Jimmy Carter still thinks he's president

Worked the late shift last night and got home and turned on the tube before going to bed. The Ch. 11 News told me of an assassination plot against Jimmy Carter in Gaza. "Carter has been in the region meeting with all sides of the conflict" Jim Watkins told me. STILL wants to broker that Mideast peace deal and not be remembered for long gas lines and inflation, some kind of syndrome going on here.

This constant and I mean constant push for gay marriage. Even former Republican Majority Leader of the NY State Senate Joseph Bruno has come out for it so it's really only a matter of Time before gay marriage becomes like abortion, people will be queasy about it but used to it. Come to think of it the Anus ain't causing the abortion problem.

DTV, more channels than ever but I'm still BORED OUT OF MY SKULL!!

Justice as a value

Elie Wiesel, after his visit with Obama to the Buchenwald concentration camp, had this to say: "I think he (Obama) has a sense of humor but I'm not so sure he has a sense of justice yet." Early concepts of justice could be understood to be inside or outside the bounds of the law. Hamlet is rife with the most primitive and elemental concepts of justice and only in later years could you say that in Western civilization to find justice solely within the law is the only way to go, that vigilante justice is immoral. This blog takes that position as it is Mr. Wiesel's position but his comment is very very interesting, somewhat enigmatic regarding President Obama. What does he mean? what was he trying to say? it's pregnant with Meaning.

How many times are we counseled to just look the other way re various injustices, to let it go, is it really worth pursuing? and such, to be careful etc. Stephen Pagones pursuing a civil case against the Rev. Al Sharpton over the Tawany Brawley hoax apparently destroyed his marriage. He was the Assistant in the District Attorney's office up there in Dutchess County NY who was falsely accused with others of raping the young black girl Tawana Brawley in Wappingers Falls and Sharpton, the lawyers Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason led the charge. Some would say why did he pursue it so many years after the fact? everyone knows it was a big-time hoax, it embarrassed Cosby and the case is so old, so yesterday but I agree with him. In many cases to not pursue Justice, to listen to the pragmatic counselers of indifference, well it might be unfair to call it a kind of liberalism but it ain't conservative. Justice is right up there with freedom and personal responsibility and lower taxes and smaller government in the conservative View of the Universe. Even on a much smaller scale justice is important. As I blogged the other day about the misfortune that my cat met last Sunday morning, basically her skull was crushed in and she was left in a puddle of her own blood on the side of the road, that is also an issue of justice on a personal scale and I'm sure there are legions who would disagree. Inside the parameters of the law yes, of course but when you're a true conservative whether the issue is big or small you don't question for a moment the value of justice, any other way tends towards liberalism.

There is also the civil and criminal case against a group of Yonkers firefighters coming up. Basically it is alleged that a few of them would dose some of their fellow firefighters with acid or LSD and in one particularly vicious case while their victim began to hallucinate they screamed obscenities at the top of their lungs in his ears. It is also charged that they have harassed some of their victims for having decided to pursue the case against them. There is also the alleged coverup of the bloodwork by the City. These incidents all go back ten years at least but there has been a culture of corruption in City government for quite some time or so it's been said. Now again I'm sure there are many many people who would say why pursue such a case? it happened so long ago, the chemicals have long since passed everyone's brains and it's so dangerous to go up against a group of alleged psychos, don't you watch the movies? Ah yes but this is NOT the conservative position, not the true one anyway, and to not pursue justice in certain cases sets a very bad precedent indeed, it's defining deviancy down to quote the famous phrase from the late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Justice is also cathartic, it serves a basic emotional human need for closure. Justice is so many things to so many people but I am bothered about Elie Wiesel's observation, have we lost a sense of justice in our culture? That liberals seem overly concerned with the rights of criminals and these days terrorists, there's more than a grain of truth to that. Their concerns are not unimportant but I too get the sense that Obama would rather just talk it out with the bad guys rather than do the right thing. To be taken to task by a noted Nobel Peace Prize winner however politely worded, that's a hell of alot of blogworthy material right there!

Adam Lambert & Clay Aiken

USUALLY and I'm just sayin' when someone disses the other like Clay did recently and the other responded in kind it really means they have a secret crush on each other. Sounds like they like each other, do I see a teabag in their future?

David Carradine - Even if I were bored out of my skull which is most Sunday nights I wouldn't auto-erotically-asphyxiate myself. I'd sooner read the tube of Crest or bang the crumbs out of the toaster. BB take it away.

Any subjects not covered so far? I can't think of any.

Getting bogged down by false issues

In Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn NY there's a Holocaust Memorial honoring ALL the victims of the Hitler regime. New York City owns it and it's located at Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard so that's your summary. Assemblyman Dov Hikind has a problem though, well read on from Hikind: Jews Only - Holocaust-memorial flap by Edmund DeMarche and Leonard Greene in the June 8th issue of the New York Post:

"Hikind said even though 5 million people from other groups - including gays, the disabled and Jehovah's Witnesses - were killed along with 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust, the memorial in Sheepshead Bay should be for Jews only.

'To include these other groups diminishes their memory,' said Hikind...These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust,' Hikind said following a press conference at the memorial. 'It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims'...

...'There's no doubt that most of the atrocities at the Holocaust were done upon Jewish people,' said Council Speaker Christine Quinn. 'But it goes against history and their memory to not commemorate all groups that were persecuted by the Nazis'...

...'The Holocaust memorial means you memorialize anyone who died in the Holocaust,' said Theresa Scavo, president of Community Board 15, who lobbied for the additional recognition. 'It doesn't matter what color or sexual orientation you were.' "

File this one under the need to have a problem. Even if we magically got rid of all our problems, issues and controversies tomorrow people would still make up more. So we have 5 million non-Jewish victims vs. 6 million Jewish victims, those are shattering numbers either way. The news will never be at a loss, there will always be news even if we have to make it up.

The vast right-wing corporate media conspiracy (or VRWCMC)

Watched Bill Moyer's Journal last night which sometimes I do on slow Friday evenings. I'm not out clubbing which shows my age but anyway if you can paint with a broad brush here IMO most of his guests tend to be liberal although they don't seem to like that word so let's go with not conservative. Many of them tend to be anti-military for lack of a better word with the occasional poet thrown in for a little culture action. E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post recently wrote a column which ties into the theme here and that is that Newt and Rush and Sean control the mainstream media, they give Bob Schieffer his talking points! Let them spell it out for you 'cause most of us are too dense and have suffered under the delusion all these years that the msm has a very pronounced liberal bias. The media, the corporate media as they call it actually tilts heavily to the Right......excuse me for a minute I'm laughing so hard my ribs hurt, I think I'm gonna die......Last I heard this argument it was Eric Alterman making it and he even wrote a book about it and so......oh God it hurts!! Now the names of Moyers' guests always elude me by next morning, I disagree with much of what they have to say but they are so damn interesting and speak well. They are so convinced of their parallel universe, of their own alternate reality To Explain Things that you can't hate them, you want to believe these folks they're so sincere but my computations come in differently than theirs. To hear Dionne and Moyers (or the guests who speak for him) tell it Obama's a moderate not living up to the conservative caricature of him, that frustrating bastardo! Hey guys it's early yet, that remains to be seen. You feel more than a little weird and confused after watching his show like how could you be so stupid all these years and not see The Bigger Picture?? come out of your brain fog dude and smell the fresh air and let Rush go hibernate in his cave. Newt and Sean and Rush, 'tis a right wing media machine all along, who knew?

The world's most controversial issue

Frankly I'm more than a little tired of this whole Israeli/Palestinian issue. It consumes so much time, energy and attention of each succeeding administration. Since I was a kid I didn't even follow politics but I knew the names -- Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, Camp David. Give the Palestinians a homeland, their own state and be done with it. Maybe Obama should speak more to the point and say the issue doesn't concern us anymore, we're done, we're moving on -- Darfur, Tibet, Haiti. Wasn't Bibi PM once before? How is this possible? It'd be like Bill Clinton becoming president again. The Middle East, the Never-Ending Story.

The roots of violence

Here's what it is in a nutshell, moral relativism and it even applies to the man who shot abortionist George Tiller to death. As I said at Kris's Elephant blog when you condone the killing of even late-term unborn babies you set up yet another exception to Thou Shalt Not Kill and then someone might decide the next exception is YOU, it's moral relativism turned on itself. Man as a rational creature (don't laugh) cannot choose evil for evil's sake, it has to be rationalized first as a good and in the case of violence the person doing the violence feels he is enforcing a moral code. Enforcement of a moral code is at the roots of modern-day violence and the person doing the killing feels the moral code being enforced is about absolute Right and Wrong. When Boston lawyer Tom Capano killed his lover Anne Marie Fahey who wanted to break it off with him he killed her and is now awaiting the death sentence (see the bestseller And Never Let Her Go by Ann Rule). Here's how he can more than live with himself and bide his time in prison, he believes in his heart of hearts she deserved her fate, by spurning him she was violating some type of moral code, a kind of absolute and universal code of we should be together forever and in the case of true sociopaths like Capano and O.J. Simpson it's not enough to believe in this moral code which many of us may believe in too but here's the difference. Most of us might accept the moral code of don't break my heart or it's wrong to kill unborn babies but in the mind of the socio this moral code needs to be enforced, it's a kind of karmic necessity, a cosmic balancing of the Scales of Justice so no matter that Tiller's killer believed in the absolute moral code of it's wrong to take the life of the unborn, he acted like a relativist for acting this out. You can't go there, it is what it is and only God can judge Tiller. For me anyway this is not debateable and one of my cardinal rules is once you throw up something for debate over time it will become morally defensible, we don't debate the pros and cons of rape for instance. Kind of a disturbing beginning of the week all around.

Send complaints to...

OK so Beth has weighed in on the murder of abortionist George Tiller and yes technically she is correct but I also agree with Daniel who posted there he thought Tiller was an evil man. The real issue is this: not the rare act of violence by an anti-abortionist but why are the late-term abortions that Tiller specialized in even legally allowed in this country? Killing Tiller, besides being wrong also has the consequence of making somebody into a martyr who doesn't deserve to be. You had to be a psycho to do the work he did for thirty long years which also begs the question of what kind of late-term patients these women were who sought his services in earnest. That the man apparently was a regular churchgoer boggles the mind and it's one reason I'm not overly keen on eulogies, many times they don't do justice to the character of a man. That the mainstream pro-choice movement never saw the necessity of ostracizing him at the least speaks volumes of THEM and that includes Obama's new Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and so that's that.

A double whopper w/cheese has like over a thousand calories

What, you didn't know? Yeah in New York State a law was just passed that restaurants have to post the calories for each food item and I mentioned this to someone and she went "how stupid, that's Communism." Well not technically but I get her point. We've entered the realm of passing nonessential laws some time ago and each thing by itself is a small-scale evil as soapie would say but cumulatively they add up to something that ain't good for democracy. IF we keep passing law after law with no end in sight this noble experiment called America will expire a natural death, it may not be Communism but there's some kind of ism at work here. Trouble is who's gonna fight a small-scale evil as having to post calories if you're a restaurant owner? You can't afford not to comply, well most of us can't and so the next nanny-state law gets passed and you comply and on and on it goes...dunno but don't you think you have less personal freedom since Roe vs. Wade? kind of a paradox which really highlights that your personal privacy and freedom ain't the real focus and priority of liberals after all but when you figure it if you have to tell the consumer how many calories are in their thick shakes why shouldn't a pregnant woman be shown a sonogram? Libertarianism with which I disagree in parts is at least consistent. Liberals are often charged with anti-Americanism, not sure if this is fair but why do I get the distinct sense they're against McDonald's?

I can't help it if I was born a Great White Male

Sonia Sotomayor, first nominated to a federal judgeship by none other than Bush the Sr. then on to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals covering NY, CT and VT. Said once that policy is made at the appeals level, said something else about me but whatever. She'll be confirmed, can't lose the Hispanic bloc but got to thinking last night about this thing called Borking. Now Robert Bork in his Slouching Towards Gomorrah comes out foursquare for censorship, feels free speech as envisioned by the Founding Fathers had to do with only speech that was political in nature and ya wanna know something? It was ugly and over-the-top but I'm glad the man wasn't confirmed. With me when you talk about Free Speech you touch a nerve, I might be all over the map on some other issues but here he got my dander up. It's not the Ron Pauls and the Michael Savages the Right needs to distance themselves from, you might not agree with what they have to say but God knows they'll defend your right to say it. Bork might look like a Christmas ornament but don't let that fool you, his philosophy is dangerous. That said allow me to digress on something the Gray-Haired Brother said over at Beth's Place the other day that got me to thinking. We talk about abortion too much for his taste but in my view liberalism with its reflexive support for legal abortion actually fosters and reinforces social irresponsibility. OK take the housewife who has an affair with the mailman while her husband is at the office, she gets pregnant and has an abortion, chances are he'll never find out about it. The Pro-Choicer, put it this way, a hitman is not the least bit interested in why somebody wants to get rid of somebody else, could be the color of his tie that's not his concern, just show me the money and then we go dark. The choicer does not care about the WHY you want to get an abortion, aborting the mailman's kid falls under the all-inclusive heading of reproductive rights, women's sexuality YADA YADA YADA while the Pro-Lifer and I'll plead guilty here sees a moral lesson for the woman in carrying the child to term. YES, the child if allowed to be born is a constant reminder of the original error in moral decision-making on the part of all the parties involved. Here's where in my gut I'm against Pro-Choice, take away not so much the scarlet letter, that's not where I'm coming from but take away the flesh and blood consequence of the act and all morality loses its moorings and becomes adrift at sea, do this do that do what your little heart desires. So how does this relate to Obama for that matter? Well as a liberal by taking that Pro-Choice position whether it's his intent or not (probably isn't) support for legalized abortion reinforces social irresponsibility, how could it be otherwise? just to know where my side is coming from OR to put it another way

you ain't livin' right.

I've always found Colin Powell mildy irritating

You don't hate him, he's more like that smug neighbor of yours with the slightest wisp of an arrogant self-confident air, he has a 'tude going and it ain't in your favor. He's morally superior, he knows it, you know it and the mailman knows it. In fact before forming an opinion he feels you need to consult him if only to tell you where you're wrong. You're on your porch happily puffing away on your fine $6.50 cigar that you bought at Mom's, it's not a celebratory cigar by any stretch since your life sucks but anyway he passes on the sidewalk, doesn't say anything, continues on his way to get something out of the trunk of his Hummer but was that just the hint of a pissy expression as he waved his hand away at that fine Honduran aroma, some kind of body gesture lingo about your habit? He's the more powerful version of the poor man's Kennedy and he's lecturing you on what's wrong with your party. It ain't moderate see? You need to grow yourself beyond your base and stop listening to the dictates of the right-wing element. Usually this pretty much ONLY means you object to fetal parts backing up the plumbing system of some abortion clinic although it could mean immigration and gun-control too but it MOSTLY refers to the A-word. He says Rush is an entertainer and the GOP needs another spokesman. I agree but not for the same reasons. It's not his conservatism just that the GOP needs someone besides some rich well-fed guy in a golf shirt with the little alligator logo puffing on an expensive cigar who lives in a mansion. Don't get me wrong, he can stay, he's more than welcome but him and Cheney? get real!! Anyway he still says he's a happy GOPer whatever that means. Col looks like some guy you'd work with, you tell him a joke and he doesn't smile and just walks away, you may as well have sneezed and he goes to Corey "is Aisle 8 all packed out yet?" You see him rapping with Chris Rock and he kinda smiles as Chris calls him a house nigger but YOU? you ain't cool, you're part of the problem, you're a social-con. Fact Condi kinda feels the same way about you......sorry the guy kinda just gets under my skin.

Shows that are not basic to the survival of the Republic

The View - basically coffee-table liberal political chicktalk with a token conservative thrown in for kicks but without the gravitas of say Washington Week in Review, in fact Gwen Ifill would ruin it by raising the median IQ there. You got your washing machine going, you're hanging clothes out on the line, ya gotta give the cat some dry food and get your shopping list going, you're not exactly magnetized to the set, it's more an ambience thing. Rosie O'Donnell was the closest thing they ever got to pure free speech but then they got scared.

The Simpsons - this spinoff from the Tracy Ullman Show has been on wayyyyy too long. Take it off already and go with some Hawaii Five-O reruns or bring back Oscar and Felix. Never my cup of tea, not a bad show but does it have to be around as long as Woolworth's was? will it outlast Nathan's? D'OH

The Tonight Show - Leno's last week, Conan starts June 1. Could care less who interviews Jennifer Garner for the fifteenth time. Once Conan's term ends maybe Ashton Kutcher can host since apparently taking this once legendary show off the air might cause the Earth to go slightly out of its orbit in which case Obama would HAVE TO intervene and maybe host the show himself.

SNL - pretty self-explanatory. Got some buzz with the Tine Fey/Sarah Palin thing but overall pretty drab. Sure it was groundbreaking in the '70s but that was how long ago? It'd be like keeping the Brady Bunch going long after the original cast members have left simply because of nostalgia. Ninety minutes too long, can throw a movie into that slot.

I call these institutional shows but I rarely watch them. Shows may come and go but there is never any serious thought to getting rid of any of THEM. I say they've more than run their course so put 'em in the vault already or in the case of The View simply burn them.

Obama's Notre Dame speech

Actually said something I agreed with which is unusual, said about abortion "in some sense the two sides are fundamentally irreconciliable." This was clever on his part, it had the subtle effect of making Obama look like a kind of disinterested observer of the issue, above it all looking at the debate from the outside, a professorial air being intellectually open to both sides despite his 100% rating from NARAL. Of course they all say they want to reduce the ole abortion rate and it's such a heart-wrenching decision for the woman. Of the second point I personally know of stories where the parties involved were unusually casual about it all and as to the first your average pro-choicer opposes such modest measures as informed-consent legislation so really it's just more pro-forma statements from a liberal president. Despite Clinton's safe, legal and rare it's not really about Choice at all but Abortion and the right to get one freely and without judgement from parents or other parties and to be fully subsidized by the American taxpayer if need be. Pro-forma statements are important though, it shows you have a heart and have properly wrestled with the issue even though your own views just accidentally, ever so coincidentally coincide with those of Kate Michaelman.

Saw bits and pieces of the Farrah Fawcett special

very mixed reviews. Controversial, macabre, morbid were just some of the adjectives used. Will say this though, here is the rare celeb who never really bothered me, never saw her on some political soapbox and no matter who it is, unless it's Osama bin Laden or Fidel Castro I always throw a prayer or two their way. Started a thread once over at Big Blue Wave, a Canadian forum for conservatives and I may have outHoused House on that one:

http://bluewave.yuku.com/topic/1752/t/The-cancer-cell-is-not-powerful-but-weak-amp-confused.html

bit and pieces I gleaned from a Dummy's Guide to Cancer once, hope it's interesting. So there was Farrah clutching her rosary beads, probably made our old friend Hitch wince but I missed the vomiting, I'm a real channel-surfer you know. So let's say we "reform" health-care however you define that term, of what good is that if there's no Cure yet? The limitations of modern medicine imo far outweigh its advances, are any cures for any of the major big ones even on the horizon? Anyway what are your thoughts on the Farrah Fawcett special?

This gospel of moderation

Do moderates have any convictions to call their own besides moderation that is?

File this one under a false issue

According to last Thursday's PageSix Christopher Hitchens has written in his intro to the new book Certitude by Adam Begley and Edward Sorel:

"In my own lifetime I have seen a series of popes make public apologies to Jews (for the false charge of deicide and its consequences), to Protestants (for the Counter-Reformation), to Galileo to forcibly converted and exterminated South American Indians, to Eastern Orthodox Christians (for the massacres in the Balkans) and to Muslims (for the Crusades). One day if - just suppose - it is discovered that AIDS was a worse affliction than the condom, rather than the other way around, the necessary admission will have to be delayed for years by the fact there was once a sacred dogma involved."

Now I realize Hitch is a hard-drinking man and some of the hardcore stuff he is regulary accustomed to really make the grievances come out, about a week ago I had a couple of Rum and Pepsis and sank into some kind of weird depression and pretty much went over my shitlist and then some, hardly the mood to be in to waft off to a peaceful slumber but last I checked the Roman Catholic Church cannot by force of law forbid you from buying a Trojan or a Ramses. The thought occured if people don't listen to the Pope on the matter of abortion why would they over a piece of latex or lambskin? If one is going to cruise down the ole Hershey Highway with different males every week it's pretty much a given you haven't been following much of Church teaching lately anyway. As Oscar Wilde once said to be witty without being charming is an unpardonable mannerism of style. Hitch is from the Ann Coulter school of thought though from the other side, everyone you disagree with even the mailman who once casually threw your mail on the porch, nuke everything in sight, it's a psychic massacre and he's wallowing, going down the hallway and opening up the next door to the next poor shmuck who has pissed the guy off ("hey you [insert insulting witticism of choice]"). H-Block and his scorched earth policy, you accidentally bump into him one day and you know how someone's eyes are always darting up and down when they're first talking to you? they have an opinion, it ain't very relaxful to be around such people which finally brings me to the conclusion you can totally disagree with the Church on condoms and everything else under the sun and still think Hitchens is a dick:)

The real motive behind censorship and suppression

OR confronting people with an uncomfortable truth becomes a threat

To kind of cap things off then - some of my themes of late, the control issue and what's really behind it. The human urge to censor is a powerful one and really applies across the board, Right and Left have been equally guilty thoughout history but lately the Left have been the bad guys and the Right comes across now as more and more the champions of what liberals used to be about, freedom of thought and expression. No matter, people who practice censorship and suppression and it could be an individual, a group of individuals, a political group or movement or at its most pervasive and dangerous a government or the State, be it Right or Left they are threatened by something. People who tell you how to think or how you should think, over time if enough people think alike it becomes a form of political correctness and its sanctions for dealing with those who think outside the box are a kind of form of mind control else why the need to punish those who think differently and view things in their own sometimes unique ways? The whole Political Correctness Movement is threatened by something, the free use of your mind and its awesome power and in this respect it's more than an annoyance or a nuisance, it's a form of evil and I'm applying this in a general sense not to particular individuals. The mind represents freedom of thought and inquiry so those attackers of the Miss USA runnerup Carrie Prejean let's say, they are not only offended by what she's saying relating to traditional marriage but they are threatened by the mere thought she may be right. Many many years ago I offered to buy some pro-life videos for libraries here in Westchester County NY, should've been a done deal since freedom of thought and expression is the very foundation of their existence according to them but the sheer resistance I encountered in my own county from liberal librarians and pro-abortion groups prove to me they were threatened by something, threatened by IDEAS since the films in question were merely informational in nature, popping a movie into your VCR is not the same as banning abortion but because Z doesn't give up my persistence paid off over time and the county library system agreed to carry one of the films and the Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion was allowed to get theirs in too. Geez was that so hard? The nature of the enemy is US, we're the threat but then again if THEY'RE so threatened by us then it means we have some power, the power of our minds and the ability to express that which they hate so really when you stop to think about it us conservatives shouldn't be so down in the dumps of late. If you get put on a list you're important, consider it a compliment and the sheer force of our ideas will prevail over time. The Death of Conservatism? not by a long shot!!

The way I see it

Conservatives, despite believing in smaller government or saying they do actually trust the government more than liberals!!! I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of mainstream conservatives believe Oswald acted alone, since they don't believe in our government ever having nefarious overtones the various JFK conspiracy theories are loony and paranoid simply because they are metaphysical impossibilities. Take the Vietnam War, to this day your rank-and-file conservative's only problem is that we didn't stick it out long enough to defeat the Communist North Vietnamese. Conservatives positively hated the social and political upheaval of the '60s because the main aim or goal of conservatism is social and political stability. Oh they'll say it's freedom and liberty and to a certain degree that's true but they still trust the government more and so you had people like William F. Buckley Jr. almost single-handedly purging the John Birchers from the mainstream conservative movement, McCarthy is only defended by the likes of Ann Coulter these days and the conservative talk radio host most suspicious and least trusting of the government overall, Michael Savage, is constantly being marginalized by most other conservatives. You might say conservatives like the '50s and liberals love the '60s more, conservatives go with the oatmeal every day whereas liberals prefer the jalapenos. Spike Lee can voice some pretty radical Katrina theories but libs won't dare try to marginalize him and oust him from their movement, Tuskegee opened the door and so while most libs may not agree with Lee they understand and why do they understand? because historically they have trusted the government less. Put another way, who over time has Questioned Things more, liberals or conservatives? WHO are the conformists of the status-quo, of homogenous thought and who see a basic inherent problem with our very institutions (hint: which side of the torture issue are you on? how do you view the CIA?)? Not taking sides here at all but what I like about soapie is he questions things more than your average conservative talking head not in a conspiratorial way but by getting back to First Principles which both sides fail miserably on, a pox on both your houses. If I may put it another way how come Bush never got teabagged?

So why doesn't this work in reverse?

Liberal Supreme Court justice David Souter is retiring and returning home to New Hampshire because unlike Arlen Specter he has a life. Now consider some of the Supremes nominated by conservative presidents over the years who for some strange reason later evolved into liberals: Nixon got Harry Blackmun on the court and we all know what he did, Reagan gave us Sandra Day O'Connor and Bush the Sr. gave us Souter who usually voted with the liberal wing. So what Z is asking today is how come a liberal president never nominates someone to the court who later turns out to be a staunch conservative and a real pain in the ass to people with a liberal agenda? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts Obama is not gonna put up someone who later is going to "accidentally" overturn Roe vs. Wade so is it because the liberal vetting process is better? do conservative judges leave more of a paper trail? are they more vocal in their views? or does just saying Judge Q or W is good because he only interprets the Constitution and nothing more really mean anything these days? geez EVERY potential Supreme Court nominee is gonna say that. I'm in a wondering kind of mood today.

Cultural trends I don't get

Celebrity stalking

First off this isn't or shouldn't be a problem for us conservatives, rank-and-file conservatives view the average Hollywood celebrity as an airhead with left-wing leanings so where's the attraction? Then there's what I once called over at Hannityland our social caste system, no way Tyra Banks is gonna go out with some lonely drifter so why even go after someone totally outside of your own socio-economic orbit when you can bother the girl next door? So Brady Green, Tyra's stalker has been convicted at a non-jury trial and the judge would rather sentence him to psychiatric counseling rather than the 90 days in jail. I've talked about this before but you can't police somebody's head, you can only punish their actions. If I like Celebrity X or Z that's entirely between me myself and I, so long as my actions don't get out of bounds my mental domain is totally autonomous and no business of the Law. I am the sole judge and arbiter of my imaginative life, you cannot punish a person's thoughts and Hannity once said that's the real problem he has with hate-crime legislation, you're really in effect punishing a person's thoughts. So basically this judge sentencing Mr. Green to spend time with a shrink, first off it won't work nor should it, so some egghead is going to be able to dislodge IT? Only Mr. Green's actions should be the purview of the Law and as such he'd be better off getting the 90 days, as with Hannity's point there's the faintest whiff of fascism in the air say if Green is in some Barnes & Noble some day and wants to purchase a Tyra Banks calendar and the clerk calls security. It's Orwellian thought control and reading about these cases which for some quirk are becoming more common among the celebrity set a common thing is sending the woman flowers and gifts. Now you can debate the wisdom of this, Z doesn't think it's such a great idea in this day and age but by the same token it never struck me as a crime-crime, you know like bank robbery or embezzlement. If I were a cop I'd be like I didn't become a cop for this, it's basically Society making up laws as they go along. Celebrity stalking, it's weird for so many reasons and it's weirdly political but basically the mind cannot be put into a prison, punish people for what they do not what they think. If there's one rule at Stranded it's be not afraid, everything is bloggable and the day the cops come for your Cindy Crawford calendar it's over.

I normally could care less about beauty pageants

They have that rep for being shallow you know but this whole Carrie Prejean thing, the Miss USA runner-up from California and her comments on gay marriage. Well I did a simple google search to find out exactly what she said to cause such a ruckus and I'm like you couldn't be more temperate, mild and polite not to mention honest. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton asked a simple question to which she gave a simple response and if Perez would just take a Q-tip and clean the sperm out of his ear he'd see that. Here's where pageant officials are being hypocritical, they don't like her being so openly political they said in a transparent statement but let's say she had come out in support of gay marriage, I just think it's not her being political that really bothers folks but rather her politics per se. Sheesh you can't say anything these days, I just wish they'd all get on that giant rocket phallus-ship to the Moon or something. Perez called her a bitch on his blog but be that as it may I'm with Camille Paglia on this, I don't buy into this whole gay male exclusivity thing, never did. Beyonce and Britney are playing nude volleyball on a beach against Jessica Alba and Tyra Banks, her stalker's there watching but you ain't? oh but Antonio Banderas is in the buff outside on the veranda of his nice Spanish villa, Castillian breezes in his hair, thing flopping around and he's puffing on a Cohiba and you're a-go? Political correctness has to go sooner or later, may as well start the rollback now, good a time as ever. Rock on Carrie!!

Maybe if she were less worried about Michael Savage

and more concerned with the earliest stages of the swine flu, Napolitano of DHS that is. If there are deaths in this country or many deaths related to whatever this is it will reflect badly on the Obama Administration, fair or unfair it will reflect. We're supposed to be a few eras beyond Typhoid Mary and for any administration official to say we ought to resign ourselves and expect a few deaths, well you just don't go there. I wanna go in my old age in a rowboat with a fishing rod in my hands and my dog dozing off half hanging over the side like in that Norman Rockwell painting and not at the hands of some disease that our government couldn't get a handle on in time because it was politically incorrect to do so (Mexico, illegals). House, he would know what to do.

He's 79, why doesn't he just retire?

Rep. Sen. from PA Arlen Specter, now a Dem. No great political analysis here, I leave that to others but from what people are saying it ain't hard to figure. He's a cancer survivor to boot so I never got this work 'til you drop philosophy. I work now 'cause I have to but when the time comes I won't go over. When you love work that much you confound God, work was supposed to be a curse from the time of Adam, you're not getting it. Specter says the extremes have taken over both parties so why switch to the other one? I don't find the story all that jazzy but maybe McCain can give 'em that filibuster-proof majority, who knows?

Al Gore on Capitol Hill

"Climate change legislation has the moral equivalence of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s."

HUH? Even the most avid ecos don't make this argument. Is a tree a person? Al Gore has always been a bit......otherworldly. He's either nuts or has a higher spiritual understanding of these things than the rest of us but I'm gonna go with flakey for now.

The fetal conundrum

People especially liberals often assume if you take the pro-life position that they can guess with a rather high degree of accuracy your position on other issues, some pro-choice whiners at Danny's place a few months back assumed quite naturally that I was for the war in Iraq but for me I take each issue as it comes. A theme has emerged at my blog of late and that is I don't apply social conservatism across the board. I'm on the record, on porn and prostitution I am very libertarian and with gay marriage I have no problem with the federalist approach although you'd have to put a gun to my head to attend the gay nuptials ("ok I'm getting dressed just let me find my tie"). BUT abortion is different my friends and that's because it's very very unique from the three big issues I just mentioned. Those have a personal element of distaste for so many by their very nature, my God just think Eliot Spitezer in nothing but his black socks but these issues generally do not involve the taking of an innocent human life (ok, generally speaking). For the average liberal though he glumps them all together into some kind of collective trauma of keeping the government out of our lives, actually out of our sexual lives because he does care very very much if you smoke or use an aerosol can. For the liberal with a conscience abortion is resolved this way: from a biological perspective he or she readily admits it's a human life, he's very personally against it as he's always fond of saying but because that human life resides for a time within a woman's body it ipso facto becomes a feminist issue, a women's rights issue not so much because of the nature of the fetus as he has pretty much figured this out by now but by the sit'chayshen. He or she can't get it out of his damn head that because the home of the fetus is the womb that the homeowner as property owner can do as she likes, it's nothing personal. She might see the fetus as an intruder although truth be told she answered the door when the penis rang. I'm a bad person because I only see the human life, I ain't sophisticated like Bill Moyers you know? I just know how to spit chickens.

While it doesn't prove Obama's a socialist

this begs the question why leaders like Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro vastly prefer him over Bush. They say they know, they have a way of telling, they can pick up on these things so is Obama giving off some kind of socialist vibe? a signal? {wink wink} maybe Obama is in denial of these things himself, he's conflicted, he's not orientated yet, he's had a couple of socialist dreams recently that probably meant nothing. Come on over to the other side

comrade!

Savage went off the deep end last night

Actually when you have a catalyst like Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and her report that veterans returning home may pose a terrorist threat Savage is gonna blow a gasket but he went off on some pretty radical tangents last night and practically called the Obama Administration a totalitarian regime in the works, a bunch of Nazis and oven-stuffers he said who are gonna knock on your door in the middle of the night to take you away for saying the wrong thing, anti-abortionists are on her list, Obama may be the Beast with horns rising out of the sea to rule the world with China and Russia and oh yeah, McCain was the Manchurian Candidate. Actually the real threat is not those who have served their country so well but radical assholery and Obama if he had any smarts would can her right now...Now my Dad says there are things you keep to yourself, things you don't talk about. You might have the thought for a nanosecond that these new DTV converter boxes are the government's way of spying on you, maybe you think your boss is on acid ("a random drug test wouldn't hurt buddy") or the stray kitten that shows up on your doorstep is really the reincarnation of your dead cat. It's the Realm of the Untalkable, most people if they're honest have some theories, views and opinions that fall outside the Norm shall we say but you pretty much shelve it, don't want the respectable folks talking. Put it this way, if I blogged after two tumblers of the Christian Brothers it'd be a whole other blog, real Robodoon stuff but anyway what you got last night was the raw feed, Savage's political id, free association and real stream-of-consciousness totally unencumbered by should I say this or should I say that? The thing was so scary last night that I had to switch on Gwen Ifill's Washington Week in Review after to bring me back down to Earth, like waking up from a bad dream in a cold sweat and you still think there's a squirrel in your room. Now Savage seems to be on everyone's shitlist these days, even right-wingers don't like him and I disagreed with almost everything the man said BUT it was awesome, I like it

it's all good.

What to do when you have radical friends

Democratic peer pressure

This issue has to make Obama uncomfortable. New York is now the latest state to push for gay marriage. Democratic Governor David Paterson is sending up a bill to the Assembly pronto, Chuck Schumer has only recently converted to the gay marriage cause and Bam must be thinking "you know guys your state has its own economic woes and you're concerned with this right now?" It's like when you have a group of friends and over time you see they're a little bit off, just a wee tad like Bam is in the back seat and Paterson is driving his souped up GTO with the hemi, Chuck is sitting right next to him, they both got little old lady cataract glasses on and Paterson puts the pedal to the medal and Bam is like "SLOW DOWN ALREADY!!" They pick up Bloomberg, for some reason I can't get it out of my head that he's not a Democrat, he's for the gay marriage too and he's enjoying the ride as well. I don't think Obama wants to go down in History as the one-term president who effected radical social change or more likely at least wanted to as I really doubt even if Richard Simmons were president he'd be able to pass gay marriage in all 50 states in just one term. Even if Obama in his heart of hearts were for the thing I think he'd much prefer to be safely ensconced in his second term before upheaving society as we know it. I think he wants to govern moderately for the next four years, he has his nice sweater on with the little alligator but his friends Dave and Chuck are like

"hey Bam come and watch the sheep video with us"

maybe someone passes him a joint. They take him to a club and pay for a free lap dance for him but he's sitting there all stiff,

you know man can't he just break free and hang with his own crowd? those who get it about not rocking the boat too much, these be tough economic times. Can't we be content with making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for now, kicking back with some milk and getting those economic numbers up again ("hey guys it's time for a break") while Dave and Chuck behind his back are calling him a f****n faggot for not getting on board. He's the first African-American president for cryin' out loud, he's Made History, lower the flame and just let it simmer for awhile.

Rush's persecution complex

He has one big-time you know. I haven't listened to him in literally a couple of years now but of the occasional snippets I hear and read about he's STILL complaining of the conspiracy against him. He can't talk about ANY subject without bringing IT up. New York Governor David Paterson has raised taxes through the roof here acting like your typical Democratic executive and Rush was complaining about this recently, says he has no choice but to move out of the state but then had to add he (Paterson) wants that and so good ole Dave started messin' with him and said if he knew his tax policy would have that effect he would have considered it much sooner. Now conservatism is largely reactionary by nature almost by default. Since liberalism pretty much holds sway in all areas of life today so much of conservative energy is spent merely reacting to the dominant philosophy of the day, it's a conservative malaise with a heavy shaving of Zoloft. Let's say it's all true, vast swaths of the msm hate Rush and want to silence him, one 24/7 subproject of the VLWC (or Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy) wants to suppress him through a new Fairness Doctrine, what of it? While if even some of these things are true it doesn't help the Right to have a persecution complex. Rush gives it that conspiratorial and paranoid edge but the time he wastes marinating in his own self-pity instead of just pushing conservative principles, it reminds me of the time you waste in traffic jams. Part of him wants to be an existential hero, some kind of angst-ridden character out of some graphic novel constantly warring with forces larger than himself. It's like working with someone who says all the time "they hate me, they want to get rid of me" instead of just putting in your eight hours, pumping it out and going home. God GOD I miss the days of the caller abortions and the blow monkeys!

Where to begin?

So yeah, unless you've been living in a cave like a blind salamander you're aware that Mel's wife of, what is it? like almost thirty years is divorcing him for his philandering ways. Seven or eight children, staunch and ultra-traditionalist pre-Vatican 2 Catholic who once said his Protestant wife is going to hell, spotted on a tropical beach with some bombshell Russian singer in a bikini so why'd he make The Passion? I've a theory about this and it involves a little Stephen Hawking, wormholes, superstrings applied to psychology, Einsteinian Freudianism......I'm working on it......it's my Loop Theory. Let's say you're not just average conservative, you keep walking along this loop and you enter the woods of SuperConservatism, I mean EVERYTHING bothers you but remember it's still a loop or a giant circle and what's on the other side of the loop? Where your ultraconservatism ends is where liberalism begins, I'm still working on the precise algebraic differential equation...but before you know it your average SuperCon "accidentally" walks into some porn shop, just browsing mind you, keeping tabs on the culture a la Tom Wolfe. When he wakes up the same hand that once condemned his wife to hell is now circle-jerking to some Slovakian fantasy, the same mouth that once lumped all things post-Vatican 2 as Antichrist is now saying "Jose Cuervo I pray for your power!" It also helps explain why former lefties like David Horowitz are now confirmed righties, they traveled the same loop as Mel only from the opposite direction. Fruit loops.

Pro-gay conservatives

Another two-parter, I HAVE TO say something about Mel Gibson but let's get back to Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal for a minute. It works like this, for years we've taken libs to task for being pro-abortion until they have to overexplain themselves, "oh no we're not for THAT, no man, you got us all wrong" and so basically all you have to do from a political angle is to criticize someone and according to this basic law of political psychology the person will start to move in the direction of the critic, nay will almost or just stop short of adopting his position or may even take on a diluted version. OK, so now for the same amount of time the average conservative has been labeled a gay-basher, a homophobe and so now they can't wait to show their new gay colors like Bree on Desperate Housewives doing a complete 180 after she found out her son is gay. So now you have conservatives applauding the State of Vermont for legalizing gay marriage through the legislature, BINGO! pass the lube, we weren't really against gays marrying in the first place just wanted you to respect federalist concerns is all. This is Kyle Smith of the New York Post but for a fair majority of us we still have a residual distaste for gay acts. We don't form an entire movement around it the way the evangelicals have, we don't have the fervor or the time and we're more than tolerant but by the same token don't ask us to celebrate the destruction of your anus. Kyle says it all amounts to this, the buggery bothers us but I'd go further. The larger issue is the loss of masuline culture. Sure a guy wearing a dress won't upset the Order of the Universe but we have a problem with it if it's not part of a comedy sketch, we can't picture him like Dirty Harry jumping from the overpass onto that school bus with the sniper holding the schoolkids hostage and any culture that celebrates the first tranny mayor who's ugly btw is a little off. We actually prefer male culture as we should, those weren't tranny SEALS after all who shot those three Somali pirates to death. In relations between the sexes feminism wants to criminalize the Alpha Male, if I'm meandering it's because it's all part and parcel of the same package, it's all part of the pussification of America but it doesn't mean you have to be like Mel Gibson...(to be continued)

Conservatives out of sorts

First off we have to put a checkmark in Obama's corner. He gave the order for the use of force last Friday to free Captain Richard Phillips from those Somali pirates. He gets a kudo or two in my book but somehow Jimmy Carter would've f****d it up.

The Winter of our Conservative Discontent - Beth has had it with liberals, you can't change their minds she says but before we go there we gotta look at our own camp. IMO the fiscal conservatives (FCs) want to take over the Party and purge us social conservatives (SCs) from the ranks. OK, maybe not soapie and Patrick M but the ones who pull the strings do. The FCs don't just want to stop moralizing about things like abortion, rather they want to moralize or mainstream abortion so as to talk about other more important things. Now as I blogged recently when you take the social issues off the table there is less and less that bonds us FCs and SCs together - economic policy, military campaigns and overall patriotism is basically what you're left with, kind of a thin gruel like eating the same thing everyday. Here's where the FCs are wrong though. I'm an idealist not just about politics but Life in general, even if our politics were correct Life could still suck. Put another way you need spirituality, conservatism has to be about moral values too. One of the SCs' focus is doing the right thing, the FCs would add nothing wrong with that but such right choices need to be freely made in an environment of maximum freedom. Whatever, we could have the right economic policies tomorrow, ultimate victory in Iraq and all the rest and still have the usual laundry list of social ills, divorce, abortion, drug abuse etc. In short how can you be a conservative and not talk about spirituality, about moral values? Social conservatism is about preserving traditions, not about saying psychedelics are good for you, that's libertarianism. So before I can respond to Beth's points we need to define what conservatism means, what does it really stand for? with so many strains of conservatism today it's hard at times to know exactly what it is we're fighting for and conversely before we take on liberalism we have to know what that stands for too, what precisely are they fighting for on their side?

I'm just worried about the next psycho getting ready to rock

WHEW!!! there hasn't been a massacre in a couple of days now. We're living in the age of the radical asshole, the Golden Age of the Psycho but what would Jack Bauer do? He'd shoot the motherfucker dead in the full glory of his lunacy but that's just it, liberals latch ahold of these stories pretty much to push gun control. The experts are saying it's job loss that pushes these idiots over the edge. I'll go along with that and that's the whole point, too many of us have too much of an emotional attachment to our jobs. I know it pays our bills, hell it's our survival but it ain't healthy. In my area many years ago a man who worked for a phone company once killed his whole family and then himself because they took his overtime away, he relied on the OT to send his daughter to school among other things. I don't sympathize with these psychos in the least, may the devils torment them in hell for ages to come. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed, get up in a pissed off mood and shoot a couple dozen or so and then the cowards almost always take their own lives. Ya wanna know something, take your own life!! hell put it on YouTube if you like but leave the rest of us the hell alone. The radical asshole, I'm tired of him like he blowed himself up real good to get 72 virgins feeding him honeycakes but his leader never does the same, he's in some cave watching CNN. My life sucks so I'm gonna make sure you don't even have one, the psycho moral code. I've nothing to add here but anyone thinking of doing the same, form your own little weirdo club and march off the nearest cliff. Rant over.

Isn't that just a pro-forma statement?

I originally was just gonna post this comment in my last thread about liberals but wanted to draw more attention to it. When a reporter put the stem cell question to President Obama in his last press conference he said he has wrestled with stem cells just like he has wrestled with abortion. Is this really true though or how do we know it's true? It's what I call a pro-forma statement or saying what's required as a societal or cultural consensus is forming or has actually coalesced around a controversial issue. Now the abortion debate has been evolving lo these past going on four decades now. Maude's daughter once said it was just like getting a tooth pulled but those were the early years, the consensus now is that the act itself does have a certain gravitas to it thus the pro-forma statement BUT let's say someone has really really wrestled with the issue as Obama has said he's done, on the whole list of sub-issues important to both sides wouldn't the wrestler come down sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other? Put another way you have two columns, the official NARAL positions and the official NRTL positions so wouldn't our wrestling Commander-in-Chief have checkmarks in different columns going all the way down the list? "Should Roe vs. Wade be overturned?" NO "Parental notification" YES "Should we have what are known as informed-consent laws?" YES "Parental consent" NO See what I'm saying? BUT Obama has a 100% approval rating on issues of concern to the abortion lobby. Brilliant? I thought it was.

What is the next big news story?

I was thinking of a transformative and positive event that transcends politics, that when everybody went in to work the next day they'd be a little less consumed by the daily grind and go "how about that?" An end to abortion? doubt it, there's seems to be a kink in our culture right now, seems we have to have a little Hoover action from time to time, we could have a thousand methods of birth control tomorrow, wouldn't matter, I don't get it. The cure for cancer? 'twould be nice, we're about due as I keep saying but somehow it never seems to come. World peace? in what lifetime? The capture of OBL? Bush should've wrapped this up and no Mark Levin Fan, this is not some liberal talking point. Abolishing the IRS? that's self-evident but the continued existence of the IRS is why we only have two major political parties and they both remain in power. Madonna becomes a nun? she's back to swinging from the trees again.

Obama as the nation's first African-American president? Many, even a majority might go with this as being the transformative and positive event I'm talking about. Even many conservatives would go along with this, I call this the Peggy Noonan School of Thought, no matter he's a liberal who's sinking our country deeper into debt the important thing is that it happened, mull this over with your brandy at night and get that happy feeling, that mentally orgasmic reverie but for me and Beth and soapie it doesn't satisfy, it's formula food and doesn't fulfill, it doesn't sit in your gut and give you that contented feeling. As a blogger I need to sink my teeth into something. Porkulus, an important but dry subject and I can't blog about Obama for the next four years, it's too depressing and you get that feeling of putting your heart and soul into a blog but where's the influence? where's that Jon Stewart pull? that "did you hear what Z-man just said?" It has to get worse before it gets better as they say. Beth taking a sabbatical from her blogging and yes it is a sabbatical is perfectly understandable, if Nancy Pelosi doesn't follow her own Pope what does that make us?

The culture's in a rut these days. Movies suck although some people feel they still have to go. Pop music, it ain't exactly the '80s and even a recent "House" had an episode about a guy who grows pot in his apartment and got sick from some rat piss, at least FRINGE knows to take a break every once in a while. You'd be surprised at the number of 40-something men seriously browsing through comic book stores, porn is so yesterday. There's no talent out there, people don't know how to make the workplace jazzy and interesting anymore, we're all into our 9-5 little gulags. Come on guys, give us the Big Story!!

Who's your favorite liberal?

Mr. Idaho of course but it's always been Mark Shields of The Newshour for me, at least until lately when he felt Obama did no wrong with Porkulus. Used to like Michael Kinsley until he started coming across as a snarky nerd so that's it for me, it's a count 'em on one hand kind of deal.

A solution to New York Times editorials

I don't read them.

A funny story

Seems there was some young African-American librarian who used to commute to work everyday by subway. Very clean-cut with glasses, not bad looking and in New York there's a lot of crime so he's sitting there in this very crowded train one day and there's a wanted poster of the latest perp wanted for rape/assault and he's getting a little nervous and concerned because he's thinking "hey, that looks like me!!"

Former Yankees Third Baseman Graig Nettles once wrote a book, "Balls", and when a hot book first comes out there's usually a long list of reserves at the Circulation Desk at your local library and so this woman comes up to get her copy and asks "do you have Balls for my husband?"

Which is most likely to be true?

spontaneous human combustion, haunted houses, UFOs, Elvis is still around, Sasquatch, Loch Ness, Oswald was a patsy, the Bermuda Triangle OR the VRWC really exists?

I'm sorry those are your options and you have to choose one. It's my hunch that BB is going with (none of the above) but I've discussed this with people and my personal favorite is Nessie.

The age-old question

Why do African-Americans vote so overwhelmingly Democratic? Used to think the answer was traditional Democrat support for such things as affirmative action programs and welfare but this seems simplistic. I've come across many blacks who have conservative values and yet they don't vote that way in the end. It's a bit of a headscratcher and are there any polls out there that ask the question point blank? Every now and then black leaders make noises to the Democrat Party don't take us and our vote for granted but when push comes to shove...'tis a waste of time imo to woo their vote, they don't like you get in through your head and it becomes a bit stalkerish but I'm just curious about theories is all.

Which conservatives DON'T you like?

This is a spinoff from my most recent threads and deserves a special section of its own. David Frum doesn't like Rush Limbaugh, soapie doesn't like Ann Coulter, personally I never cared for Bob Grant. BB has finally come clean as having liberal tendencies but in my view judging from the bulk of his posts he doesn't read from the liberal playbook either, he's a fair guy. If I may toot my own horn here too I don't read from the conservative playbook but on balance I'm a conservative. It seems to me the real team players don't really have a problem with any of the prominent conservatives out there, throw out a name and they'll be cool with it. Just wondering though and this is just among friends are there any conservatives out there whom you don't like?

Personally I find her a little too bony

Meghan McCain, daughter of the Senator, in her blog on Ann Coulter:

"I find her offensive, radical, insulting and confusing all at the same time."

I normally would say something when somebody in the news criticizes a prominent conservative especially coming from outspoken liberal offspring but Coulter is a rather strong brew. I don't like it 140 proof either, Jack Bauer as politician, her scorched-earth policy of verbally obliterating the opposition, C-Block. I want to say something Meghan but I can't, it is what it is, you're entitled.

Mythologizing Limbaugh

I was in the A&P just now and noticed the spanking new issue of Newsweek with Rush's face on the cover with some kind of duct tape over his mouth it seemed to me. The big bold headline: ENOUGH! A Conservative's Case Against Limbaugh by David "Axis of Evil" Frum. Now if you turn this around and let's say it said instead "A Conservative's Case Against the Z-Man" I'd be tickled pink, I'm on the MAP and I must have some real pull, they must fear me for a reason if I'm on the cover of a national newsweekly but I would also feel I'm somehow being mythologized, a victim of apotheosis or being turned into a god but I'm only a blogger and he's only a radio guy but I suppose you're not supposed to diss the nation's first African-American president, for God's sake show some respect! but imho Frum is a dick. It's the BOX again that bothers me, what we're allowed to say and think is getting smaller by the day and people like Frum seem perfectly content to masturbate to Conformity, to hump the Rules even as they make them up as they go along. People who make it their hobby to attack those who think outside the box, they seem dangerous to me. The BOX now says you have to like the man who Made History even if you disagree with his political philosophy but libs never liked Bush and Rush calling Rahm Emanuel a ballerina is pretty mild stuff if you want to get all Michael Moore about it. There's an old old saying, you scratch my balls I'll scratch yours and neocon Frum making his case against a conservative legend in a major liberal newsweekly, there's some kind of weird footplay going on here even if I can't put my finger on it.

Why we're fat

Blame it on conventional wisdom. Ever since we were growing up we had it drummed into our skulls that you need 3 SQUARE MEALS A DAY, there's even a small diner in Yonkers with the same name. Conservatives who think our prison system is too liberal complain among other things that prison is a place where you're assured your 3 SQUARE MEALS A DAY. Conventional wisdom has it that BREAKFAST is the most important meal of the day, it's fuel for your body and you won't feel right the rest of the day if you skip this critical morning ritual. So here's the deal, it's that third meal that's doing us in. The Z-Man regimen would say you only need one square meal a day at a minimum although this does require some discipline so for the vast majority I would propose either a light meal and then later on the main meal or if you feel this is still too ascetic for your tastes then simply two regular meals a day. BUT 3 meals a day?!? Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner? This is why we're so fat, you don't need three meals in a 24 hour period. Conventional wisdom, it'll get you in trouble every time.

& what if those cures never come?

I hadn't even planned on blogging about this today but Savage was so eloquent and insightful last night it inspired me. Yeah Savage is known for an extreme view every now and then (nobody ever seems to define this term "extreme") but I enjoy the show anyway and the biggie topic yesterday was Obama taking pen in hand (yet again) and signing an executive order lifting the ban on taxpayer funding of human embryonic stem-cell research. OK, so 'twas to be expected and so far Obama's report card has a big fat red L on top saying he's a liberal and so where to begin?

ALL the approaches from the scientific to the philosophical to the mathematical which I recently contributed in a blog point overwhelmingly in the direction that human life begins at conception. Faith talks about ensoulment but I don't think that's relevant here, after all if we hold a newborn may not get a soul until two weeks later we don't normally then sanction infanticide. You did not come from an embryo, you once were that embryo, so says this branch of philosophy concerned primarily with the nature of existence. Mathematically we have what Dr. Bernard Nathanson calls the vector of life at work, cells dividing at a rapid pace and forming organs etc., a velocity and direction at work, a force and magnitude and again the vector obviously begins at conception. It's a canard to say we don't know when life begins and will probably never know, that's not the issue anymore although many pretend it is but that's for psychology. The long and the short of it is as one pro-lifer put it after yesterday's signing "this president places very little value on the life of the unborn." You wonder though, yeah I know Obama's official political position is one of Pro-Choice but when he looks into the eyes of his daughters Sasha and Malia at night how can he not question his own stance or is he that hardboiled on the issue? Anti-socialism unites us conservatives far more than the social issues (ka-ching ka-ching) but for me the larger concern may be how extreme will Obama be on abortion? The media might pretend FOCA doesn't exist but I know an awful lot of folks who are concerned. As Savage said yesterday Obama is beginning to pay back one of his biggest constituencies, the abortion racket in this country. Some people might consider this out-of-the-box talk but I was never a fan of the box anyway.

I don't like being boxed in like this

Danny has a recurring theme over at Right Minds and that is his concern that the conservative movement not become irrational as the liberal movement has been in the past if I can give a capsule review here. He says the growing conservative charge that Obama is a socialist or has socialist leanings is evidence of the movement becoming unhinged. Libs did this with Bush and it became known as BDS or Bush Derangement Syndrome but here's another option: what if the libs were right about Bush and the conservatives are right about Obama? I was thinking about the late William F. Buckley Jr. the other day and one of his legacies was he almost single-handedly purged the John Birchites from the mainstream conservative movement. Now if you ask me if I agree with the Birchers I would say in large part NO but I still want to hear what they have to say just like I want to hear Rosie O'Donnell's theories on why steel can't melt. Throw it ALL into the mix and while Danny is a smart fella, imo he's a rising star but the reality of it is this whole country right now is the top of the blender having come off and the shake going all over the place. You hear this you hear that and pretty much you can't control it anymore, it is what it is and maybe that's a good thing after all. Savage said last night a very profound thing, when the day comes when you can't hear these things, when everyone says the same thing our country is gone, no longer a democracy. Gotta say something about those embryos in the next blog.....

The subject is ghosts

You can consider this a companion piece to my recent Why aren't there more miracles?, in short why aren't there more ghostly encounters? Having gone to a wake recently this thought's been rattling around the ole mental attic for a while but as it stands now the age-old question is there life after death is still quite up in the air. Now it's easy to make Casper jokes when this subject comes up but let's be a little serious here. The purpose of more visitations from our dearly departed would be twofold -- to ease the pain of the survivors and to add the weight of the evidence to that timeless question.

When I was a member in good standing at Hannityland I was mostly political but occasionally poked my nose around into other territory and I brought up the subject one day in the Religion Forum (please no dissing there, either respect any and all beliefs or consider yourself eternally banned). Monsieur Hben, the resident Protestant minister pounced on the topic and said consider any and all ghostly manifestations as the work of Satan but then two longtime and stalwart conservative Catholic posters chimed in too. Socrates and Apatriot agreed with Hben and pretty much said the same thing, that if your dearly departed Uncle Charlie walked through your living room one night to say hello that he's really a demonic imposter. Really?? I wasn't even aware the Church had such voluminous teachings on the matter, has Benedict given a recent statement? I'm aware of a few true-life ghost stories, some in the family and some I heard about involving friends and acquaintances. The tales are benign in nature and quite inspiring so Soc and Patriot's point would be what exactly, that some of these folks are actually in a rather bad place and the Devil is trying to hoodwink us?

I always liked that old TV series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir starring Edward Mulhare as the deceased sea captain and Hope Lange as the tenant of the house he's haunting. The ole Cap'n would appear constantly and converse with her and offer advice, take in and sympathize with her problems, he was a friendly spirit and took all the shock and dread out of death through his regular appearances, just a member of the family you could say. If only Real Life were this way instead of this eternal mystery, this perplexing and to many disturbing enigma that keeps us wondering and guessing right up 'til the bitter end, what's behind the curtain Monty? So anybody out there got any good ghost stories? I promise I won't tell Hben.

The wake scene

Another reason not to be good, you won't get an honest eulogy. Practically everybody gets good eulogies these days, the guy who cheats on his wife every chance he gets, your scumbag of a boss so where's the motivation to do the right thing? "Yeah, Bob was a selfish prick", imagine you're not part of the solution but part of the problem and you're sitting in back of the church and you hear that, might make you think twice. What's this "she lit up a room every time she entered it?" I mean it's nice to be nice after somebody's passing but let's cut the bullshit. I can only think of one person whom I came across in my life who this could possibly, possibly apply to. Had a neighbor once, crusty old woman who lived a hard life and had a bad husband and after he died she said "I don't know why everyone's sending me sympathy cards." I was never into cemeteries but Gate of Heaven in Valhalla is a good one, Babe Ruth and Sal Mineo are buried there.

Adult Hyperactivity Disorder or AHD

Worked in a deli way back and this guy would come in and I mean right after we opened and that was at 7 in the morning, thin and middle-agish, looked like he jogged and he saw me going to my department after I just clocked in and he'd stand right there in front of the counter at exactly two minutes after to order his cuts and I'm like "I have to wash the chicken juice off my hands first, give me a second" and he kind of got offended and stalked off all wired up, bouncing off the different food sections to pick up things and then came back a few later. I hate these early-risers, everyone else is still waking up and they're out there and the sun's not up yet and they're jogging against traffic. Same place, few years ago and I was told to close the deli at 4 since we were in the middle of a big blizzard. Already had over a foot of snow on the ground so I must have had a worried tense expression on my face and this young guy came over. Now I'm worried about how it'll be going home and I'm trying to cover the salads and he just stood there and said I just gave him a, get this, a nonverbal form of communication as in I don't want to help him. Yeah but why is he even out in a blizzard ordering cold cuts? I swear it's like the snow ionizes people. You'll get some frail elderly woman out in this stuff and she wants a 1/4 lb. of cole slaw, stay home and watch a court show. So that's it, I sass people with my eyes.

The incredibly obese

Here's the way I break it down. Now for the vast majority of us we won't go over a certain weight, most of us are probably overweight but within reasonable limits, a sensible paunch but it stops there and WHY you may ask? Has to do with one of the two strongest and most primal urges in human nature

EL SEXO,

the other being food of course. OK so now most of us enjoy both or at least hope to enjoy the fever of which Madonna sings about but the deal is we pretty much know that if it's too much going down the pike foodwise we ain't getting the other thing. Just trying to break things down here to their most elemental, most basic, most simplistic so the ones you occasionally see on Springer and in real life, those who are fat in an awesome way have pretty much made their decision in Life. They're going with the food and I can understand this. God gave you taste buds and as Gwyneth Paltrow said on one installment of Spain - On the Road Again "dieting is a horrible way to live" and I agree BUT...so at what crossroads point in your life's journey do you make the choice for food, that philosophical watershed of never going back to the other thing? Don't tell me it's metabolism because if you step out of the shower one night and you see you're 500 freakin' pounds you know you have to do something about it and do it now if you're ever gonna get that spoonful of lovin' going, the tub with the candles and the Barry White pumping in. It's all good though because it's all about choice, in this case FOOD VS. SEX, I just find it interesting is all.

Just a spritz of paranoia

Woman and I were discussing this. When we grow up we're taught to trust each other, that people are basically good but that paranoia or suspicion or what have you is a bad thing but you may be at a disadvantage later on in life. She brought up crime writer Ann Rule's books and one intro in particular where Rule says the people who are most often prey are the honest as being honest they think everyone else is. People who lie and do so skillfully, the honest never even suspect they're being had. These are very apropos insights especially in light of the Bernard Madoff scandal and now this Stanford guy. IF it doesn't add up it's not always paranoia at work, it could be your sixth sense or what Lista calls that still small inner voice. Shakespeare knew it, in King Lear the virtuous Edgar has no idea his evil brother Edmund is scheming for his land. There's been events in my own life that don't always add up, bad characters who for some strange reason remain popular whom everybody else trusts but you can see right through them. It always amazes me that these Madoff guys can get away with this stuff for years before the truth finally surfaces, maybe it has to do with the way we're brought up? Politicians we know are corrupt but we still elect them. Perhaps we need to apply a bit of the soapster's wisdom here who once said he tends to think the worst of people until they prove themselves otherwise. I might add ESPECIALLY when $$$$$$ is involved.

Rx against Porkulus

I only caught a small part of his don't mess with Joe speech last night. I can only take this stuff in very small doses, I'd rather watch them sell a banjo on Home Shopping Network. It's easy to lose focus and see the problem as OBAMA but it ain't this per se. Eliminate the income tax!!! Yes, when you have people's hard-earned money rolling in the temptation is just too overwhelming to use it for this reason and for that reason and I don't care what party you belong to. Get rid of the income tax and you can use it for no reason.

In one ear and out the other

Pope dresses down Nancy Pelosi on abortion.

Impressions of Obama

He might be a moderate or a pragmatist or a healer or a reconciler or a torchbearer of peace to all mankind, all kinds of yummy ingredients blended together into one heavenly decadent sinful dessert but to me he's a liberal automaton, a kind of political cyborg sent back through Time to sign liberal bill after liberal bill. The order to close Gitmo, the new pretty-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top interrogation rules on terror suspects, that Hummer of a stimulus package barreling down the street and now lifting of the ban on embryonic stem-cell research and let's see, it's only February the 17th. The cyborg always has a mission, never to be troubled by afterthoughts or doubts or followup questions there is a job to be done, undo every thing Bush, reverse conservative gains, have liberal clones in place when any of the Supremes decide to call it quits. Let it not be said that he is the President who does Nothing, don't put that left-handed bill-signing hand on ice quite yet. Just throwing the practice pitches until FOCA, I'm getting depressed but I sure hope helping some guy with genital warts somehow stimulates the economy and as a diversion we get the Octomommy and homicidal chimps and a 24 season that doesn't quite make sense. It is a surreal moment, tell me I'm dreaming.

Moral Instruction

I've read in different Catholic Church bulletins that when a couple want to use the sacrament of marriage they usually have to inform the parish at least one year in advance. Struck me as way too long a wait, what if they want a small affair and not all the hoopla and they want to do it three months from now? What if there's already a bun in the oven? Basically a large part of the wait has to do with the requirement of those Pre-Cana classes, marriage preparation courses designed to strengthen their future conjugal life together. I found myself being alternately annoyed and offended by this, it's my libertarian streak coming through I guess and doesn't the Church already have too many rules and regulations to begin with (be sorry for your sins but don't confess them to a priest and you go to Hell, your basic control issue)? So I came up with the root of my displeasure here and it's this: you either believe in the sanctity of marriage, the seriousness of the marriage covenant or you don't, it's not teachable, it's not trainable. Now moral education makes perfect sense, is even necessary when raising kids. At such an impressionable age they're perfectly amenable to notions of Right and Wrong, well some of them anyway but when dealing with adults...it'd be like if your Dad came over your apartment, you're 37 now and found a porno under your bed and yelled at you about it. Dad might be perfectly right about the bad nature of the stuff but...regarding morality you either have it or you don't, it is what it is. Now to tie together two of my recurring themes here, abortion and drugs - since the fetus is human it should be protected by law, since drugs pose a public-safety issue that's the primary reason they should be illegal. Going over some of my most recent blogs on these two matters it's become obvious moral instruction doesn't work, moral education is a waste of time. I've articulated the old tried-and-true reasons for being against abortion and threw in some new and original points I hope on the matter. Same deal with drugs especially as relates to the psychedelics but it's almost as if people don't read the stuff or read it but don't absorb it. They're passionately for abortion or at least pro-choice as they say and the folks who are for narcotics seem to be really for them, the scare tactics only make them more curious and aggresive in their defense of them. So perhaps the pedagogic (or teaching) aspect of my blogging is coming to an end now, gave it my best shot and the thought occured to me if I feel this way about Pre-Cana why not the rest? In a morally relative universe to say you have all the answers or at least some of them, we prefer to revel in our ambiguity, our ambivalence and we've made the quest of not knowing or not striving to know a gospel. In the olde days Truth was our beacon, today truth is controversial. I still hold the same positions I've always did, I'm simply giving the chalk and the eraser and the pointer a rest for now.

Kind of an apocalyptic assessment from the msm

Patiently waiting my turn to use the computer at my local library after work the other day and browsed the magazine rack to kill time. First Newsweek caught my interest with its cover of 2/16 - We Are All Socialists Now - The Perils and Promise of the New Era of Big Government, I didn't know I was a socialist but thanx for enlightening me boys and then my eye caught The New Republic of 2/18 with its breathless Conservatism is Dead - An Intellectual Autopsy of the Movement by Sam Tanenhaus. I always knew TNR was liberal in political orientation but somehow I thought they had shaded themselves towards moderation over the years, wasn't quite The Nation know what I'm saying? Now all this because Bam was elected? A movement that's been around since like forever and is simply the collective mass reaction to the dominant liberalism of the day is no more? In this sense conservatism is largely reactionary by definition since as a movement it never really gets to call the shots at least in academia, the mainstream media (ok there's FOX), the judiciary and you name it. Liberalism is pretty much public policy these days, there's still a good chance you can get a welfare check but I didn't know Obama had such power that he wiped conservatism off the face of the map. The msm inhabits a rather weird universe, it's almost, oh I don't know, psychedelic?

If it's not the social issues what unites us as conservatives?

Is it the theme of less government? The fiscal conservatives (FC's) would say no, if anything they're the true conservatives. With my heavy abortion blogging a few months ago to my more recent drug tangent it's become apparent we're not all on the same page. Throw in gay marriage and I would hazard a guess too that they don't get all that bent out of shape if a sex shop opens next door to a church and a playground which segues nicely into

economic policy? Well if this is all there is that's kind of thin gruel. Most conservatives favor lower taxes but what about those of us who favor no income tax at all? I almost said "and less spending" but true to form when they get into office even they throw the money around. OK, so the libertarian position of no income taxation to the more mainstream conservative view of lower taxes, well that's a bit of a ravine but we can still wave comfortably to each other from each side of the bridge. So does it all revolve around the dinars? Then there's

military excursions. Surprisingly I would've expected more diversity here, when those phantom WMD's in Iraq failed to materialize I would've expected conservatives to debate more the loss of life there, we're not pacifists by any stretch but remaking the Middle East? OK, Pat Buchanan had a problem with this but he's Pat Buchanan, the rest of us referred to it as Bush-bashing.

$$$$$$ and War.....hmmmmm.....and oh yes, Alec Baldwin is a dick.

Take social issues off the table and what do we have? Are there still common threads? Do we still have A common thread? I don't quite have the answer anymore but I don't think liberals debate what liberalism means to them, if they're not always on the same page at least they're reading the same book.

Channel-surfing last night

NO I didn't watch the whole thing, merely dipped my finger in that liberal dip from time to time, get that aftertaste going in the mouth. Obama's very first news conference. As expected he pretty much touted the important role of government in Life and lectured us on the conservatives didn't like FDR and the New Deal, "but they're fighting old battles" he said. I didn't know that if a battle is old it's no longer philosophically valid so after that I kind of drifted off into Home Shopping Network land, did a little Globetrekker which was interesting because I learned all about the Yangtze River in China and swung back to catch his thoughts on Iran still being a member of the international community or something, checked out what's on the CW and then caught the very informal and brusque "thank you guys" at the end at exactly 9:02PM as if he had to catch 24.

Credibility issues with 24

Sangala Colonel Ike Dubaku, right-hand man to the Juma Regime responsible for untold genocide against their own people. Our first woman president Allison Taylor has decided to militarily invade this fictitious African country to stop the atrocity but Col. Dubaku has corrupted vast swaths of the U.S. government with diamonds and since Plan A with the now destroyed CIP device has failed he has kidnapped the First Man or Gentleman Henry Taylor who's already been through hell and back, through the mill as they say, and personally calls the White House to tell her to back off and withdraw the U.S. fleet from the coast of Sangala, all this time operating from various safehouses in America. So why exactly did Dubaku under the assumed name Samuel cultivate a persoal relationship with an African-American woman and get himself into all kinds of personal distractions with her mother who rung up his cell on last night's episode to tell him to break up with her? I'm sure someone of his military stature when the need comes to get his rocks off has a 'ho or two in his back pocket and ALSO he roams about freely on subways and sidewalks and but NOBODY seems to recognize him. Now I'm perfectly aware of a good part of the Taylor government has been bought off but you'd think at least some part of the CIA, the still good part would be looking for the man. Maybe he figured it's true what they say, we all look alike but it's still a compelling season on 24, just stretches it a tad you might say.

A new credo?

Had a young manager once and was mulling over in my head while channel-surfing last night what he offered me once as his own personal wisdom for the workplace (I'm sorry Obama but I wasn't paying strict attention). "Don't do for them until they do for you." It might sound cynical and negative but when you think about it it makes sense. How many times at your job have you come in on your day off to help out 'cause somebody else called out sick or else stayed late too many times to count? Did you rack up any brownie points by doing so? Have they kept track of your good deeds and will duly reward you in the end? Not likely so rock on brother!

Are we outnumbered?

This is kind of a spinoff to my most recent blog The hippy lobby never seems to die as I am concerned and I've shared this with Beth. That particular post dealt specifically with studies being done right now purporting to show the health benefits of lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD but I'm broadening the subject here to narcotics in general especially in light of the recent Michael Phelps bong show. Now as I expressed to Beth I had thought there was some kind of societal consensus finally evolving that illegal drugs are bad for you, even that hedonist Hef reportedly doesn't allow them in the Mansion but then reviewing the most recent blogs out there the number of people who see nothing at all wrong with using at least some of these drugs, put it this way, I find this counterconsensus if you will disturbing. To say that there is irresponsible drug use and then responsible drug use is like saying there's also responsible adultery which many people hold to also. Now getting back to my hippy blog even the heavy hardcore hallucinogens, otherwise reasonable people who should know better seem at least curious about them. There's an intellectual curiosity here and they defend it by saying that this normally political desire for moderation be applied here too. Now as positive a thing as moderation can be I say it doesn't always apply across the board this being one of those cases, it's a common error in moral reasoning to say moderation in all things. I find these thoughts mesmerizing in a bad way and so this hippy blog companion piece.

Why conservatives want Obama to fail

Now ask yourself this question: As a conservative you are rightly concerned about some of Obama's policies or stated positions in the past, it could be FOCA or the stimulus package, it could be the closing of Gitmo in one year, whatever but do you want to see a failed presidency over the next four years? I would say that RUSH does in spades and here's why, it would show the world yet again the bankruptcy of liberalism, the damage it causes, a textbook case to be used come '012. That's f****d up, as conservatives we can and should fight Obama whenever the issue is important enough, we have to hold the line on fiscal extravagance for instance when it comes to "stimulating" the economy but as I said in my last blog partisanship has been sharpened since his election, this is not good. Now many of my own views may happen to fall along partisan lines but there's a difference between this and seeing yourself as a member of a Team, Us vs. Them, criticizing Obama's proposed infrastructure program for example as Karl Rove has done early on instead of saying yes, our roads and bridges and tunnels are in great need of upgrading and basic repair. This is tweaking and it is petty, it doesn't rise to the level of a FOCA and it shows the sorry state of conservatism that we'd rather he fail to give us a leg up in the next big one. I hope he doesn't push FOCA, I hope he gets a healthy dose of fiscal sanity, I hope he's good in the War on Terror and keeps us safe, I hope this and I hope that. His very early going out of his way to seek out Republican views and ideas bodes well which brings up the question: IF his turns out to be a good or even fair presidency will we give him due credit? There's a fine line between pushing your views and hoping somebody falls flat on his face to "prove" the correctness of your views which is why I haven't listened at all to conservative talk radio since the election. Savage is still harping on Obama's middle name and my brother says Sean has this high-pitched wail of a voice like we're in the middle of a world war. I don't know what this all means, whether conservative talk radio will see a rejuvenation or its own demise but frankly I'm tired of everyone at this point.

Obamafest

I was surfing the regular nightly news broadcasts last night and there for the first ten minutes on CBS, NBC and ABC was Obama being interviewed mainly about Sen. Tom Daschle's withdrawal as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson all doing their thing and Williams ending his broadcast by affectionately saying "Obama had a bad day at the office." Now I realize that this is the nature of the beast, that at least 90% of the news you see every night revolves around Washington, it would be quite easy to defend this practice journalistically but I'm bored. This is one thing I like about watching the BBC News or the French News, there's a world beyond Washington and you learn about things happening in the world you had no idea about. Now l'affaire Daschle is fairly interesting at best that is for a day or two but I'm not going to judge Obama's whole presidency on it. Laura Ingraham had some valid points to make on the Today show this morning but is it really that important? Obama's election has sharpened our partisanship but lest we forget when Linda Chavez and Bernie Kerik were nominated for important posts we all know how that turned out. Obama muffed it, he said so, let's move on.

I'm not a fan of the Goracle by any stretch

it's just that here where I live in New York State we haven't had ice-skating in a decade at least. It's now received conservative orthodoxy to give no quarter to AlGore, I only remember when Boyd Corners Reservoir in Carmel NY had three feet of ice but that's years before I even knew what a blog was. Them were the days, went into a local bait and tackle store run by some heavy older gentleman with diabetic toes and we asked where is he one day and the guy at the counter says he's still upstairs having sex with some male college student. Now that's going way back, before Giggles (why not?) sprouted up everywhere up here. There was a market for ice cleats because there was a need for them back then. Anyways went fishing with some guy once and he told me to slow the car down which I did, the window was rolled down most of the way and he says to me in a rather loud voice "HEY, look at the midget!!" Poor guy, probably just came out of 5 years of intensive psychotherapy to be socially accepted...same guy said when we were fishing for bullheads during their spring run in the Hudson, if a condom came up during high tide he called 'em Coney Island Whites. I wanna see people ice-skating is all and not at some artificial rink where you can't skate backwards, freezing your little cherry balls off up at Woodlands Lake, that's what it's all about. The disproving of the Theory will take some time, the counter-evidence ain't exactly rolling in.

A philosophy of work

Here's the common thread of what's wrong with so many jobs these days, there's no reward system in place, no forward progress. It could be as simple as you've been at the same place for ten years and can't even get the shift or hours you want. The reward system would say you deserve some accomodation based on your length of service but I've seen the same people doing the exact same thing they were doing when they started the job. I've also seen many people whose true talents aren't being utilized in the right way. The category is most often referred to as soul-sucking jobs or dead-end jobs but it doesn't have to be this way. Problem is at far too many places there's no organization, no philosophy, WHAT'S THE PLAN HERE? Maybe that's why our economy is hurting, nobody knows how to make money anymore. It's all mundane, no imagination, where's the pride? People in the know have told me think tanks come up with this stuff, to keep the average worker behind the 8-ball and when you do feel hopeful at times that's a false optimism. Working, since we all have to do it it could be so much better in this country, not so much a mandatory component of your whole life experience but something you actually enjoy. It ain't so much the stimulus it's what are we doing?

What recession?

Or is the bad economy being overstated to sell a political agenda, to ram through more government regulations and stimulus packages? "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste" so said Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Now here's what I'm getting at, it's by now incontrovertible wisdom that this period we're now in is second only to the Great Depression in the scope of its seriousness but I will submit there is a rather large chunk of people right now who are not the least bit affected by the Bad Economy. I've been in stores that are constantly raising the prices of their cold cuts but I've noticed the same lines of regulars getting their usual cuts of meat, same amounts too. If the bad times are affecting everyone I've failed to notice. These people probably paid their mortgage off or are heading well in that direction, they are living responsibly, well within their means and so why should the wrong decisions of the fiscally irresponsible among us affect them? I consider myself to belong to this group, paid all my credit cards off long ago and operate well within my budget. Nothing's changed for me despite the players getting hit hard, I still spend the usual amount I've always spent. Never even went near a mortgage, ACORN could have approached me and I would have smelled a swindle a mile away. I've always swung the rent and managed. I've never lost a job or been laid off but I'm hearing this economic melodrama every night on the evening news and how our President says we have to do something and do it now, time's a-wastin' So how come the same people keep buying a pound of Ovengold?

My impression of Idol this season

First off it's a weird one and I'm not even talking about the contestants. The judges are acting goofy but it's an annoying goofy, like somebody at work who insists he's funny until someone smacks him inside the head. People can be functionally insane and still report to work in the morning (NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg) but the other thing is the calibration of the judging seems to be way way off especially Simon's. A bunch of chicks'll get up to sing, maybe not bad voices but something's off, maybe the timbre of their voices or their presence and they all go YES YES YES with nary a word of constructive criticism offered their way but then some guy with a great voice'll come on and maybe Randy will say NO and Simon will come up with something out of left field. It's not just me, I've heard others say this when discussing last night's Idol and for most of the show's existence I could find myself agreeing with Simon even if his sarcasm was over the top or uncalled for. I probably won't be watching most of it this time, the panelists have made it way too laborious and how successful are the ones who win in the end anyway? A for instance, after some singer auditioned Kara offered her critique and said something like "that's giving you a real solid." Like trying to be hip and coin her own expressions but what the hell's a solid? Maybe the FRINGE team needs to investigate.