prime I'd be more than happy, you wouldn't hear a peep from me for the rest of my life, I might even be in a charitable mood and charter a few private jets and get the people subjugated under Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe the hell out of there (hey W is he on your list of foreign leaders to be overthrown? didn't think so). You can be warm-blooded but help the poor but greed just feeds on itself and devours your soul and it is not for nothing that the Good Book says the love of money is the root of all evil (I'd like to say simply money but people keep correcting me) and I'd rather go before the Lord in the end as poor as I am. But there was Mr. Koslowski in prison garb chatting with Morley Safer last night on "60 Minutes" (Morley still remembers what he was doing the day Honest Abe was shot). Now an innocent person wrongly sent to prison would be more angry and indignant about the whole affair but Kos just rather blithely said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "yeah, you know, I was railroaded." He said the timing of his trial for grand larceny was bad what with the other big corporate scandals in the news at the time, the Enron boys and Worldcom. He pretty much chalked it up to here he was, a big fat corporate pig CEO being judged by a group of average people, you know, how could there be any other outcome?

Our prisons are teeming with innocent people, it's a national scandal.

The age of voter romanticism

With his interesting multi-ethnic makeup he's Tiger Woods with a better personality but in a far more rational world a one-term Democratic Senator from Illinois would never be taken seriously as a presidential contender. What the rational pragmatists don't understand though is that when you're in love with somebody nobody else will do ("if I can't have you I don't want nobody baby, if I can't have you..."). To be sure this is in large measure the same romantic spirit that drives Rudy's supporters but in his case he is at least far more competent and capable. Barack Obama is too young and inexperienced to handle the world right now in its present state but that's besides the point. He gives you that magical feeling that McCain and Edwards are incapable of. The Goracle (to use a John Podhoretz phrase) might be a movie star now but he couldn't inspire lust in a woman going through a twenty year dry spell (and we're to believe he and Tipper were the inspiration for Love Story)?. Now Barack working in a Giuliani administration, the two of them together, now that's dreamy.

The MSM on the couch

It is a major theme of this blog that everything can be psychoanalyzed and so let's dispense with the myth that we have an objective press in this country (the media professor Marvin Kalb's position), there is no such beast whether we are talking about FOX News or CNN which makes Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' recent refusal to participate in a FOX debate all the more hilarious. It would be far more honest and easier to swallow if shows like "Dateline" and "Primetime Live" preceded their broadcasts with this disclaimer - "what you are about to see is an opinion piece where facts and various 'experts' were selectively marshalled to make the case."

The msm are:

(1) Secular - religious stories important to other people are not even a blip on the msm radar screen. Interested in the life of St. Padre Pio? then go to EWTN, you niche people you.

(2) Feminist - this goes a long way towards explaining why so much of the msm are anti-porn but also pro-abortion, it's a Gloria Steinem thing. It also may help explain the media's heavy emphasis on crime stories of late especially as it affects women (men getting raped in prison ain't no big thing). In real life people may be lovesick and obsessed but in media land there is no such thing as the harmless stalker. In fact there is nothing but CRIME on CBS nowadays, real and imagined.

(3) Question authority at all turns, especially when it comes to matters of race - as in the tragic Sean Bell case which a Queens NY grand jury is now considering. On Nov. 25 of last year the 23 year old Bell, an unarmed black man, and his two friends, also black, also apparently unarmed, were shot by 5 NYPD detectives outside the Kalua strip club in Jamaica Queens. Bell, who was to be married later that day, was killed and his two friends were wounded but survived. With the notable exception of the more right-wing New York Post nobody in the NYC mainstream press bothered explaining how Bell allegedly attempting to drive over a cop who identified himself may have precipitated the whole thing. Now there is talk if the jury doesn't hand up the "right" verdict the fit will hit the shan.

Geraldo Rivera, more honest than most, when asked why he became a journalist famously said "to make the world a better place." Anyone else want to confess?

Newt dipped his toe in the lake

and it felt good but for those chilly currents swirling around Giuliani, wade slowly Newt, tuck your tummy in and splash some on your shoulders and then take your dive. The writing is on the wall, Rudy is not resonating with social conservatives, and whether Newt Gingrich's mea culpa the other day on the Rev. James Dobson's radio show was a result of

political calculation or moral epiphany (to use a George Will phrase)

he did what Rudy never did, admit to personal weakness and say, yes, adultery is technically wrong. While leading the charge for Clinton's impeachment then House Speaker Gingrich was cheating on his second wife with a woman who became his third (talk about a Giuliani parallel!) As one analyst said last night this probably won't bother Christian conservatives who are used to forgiving people anyway so long as Newt espouses a political philosophy that is close enough to theirs (I don't think it'll be a problema). You have to have a pair of brass balls (I'm talking about Giuliani here) if you're a Republican your whole life and say things like you'd pay for your daughter's abortion and then, years down the road, expect to get the wholehearted support of your base. Your political compass is in the Bermuda Triangle. Newt is smarter than that, without getting into the abortion quagmire he can simply repeat what he's always said, that Roe was a judicial abomination, a gross usurpation of the principles of federalism and leave it at that. Makes the cut in my book.

I'd vote for the guy.

Why Rudy still loses to Obama in '08

Dick Morris, as if to stay one step ahead of the z-man, says in today's column that Obama's support among the black leadership is not as strong as one might expect and that this in turn will lead to less black voter turnout for him in '08. The Morris analysis seems to be that he's too white but isn't this the same stereotype that Joe Biden recently engaged in? Is he supposed to be more like a rap star and say "a'ight"? At any rate if it's Rudy vs. Obama, as I suspect (as Beth says) that Hillary will beat herself out of the race, blacks will turn out for Obama or, put another way, they will vote against Rudy. I've heard African-Americans talk about Giuliani over the years and their dislike runs deep, he's a definite lightning rod for blacks. Blacks will not vote for him simply because, let's say there's a high-profile case of police brutality or the shooting death of an unarmed black man and the black leadership, feeling justice isn't being done, wants the Dept. of Justice to take over, it won't happen in Rudy's house.

There's also the issue of partial-birth which he supports, this hardly makes him a "moderate" on the abortion issue. He could therefore turn off pro-choice voters who want some restrictions placed on the practice but there is a new breed of conservative out there for whom the social issues are not as important as, say, the war or law and order, people like Sean Hannity. 9/11 does not entitle him to be president of the United States and anyway Americans are not going to elect someone who will prolong the Iraqi quagmire ad infinitum.

Bottom line, all things considered, by my calculus Rudy loses to Obama in '08. Take that Dick!

What exactly is our way of life anyway?

This comes to mind because conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza says that the radical Muslims don't like us for our coarse and pornographic anti-life culture. Leaving aside for the moment how could flying planes into buildings be considered pro-life D'Souza has touched a nerve with other "conservatives" tired of the culture wars, people like Victor Davis Hanson who calls it "one righty writer's terror tantrum." So how does one define our "way of life"? Are our soldiers dying in Iraq to protect legal abortion and hardcore porn? I myself would like to think they're giving up their lives to protect the nobler aspects of the American democratic experiment. Be that as it may why can't we just say Dinesh has the God-given American right to think out loud and leave it at that. Myself? I had a very bad day at work today.

Let's bring back the Charles Dickens workfare program

Remember not too many moons ago there was all this talk that we'd have more leisure time, technology would do our jobs for us? There was even talk of 3 day weekends whereas now the norm is one day off, in Japan nobody has a day off! Are Republicans running the show? Take chefs. Most chefs I talk to work something like 14 hour days on average and never take an official lunch break, 5 minutes maybe tops to wolf something down. In many jobs today, especially in retail, nobody takes 15 minute breaks anymore even though it's in the union handbooks, too much work to do and so people don't bring up the subject, your Republican boss certainly isn't going to. This is like a retrogression to an earlier era. This is a civilized, advanced society?

According to veteran conservative journalist Bob Novak the GOP, aka "The Stupid Party", doesn't want to listen to veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz who's been telling them how the public at large reacts to their ideas. Take NR editor Rich Lowry and conservative pundit-at-large Thomas Sowell, both bright guys but they now devote more and more inches of column space to defending the extremely wealthy like corporate CEOs and criticize those Democrats who take on greed (you see, even though greed is one of the 7 deadly sins it's really a good thing). Now Lowry and Sowell may have a couple of valid points to make but let's face it, the vast majority of people are nowhere near being rich themselves and will never be and can't relate to it. A Luntz piece of advice might be to talk less about the country club set and more about the middle class and even the poor. So Luntz is now persona non grata within his own party just like a Republican will be persona non grata in the next White House. People who masturbate your mind

If Mom were a supermarket honcho

I am thoroughly convinced that Moms have more wisdom than 10 men with retail business degrees combined. Take today's Game. So I'm walking through the produce department at my local supermarket and all I see at the salad bar are tons of these special platters, things with carrot sticks, celery stalks and broccoli. I ran this by my Mom. She said "men don't eat that stuff."

A group of dietetic men are sitting around the tube and one gets up and knocks the veggie platter over, "man! did you see that play?!?"People who masturbate your mind

Shrillary, the Oprah Candidate

Hillary resents that George Bush may leave her his war to deal with which would be akin to Richard Nixon saying he resented LBJ leaving him the Vietnam mess, real, um, men deal with these matters everyday. Agree or disagree with the war in Iraq presidential candidates of true fiber generally do not talk like this, if the mess persists into a Hillary term she can deal with it her way by simply bringing the troops home. This is Dr. Phil talk, imagine the late Margaret Thatcher talking like this!

People who masturbate your mind

Conservatism defined

The instant gratification generation and change as the illusion of stability

I know of many young couples who, having been married only a few years, have bought houses. Many times it is the pressure from the wife to get out of apartment living and an older generation would have said wait a while, save some money before you become saddled with a mortgage but these are people who each have a car in their own name. The idea of taking public transportation to save and getting a new car down the road, in short the very idea of suffering and discomfort in the now for long-term gain, is alien to the age that wants it all and wants it today, pay now to save later is a relic from a wiser but extinct generation. We want to make love by the fireplace with the Barry White music pumping

NOW,

this hovel we call an apartment is cramping our STYLE.

You can pretend all you want the house is yours but job security ain't what it used to be, what with the New World Order and all, and one only look through your local Pennysaver to see so many romantic illusions shattered. Conservative values this ain't, things like forbearance, sacrifice, patience, financial prudence (this is the credit-card generation after all), in other words living within your means. We'd rather be in debt than go without. Me? I now pay cash on the barrelhead wherever I go even if it means people look at me like a fossil.

liberalism = change, conservatism = keeping traditions

Conservatives, in marked contrast to liberals, as a cardinal rule do not question government or its institutions, not in the general sense anyway, or law and order, in a word, authority. Social and political stability is this movement's highest value even at the expense that they should question things more from time to time. Liberals, by contrast, seem to be all about social unrest, an attitude that began in the '60s and continues today. Witness the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the hundreds of their followers protesting last November's NYPD police shooting death of the 23 year old black man to be married that day, Sean Bell, who was unarmed but may have been trying to run a police officer over with his car. The conservative would say what was he doing at a crime-infested strip joint in a bad part of Queens at that time of night (or why hold a bachelor party at all for that matter) but all these elements of proper social order and living are irrelevant to the activists. The overriding need for political and social stability is why, to this day, conservatives can't bring themselves to question the Vietnam War and they have only now brought themselves around to accepting the historic rightness of the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s.

to be continued..... People who masturbate your mind

Change vs. stability - why change is overrated

We recently had two of our best workers leave. One, a talented and hardworking young chef was with us for a year and a half and the other was a chef/manager who stayed a couple of years longer than him. The consensus at work is that change is good, it is exciting, everyone needs a change and so good for them but in my view it can look lousy on a resume or job application. Yeah, change is jazzy for the person leaving, new adventures and mountains to climb, but to a potential employer it looks like you get bored easily with your jobs or disgruntled or something at least after a time. Stability is boring though and to preach its value over the idea of change leaves you in the definite minority. It bears noting that both of these men who left are young, in the mid to late 20's range, and so being young they haven't yet discovered the wisdom of traditional values like stability. In this sense a job is like a marriage and these two guys haven't settled down yet.

Some will say personal responsibility is the key behind the conservative movement but personal responsibility is only one thing that leads to social stability. It is stability, stability in the social and sexual sphere, in one's work, in life in general that is the real driving force behind conservatism. This is why conservatives preach marriage is between a man and a woman, why committed relationships, while not as strong as marriage, are far preferable to promiscuity, why many times it is better to stick with one job even though it may cause you no end of grief (Mom's wisdom), that boss you may hate may be transferred soon if you just hang in there. Young people like motion and movement is inherent to change, the wisdom of stability doesn't appeal to them yet as it represents inertia, sexually, socially, workwise and in every way.

They say most people start out more liberal in their earlier years and become more conservative with age. I don't know if this is true for Kirk Douglas who still feels the immature male need to brag about the sexual conquests in his youth (his controversial new autobiography Let's Face It - 90 Years of Living, Loving and Learning) but for me conservatism makes the most sense. A society without stability is chaos.People who masturbate your mind

Jesus

Thousands have died for my freedom. Only one has died to save my soul.People who masturbate your mind

I can only take so much male bonding

I've been running into some old buddies of late and we've been getting together. Couldn't have come at a better time as I've been suffering of late from severe spells of ennui which is a fancy French word describing overwhelming boredom with Life in general. So you all go out and do your thing and enjoy each other's company and reminisce but it all seems ever so slightly

gay (not that there's anything wrong with that)

You start feeling like a roving bunch of faggots, hey maybe we can, um, "rest" at one of those stops on the interstate on our way to the Mall, get a little Jim McGreevey action in. It always seems lost buddies you come in contact with later in life, never lost loves. There are no.....possibilities. You're both eating your burgers and drinking your Coronas (oh, such a manly brew!) and you look across the table at your pal and wish he had breasts and a nice pair of gams with that oh so intoxicating perfume. I can only take so much male bonding. I desperately need some McCounseling.People who masturbate your mind

Yesterday's soap opera

MSM tired of the Drama of the Clintons

On the "Today" show this morning David Gregory set the stage. He interviewed Hillary campaign spokesman Terry McAuliffe (yes that Terry McAuliffe) and kept interjecting things like her business dealings in the past, her husband's scandals and summed it up best when he said aren't we just tired of the whole drama of the Clintons by now. You see for the liberal msm the Clintons are so yesterday, we have fell madly and hopelessly in love with this new stud Barack and wouldn't it be nice if liberalism could be clean once in a while. Here here...meanwhile all the conservatives like John Podhoretz are warmly and oh so politely welcoming Hillary to the race as if to atone for their past impeachment zeal. It should be interesting without the msm on her side. Can we talk?People who masturbate your mind

When you're right you're right

Score one for the Rosie

She is right on in her remarks about "American Idol" and in particular Simon Cowell and his cruelty. This is where the culture is at right now and truth be told the Donald is a dick too, holding his "Apprentice" party at Hef's Playboy Mansion. You can't blame Melania for having a clause about affairs in their prenup, he's a god in his own head who can't take the slightest criticism. I liked Dr. Phil's thoughts on Idol, these are people who only want their 15 minutes of fame, go easy already!

So Liz Smith thinks the hit show "24" is too right-wing for her and wonders what Kiefer Sutherland's father, Donald, thinks of it all. In the season premiere the Counter Terrorist Unit of LA, CTU, negotiated with terror mastermind Fayed to give them the head of their star agent, Jack Bauer, on a plate in order to prevent future attacks on American soil. This is a right-wing position Liz? Bush wouldn't even compromise with Zarqawi to save Nick Berg's head. Ah, the perils of judging something you haven't even seen, something the libs are constantly chastising us not to do.

Great show "20/20" did last night on credit-card companies and how they love people to go into debt they can't get out of, that's how they make their millions. The show makes you angry at all those country club Republicans who were so key in passing bankrupty "reform" at the behest of these usurious credit-card companies who began whining about families being unable to meet their debt obligations. Loansharks and Republicans, perfect together. This is why the Repubs will continue to lose election after election, they no longer speak for the Common Man like they used to. People who masturbate your mind

Sean Hannity has better beer

I was asked recently by a good Internet friend why I've been so hard on Bill O'Reilly of late. Here it is. In the past O'Reilly boasted of his political independence, he was fond of saying he is not a conservative (look at his environmental views) or a liberal (he hates secularism), but now he just reflexively takes right-wing positions as with the war. I simply prefer the cooler O'Reilly of the past. The new O'Reilly simply wants to be popular and accepted on that National Review cruise ship coming up, you know, the Caribbean voyage with Thomas Sowell as chef, Rush Limbaugh at the helm, and WFB Jr. in the lounge as elder statesman smoking his pipe.

The genius of Season 6 of "24". Every time you think they're making fun of liberals and their concerns they go after conservatives and their extremism, but wait a minute those victims of ethnic profiling were terrorists plotting mayhem after all and maybe the conservatives had a point, then again the libs have a point about all those detention camps rounding up Muslims. "24" has both liberal and conservative writers, FOX and CBS can take a lesson here.People who masturbate your mind

What a Hillary victory would mean

Conservatives who want to bring the war front and center into the '08 presidential race need to consider Hillary's future Democratic victory acceptance speech as screened through the z-man truth filter:

Let's oil up the abortion machines. Let's tune 'em up, get 'em going, change the filters. Line the kids up.....People who masturbate your mind

Be careful what you wish for

or the perils of a sex-obsessed society

Bob, the partly balding mid 40-something accountant in all those Levitra and Cialis ads, the kind you don't want to imagine having a ball-slapping good time with anyone, can't salute the missus anymore but he finally has the Magic Bullet.

Bob: "Honey, it's been about 3 hours and 20 minutes and it hasn't gone down yet. Should I call the doctor?"
Missus: "Just wait a little while. Wait about 20 minutes. The threshold of the warning hasn't been reached yet and in the meantime try to concentrate on something else like world famine or Rosie O'Donnell masturbating."

(Later at the doctor's office)
Doc: "I really don't know what to tell you. I haven't been trained in this. Maybe I should just break the damn thing."

(audience - arrrrgggghhhhh)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.People who masturbate your mind

The Rosie O'Donald Feud

Rosie has a tendency to dwell on rather unimportant items in the news. She went on and on about Clay Aiken's hand covering Kelly Ripa's mouth and now, as we all know, she doesn't like the fact that the Donald gave Tara Conner, MissUSA, a second chance. One of the founding priniciples of political correctness is never forgive once somebody messes up or says or does something offensive and so I guess it is radical in this day and age to be given that second chance. I think the Donald likes the classical submissive woman, the European beauty who is feminine and subtly sexual, and Rosie represents the polar opposite, the brash and obnoxious tomgirl who kicked you in the nuts in the 4th grade. Melania is Hellenic in her beauty and Rosie looks like she works on the wharf hauling the mackerel in.

Just my .02 People who masturbate your mind

Why comics all swing from the left

I finally figured out why so many comedians swing to the Left, maybe it's just because the Right is so much easier to make fun of. The Left may be wrong about most things but they may be right about the War, even a little bit. The Right might be right about many things but wrong about the War, even a tad. It would be too easy to make a Macabre House on the Left, what with Terri Schiavo and New York Times Magazine reporters who never met an abortion they didn't like, throw in a feminist coven or two for good measure, but the Left is pretty much upfront about their Death Worship these days, what makes the Macabre House on the Right much more scary is that they purport to be

The Party of Morality and All That is Decent,

people you can trust. I expect more. As the Joelster says "I'm movin' out!"People who masturbate your mind

Isn't this what free speech is all about?

There is a crotchety middle-aged man in town whom the other conservatives seem to shun, some even call him a closet lib. He can be found most nights at the Tavern & Grille at the end of town holding court, getting in touch with the common pulse. Last night you walked in and heard him put down Betty Ford for breaking down at Gerry's memorial service. At first you are shocked by the outrageousness of his words but then you sense an original thought, a rare commodity these days. Then you realize you've always had these unformed thoughts rattling around in your mental attic somewhere but you were never fully aware of it. You've often thought yourself why do religious folk who believe in God and an afterlife get so bent out of shape when a loved one dies even when they don't die tragically but in a normal and expected fashion, life having run its course. You would never say this and anyway people mourn in their own way but now you kinda like the guy regardless and could probably have a decent conversation with the man about the 20 year old guy who was arrested the other day in a Staten Island McDonald's for calling a clerk a faggot for not giving him a McFlurry, whatever happened to free speech, what are we some police state or something? Many in the bar like the man and enjoy his company but the other, more respectable denizens of RightTown like O'Reilly hate the guy 'cos he doesn't get with the program. He makes fun of both Left and Right and you're not supposed to do this, pick a side, any side buddy and stick with it. He even disparagingly called Sean and Rush border collies in his new book for barking and yapping at any conservative who dares stray too far off the plantation. The chutzpah, the audacity, the nerve...

the balls.

His name is Michael Savage. People who masturbate your mind

From Whitewater to genitals all in one season

A middle-aged but young looking man with a rather pleasant looking face approaches you. He has the hint of a benign smile forming and has glasses on and is wearing a pair of beige Dockers with some casual brown loafers and a short sleeve sky blue polo shirt with a fancy, rather intricate design done in a wavy pattern. It's probably you and your latent thoughts (you really should get that checked out) but it somehow reminds you of male and female genitalia with some spermatozoa thrown in. He is smoking a cigar and has some Macadamia nuts in his hand.

"Hi! I'm Ken Starr, I'm your next door neighbor."People who masturbate your mind

It's a vibe thing

Macabre House on the Right

Since you can remember you were always against abortion, euthanasia and the Playboy philosophy at the root of it all and were looking for a nice place to live in a good neighborhood. You fell in love with the House on the Right and it had a good school district that didn't teach kids they came from apes and how to put on a Trojan and so you settled in. You don't know why you didn't notice it before with your walk with the realtor but there it is when you were chilling one night in the living room, an enlarged and framed photo of Saddam hanging from the gallows, next to that is a psychedelic poster of a huge mushroom cloud. On the coffee table are National Review magazine articles in defense of the late right-wing Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet, he may have tortured people and violated some human rights but he was more congenial to our national interests than other dictators, like say Saddam. On the bookshelf are bound testimonials published by Judie Brown of the American Life League, testimonials from married couples themselves who have divorced each other because they had sex with each other before the wedding day. You look in the stereo cabinet and see CDs like "Sean Hannity's Greatest Radio Hits", #3 track - Nick Berg screaming during his beheading at the hands of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

And that's only the living room, you haven't checked the attic and the cellar yet.People who masturbate your mind

The ICC

Though they won't complain about it this time there is a reason why many neocons are wary of the International Criminal Court. They know it was theoretically possible (although highly improbable) that Harry Truman could have been brought to trial for nuking two Japanese cities and they also know that former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger is oft mentioned by those on the Left as a candidate. In his book The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso Books - 2001) Christopher Hitchens indicts Kissinger for his alleged involvement in the following - the war in Indochina, mass murder in Bangladesh, assassinations in Santiago, Nicosia and Washington DC, and also for sabotaging the Vietnam peace accords at Paris and thereby prolonging the war. Hell, while we're at it why don't we bring ole Fidel to justice before he croaks? Let's throw in Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez as a 2 fer.People who masturbate your mind

Better him than Osama

So Saddam is no more. What do you say to a woman when your line of work is executioner? I can at least say I made quiche the other day at work, "oh really? How much heavy cream do you use? How much cheddar to Swiss?"

"I helped kill Saddam."
"Oh"

Death penalty is primitive and barbaric but people's minds are made up so I don't much debate it anymore, it serves their most primal emotional need of revenge which they dress up as retributive justice. They say they filmed it so Saddam's killing will probably wind up on Faces of Death, sure to be a collector's item among the rabid right. Sean better put in for it now while supplies last.People who masturbate your mind

What kind of question is that?

National Review asks "are we allowed to be against Barack Obama?"

He was on the Oprah the other day with the lovely missus talking about how he called his wife up from the Senate Office Building after helping to pass some crucial nuclear non-proliferation bill or something when Michelle said "we have ants!!! Can you get some ant traps on the way home?"

In answer to NR's question,

in a word, NO.People who masturbate your mind

Celeb worship

E.T. and Access Hollywood, they're more or less the same thing, celebrity suck-up shows that would do Jenna Jameson proud. All that BLING BLING, it's disgusting and obscene stuff when you consider all the masses in the world starving but that's just it, Hollywood stars feel so guilty about all their incredible wealth that they reflexively vote and preach Democratic Party values so as to balm their consciences, at least this is Rush's view and I agree. And the shows are so loud as if to GRAB your attention. I'm sorry but the only Hollywood celebrities I like these days are Danny Aiello and Fred MacMurray and he's dead. And I'm sick of seeing those two blockheads, Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio, in the same movies, like in The Departed, it gets damn near confusing. Monsterism.People who masturbate your mind

George Will

I can imagine George Will as a shrink, a man sits on his couch and goes over his problems and his life,

Will: "I know what your problem is, you have a malignant case of solipsistic narcissism, all you do is talk about yourself." (see footnote)

Will doesn't like you bloggers and has issues with TIME magazine choosing you, yes you, as its "person" of the year. I agree with him about the mindlessless of YouTube and MySpace but that's where we part company. He doesn't like bloggers making themselves the subject of their blogs but blogging means different things to different people, for many it may be cathartic and I don't think talking about your life experiences automatically means you are overly in love with yourself. I myself am my own harshest critic but I just love to blog about EVERYTHING, including George Will.

(footnote - solipsistic narcissism, to be distinguished from narcissistic solipsism)People who masturbate your mind

24

I'm lost without my "24", when it's off the air it's like prison boredom. The other day I bought the box set for Season 5 and this stuff is addictive. It's been said they have some conservative writers and some liberal writers and I got a whiff of the latter when President Charles Logan's chief of staff, Walt Cummings, said he told some Russian separatists about where they can find these canisters of military-grade nerve gas but that he controls the detonation configuration so the plan was to set them off when the terrorists got as far as Central Asia so people would be convinced of the need for an increased U.S. military presence there and we need the oil. Got me thinking maybe Bush was duped by people in his own CIA who knew they were misleading him about those Iraqi WMDs and that's what led us into war but anyway, like an addict without his weekly fix, the season premiere of "24" is just around the corner, if I can just hold on 'til then.

Rich Lowry and other conservatives have had it with CNN's Lou Dobbs for taking on Big Business and this is why they'll also lose the White House in '08, big biz is a sacred cow for them and if you criticize its practices, like laying off hundreds of long-time workers, then you are just an anti-capitalist socialist pig like Gwyneth Paltrow but that's just it with pundits of all stripes these days, everybody thinks they are always right and the talking heads (more like bobbleheads), both left and right, always talk over each other. There's such a welter of political opinion out there that your head swims. Might be a good idea to lay off the paper for a week, get your mind flushed out, but when you get back they'll just be sparring again calling the opposing side evil for opposing the war or whatever, just the right time to plug in your "24". People who masturbate your mind

Obama and the media

Having thought about this Barack Obama thing I think in large part he is a creation of the media but not totally, that would be unfair. That we are even talking about a one-term Democratic Senator from Illinois as being a viable presidential contender shows he has that something extra but, with the exception of Hillary, in a Democratic field as dull as this one you almost become charismatic by default. When he does run, and he will, look for the msm to constantly refer to him as a "moderate" despite having a 100% liberal voting record, even having voted for international funding for groups that provide abortions. In the msm worldview there is no such thing as a liberal anyway, there are just those radical righties and the rest of us, aka moderate folk.

Former Republican Congressman Tom DeLay has said it will be a Hillary/Obama ticket in '08 and I agree although it's possible to flip that one around and play with it a little. DeLay is urging conservative bloggers to find something on Obama, anything, to derail his prospects. With so much to blog about these days, being a fairly conservative blogger myself, yeah Tom, that's what I'll do in my spare time when I'm not putting in 6 days of full-time work myself. Conservatives who do this, who want us to roll around in the pigpen, can't be too confident of their own political philosophy of conservatism, they must not think that pro-life plays in Peoria, so I guess they feel compelled to go this route. Oh well, at least he's honest.

NR's Richard Brookhiser is touting a Giuliani presidency in '08 and is even referring to him as our next wartime president. If you're a rightie and prefer to go this route, all or nothing for the war, then Rudy should be your man. Brookhiser is not overly concerned with his extremely liberal stances on such social issues as abortion and gay marriage. I think he is willing to overlook these because he knows the war is not popular now and Rudy is the only viable Republican candidate with enough of a powerhouse name to make the case for war ad infinitum and get away with it but my prognostication for '08 is that even he will lose to HillObama (or ObamaHill), the country will be so sick of the war by then with so many more casaulties and about a DRAFT don't even go there.

At any rate come November of '08 the sun will continue to rise and I'll be up early every day with my lunchpail runnin' on Dunkin' and blogging about God knows what then in my very meager spare time. If Rudy were smart he'd ask right now if there's any room for him in a Hillary cabinet.People who masturbate your mind

Don't confuse me with the facts

Almost every night now the local NY news stations breathlessly tell us the latest developments in the Sean Bell case, the situation on Nov. 25 in Jamaica, Queens when three unarmed black men in a car were shot at in a barrage of 50 police bullets outside the strip joint Club Kalua. 23-yr. old Sean Bell, to be married that day, was killed and his two friends were injured. The nightly news now reports that the so-called 4th witness, a man with a gun who fled the scene, is most likely a myth and the lawyer for this man has accused the cops of not identifying themselves before opening fire.

There is another version, an angle the liberal New York media are not covering at all and that is the allegation that Sean Bell was using his car as a deadly weapon by ramming an undercover police officer twice and that this detective leaned over the hood of Bell's Nissan Altima and flashed his badge to identify himself as an officer of the law. Apparently the NYPD has a stupid departmental rule that a cop cannot fire at a moving vehicle even if the driver is attempting to run him over unless an occupant of the vehicle has a gun. Black NYC Councilman Charles Barron has said "there is going to be an explosion in this town if there is not a prosecution" while Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg sits on his hands. Barron is perilously close to inciting a race war in this city by his incendiary words, so far he seems to be on the outer edges of protectable speech but this racist and hateful councilman seems to want the unspeakable to happen. I say rioters should be dealt with accordingly and should not be allowed to wreak the havoc they caused in LA during the Rodney King riots when the LAPD did practically nothing to protect innocent law-abiding citizens.

Let the truth come out.
People who masturbate your mind

Americanism and God

Which is more important, love of God or love of country? For me the answer is self-evident, if love of God leads me to conclude the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wrong actions, for example, then that's the way I go. As important a national value as patriotism is it only becomes offensive if it takes on the aura of a state religion, a substitute for God, jingoism that blinds us to our own nation's faults, the political worship of Americanism, that only we are the moral beacon of the world and must guide, if not force, the rest of the world out of the dark cave of barbarism. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow, it is said by conservatives who have an eye on Hollywood these days, spews anti-American rhetoric almost on a daily basis and it's probably true but it needs to be pointed out that when social conservatives do this, as when they criticize our cultural moral retardation on such issues as human feticide and forced starvations, they can still hold on to their mantle of love of country. Should a liberal do this, as when he focuses attention more on economic disparities let's say he is said to hate his mother land and may even be called a Communist. Sean Hannity couldn't believe we were starving a young disabled woman to death in a hospice in Florida in March of 2005 and yet he is still an unquestioned icon of patriotism, let a liberal like Al Franken talk about how we don't help the poor in this country and he's a left-wing turd. Just my thought for the day.People who masturbate your mind

Armchair warriors

No sooner had the conclusions from the Iraq Study Group come out then conservatives attacked en masse ("ridiculous" said Rick Santorum). The true righties like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh were quite willing to lose both Houses of Congress to the Democrats, the War was more important, now they are saying James Baker and Lee Hamilton's recommendation that we pull out of Iraq no later than early '08 is a shameful "cut and run", a pathetic running up the white flag of surrender. Even if you disagree with them as I do you have to admire these conservatives just the same, they are quite content to lose even the White House to Democratic control to push harder for the war which they know to be unpopular. It wouldn't be my political strategy but it is a principle I guess they are willing to go to defeat on.

First Man Bill Clinton.People who masturbate your mind

Left-wing Hollywood

America is primarily a Christian nation but I've been wondering of late do Americans hate their own religion? I'm thinking they made The DaVinci Code #1 at the box office and now the DVD is at the top of the charts too. The most common refrain of defenders of the book and movie to critics is "you moron, it's only fiction!" but this is disingenuous. It's like that movie starring Tim Robbins, Jacob's Ladder, his Jacob Singer character is a Vietnam vet and he's having all these weird hallucinations and he later finds out it was all a government plot to conduct mind-altering experiments on American soldiers and there is even the obligatory scene where the G-men pull him into a black limo and say don't pursue this or else. It's a great movie as a work of fiction but you're left wondering did they really do this, why make a movie out of it all, and I think this impression is intentional on director Adrian Lyne's part, he who directed Fatal Attraction. Also, the fact that it stars uber-lefty Tim Robbins. The normally very conservative Danny Aiello must have really needed the work. Point being DaVinci Code and Jacob's Ladder are not just fiction, there is a message behind them, like somebody planting the seed you never suspected your spouse before but now you're like thinking about it, these are message movies to question your own faith and government so it would be refreshing if the creators of such works were at least honest about it all. People who masturbate your mind

Saddam did what again??

From the New York Post editorial for today, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor:

A Terrible Resolve - "...The loss of life on Dec. 7, 1941 was staggering...That single-day toll would not be surpassed until six decades later - when Osama bin Laden's killers brought down the Twin Towers in the second sneak attack on American soil. But the American people in 1941 did not respond to the devastation at Pearl Harbor with hand-wringing, calls for negotiating with the enemy or incessant second-guessing of the president..." (emphasis mine) -- The Post still holds Saddam responsible for what happened on 9/11 in their soon to be collector's edition of "Surrender Monkeys" about the Iraq Study Group. Bermuda Triangle. People who masturbate your mind

Just don't read 'em

I wouldn't even call New York Times editorials liberal anymore, to say this is an insult to liberalism. I stopped reading them altogether when they treated George Bush's major primetime speech a few months back about illegal immigration as pandering to the extreme right-wing of his party even though mostly liberals themselves liked his proposals better than conservatives. Then there is the Times' defense of notorious late-term Kansas abortionist George Tiller. This is beyond liberalism, this is real Bermuda Triangle stuff, the Ole Gray Lady's political navigational instruments have all gone haywire, read the hard news events of the day on the front page if you like but it would behoove the reader, liberal and conservative alike, to not venture into these uncharted waters, you may never return to normal political thinking. Now you have to go back aways in my blogs to understand what I mean by "masturbation of the mind" but to reiterate it's people, usually liberals, who know how to stroke the pleasure centers of your mind and the fantasy that goes along with it has no grounding in reality whatsoever like making the girl next door into a whore or saying an unborn child at 5 and 3/4 months is not fully human but a 6 month fetus is, not at all logical but dream away dear fantasist and clean up after you're done. This is the Times' editorial board these days, we're talking major onanism here, getting it on the lampshade, the ceiling, in your eye. I can't stand to read the stuff anymore, a Yoko Ono concert by comparison would be getting off easy. An early warning sign would have been when they referred to the singer Meatloaf as "Mr. Loaf" (no kidding). Don't get upset at their editorials anymore, just turn the page and go to Arts and Leisure or better yet don't buy the damn thing.People who masturbate your mind

There's a right way to nuke and a wrong way to nuke

If memory serves during the Cold War, when it became apparent that nukes were a bad thing, negotiations dealt with both countries, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., reducing their nuclear stockpiles. Reagan didn't insist you get rid of all your nuclear weapons and we keep ours. We are the only country in the history of the world to have dropped the atomic bomb on a major city, make that twice, we did it at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945 respectively. It's as if we're saying to Iran and North Korea only we know how to use nuclear weapons responsibly, only we know when it is morally right to incinerate entire populations including pregnant women and children (are pro-lifers against these nuclear "abortions" too?). Make no mistake, rogue nations like Iran and North Korea should not have nukes but I'm just wondering where we get our moral platform from. Does God agree with our first use of nuclear weapons way back when? (a question nobody even deems relevant to ask). We seem to see ourselves as the final arbiters of ultimate morality, of Right and Wrong, not God. We have become Supermen.

E=mc2 Energy equals the mass of something times the speed of light squared (the speed of light being about 186,000 miles/sec.) This formula of Einstein dealing with mass and energy conversion led to the Manhattan Project led by Robert Oppenheimer, the genie was let out of the bottle, we ate from the forbidden tree and now we are worried that terrorists may turn the nuclear tables against us. I don't know if we can turn to God in these times since if He didn't approve of our actions in 1945 He might find it ironic that we are now asking for His help. We need that National Day of Prayer that Lincoln penned during the Civil War now more than ever. Our Lady of Fatima, The Mother of the Divine Mercy, pray for us. People who masturbate your mind

Art & Life

Why can't life be more like an old-time movie, at least some of the time? In many ways I prefer Art to Reality and art is often a reflection of what reality should be as in the 1967 movie The Graduate which made Dustin Hoffman a star. For some this is a movie about adultery but for me I was more captivated by the larger love story of the last third of the film where Benjamin Braddock goes off to Berkeley to find Elaine so he can marry her. Ben had had an affair with her mother, Mrs. Robinson, and Elaine can't forgive him and so she tries to forget about him and is set to marry a young doctor. During the ceremony at a Presbyterian church bride and groom are about to kiss each other when Ben screams "Elaine" over and over from the church choir and the movie ends with Ben stealing her away and they live happily ever after.

The trouble with pc is that it is never poetic, the proper thing for Ben to have done would have been to forget about Elaine and get on with his life and she could get on with hers. If this happened in real life Ben would be arrested for stalking and harassment but Ben does the heroic thing over the proper thing to do. This was the Second Golden Age of Movies, the period from the late '60s through the '70s, as movies then portrayed real life with real emotions, they had real storylines and you don't seem to get this quality in the cinema anymore. The Graduate has turned into Redeye but Ben is my kind of character and hats off to him, if only more people sensed the potential for art in real life instead of getting all uppity. The Simon and Garfunkel score was just the icing on the cake, a DVD worth having in your collection. People who masturbate your mind

Queer Eye for the Herod Guy

In Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ movie why does he make the Herod guy gay? and why is the Devil a transgendered individual? Discuss.People who masturbate your mind