The West Point address

I DID watch the bulk of it until the Sobieski kind of took the upper hand and haven't read the other blogs on the matter yet but I have to say the thought occured that Obama is somewhat better at foreign policy than domestic policy. I watched it basically because it was West Point and wanted to see the cadets. There was the element of pathos there, you'd look in the audience and realize that many of them are going to be deployed to Afghanistan and a certain percentage of them are never coming home. I also feel the war in Afghanistan is far more germane and relevant to the War on Terror, to crushing Al-qaeda than the campaign in Iraq was and is and there was a kind of inversion of priorities under Bush when we saw Saddam Hussein swinging from the gallows instead of Osama bin Laden though for the record I oppose the death penalty. The President will send 30,000 more troops over there, many by Christmas and the rest by next summer in a kind of two-step surge and the withdrawal date is set for sometime in 2011. What's a conservative to argue with? the speech was okay unless you like eternal warfare but it's hard to believe we're still at war with a bunch of cavedwellers who haven't been rocked back to the Stone Age yet. Bush kind of led us to believe the Taliban was crushed once and for all and all the action was in Iraq if you wanna be honest about it. I pray for those young men and women we saw last night, lives so full of promise and hope but Obama did well in laying out why they're going over there. Now to the other blogs......

keeping it psycho: those White House party crashers

We finally got our exclusive! There they were on The Today Show this morning talking to Matt Lauer. We're talking about the Salahis of course, Tareq and Michaele and Tareq was saying how the media have it all wrong, how they were devastated and their lives practically ruined over this. So it's all our fault, it's that old theme again. They can't talk in detail now but that day's coming and they insist they were invited. Seems they once crashed a Congressional Black Caucus dinner and they were politely escorted out and when Matt brought this up they just called it a gossipy rumor. OK no need to recap all this you know this stuff already but here's why technically they're not lying, they're telling the truth which is not to say the msm is engaged in a conspiracy against them (why for heaven's sake?), the msm do have their facts straight so how can both of them be right??? Very simple,

they're nuts

they ARE telling the truth as it exists in their own heads just like O.J. didn't murder those two people and UMA sent love signals to Jack Jordan. Now the Salahis are not Charlie Manson insane, they're what is known in the trade as being functionally insane. Worked with a woman like this once and you don't catch on right away until the stories they tell, the things they say don't make sense, don't add up. They can hold down jobs perfectly well, tie their shoelaces in the morning, brew their coffee, pay their bills on time and chat with their neighbors. They make it through the day just fine but they're still major bonkers. Even THEY don't know they're nuts.

it's awesome!:)

Tiger Woods

I'm no legal expert so correct me if I'm wrong but I thought when something happens that may be in the purview of copland and they call you down to the precinct or come to your house to talk to you you pretty much have to, I mean Joe Schmoe just can't slam the door in their face and say he's had a hard day at work, he's tired. Yeah I'm talking about The Accident. I remember about a year or two ago when Tiger's game was suffering, he'd miss a few putts here and there, he was a little off his game, just a tad and my brother said "that's because he's still thinking about her sitting on his face last night" but that was then, apparently the shine may be off the conjugal apple. Now sure his Swedish supermodel of a wife was probably tempted early on, he's another one like Simon Cowell who can wipe his ass with money AND single-handedly fund health-care reform but a smart gal with a good head on her shoulders would have easily saw down the road and seen the signpost marked TEMPTATION, turn around. You know it's a pretty big story when it's the second lead story on the national news over the weekend even bigger than those White House party crashers and the prevailing theory right now at least among the women is that he had an affair and she wanted to wrap a golf club around his neck, just sayin'.

Tiger Woods, I always thought he had a 'tude.

How do you define a conservative Utopia?

Let's say in our futuristic theoretical scenario conservatives got every victory under the Sun they ever fantasized about

except One,

and anyway the FC's have always had a problem with this one issue. They say the SC's are way too concerned and focused on It and it would do the party well to give it the old heave-ho since we agree on so many other things. OK so let's say in our hypothetical here liberalism is a total thing of the past, a fossil, don't gotta even worry about it anymore and so we have our conservative society, our conservative world but without Pro-Life. We got everything else just not that one thing. The libertarian wing got their wish big-time and so the everything else includes the usual: leaner government, vastly lower income taxes (or none at all), a strong and stable military (very Reaganesque), labor unions gone, a better educational system that got rid of tenure, geez terrorism you don't even have to worry about anymore even at a shopping mall in Israel, free speech and then some, tort reform

the whole gamut,

except that not only is abortion-on-demand still the law of the land but the country hasn't even been pulled in a pro-life direction, in short there's no pro-life influence even. The FC/libertarians would naturally be perfectly fine with all of this but it would still be a spiritually empty victory. Take away the moral tension on any issue and you leave yourself a vacuum, there is a part of us that likes to be reminded of Right and Wrong though we may bristle at it on the surface. Even the FC's themselves who no longer hide their irritation at the SC's, take away the SC's would they still miss us? We need that moral voice even if we disagree with it, if anything it may lead us to calibrate our own views, many times they need calibrating anyway. If abortion ceased being on the political radar screen, if every pro-life voice vanished overnight it'd be like your Dad buying you a Hustler and a bong, you'd be taken aback and would lose the sense of sin. Many of you may hate the SC's the way Barry Goldwater did in his dotage but do you really want us to go away? Can't we on some psychological level represent Conscience at least in some rudimentary, vague and primeval way, serve some type of existential purpose? Tension, moral tension always serves a purpose and liberals can serve this purpose as well. We will always oppose the Welfare State but the moral calibration here caused by liberals force us to give more charitably, at least that's my theory and studies bear this out, conservatives are not at all stingy when it comes to the collection plate. Take away every single moral voice which you hate be it liberal or conservative and what have you got? Many FC's say Rand had the perfect blueprint for a perfect society but for me for all of her great ideas and she had a few it would still leave me spiritually empty. We NEED other voices!

How do YOU define a conservative Utopia?

Idol without Paula

She's been on since the show's founding and I ain't the president of the Paula Abdul Fan Club or something but it's like when a regular worker leaves for all their faults you still miss them. Ellen the newest judge, no musical expertise or connection to the music world that I know of. Drifted in and out of Idol all last season and what we got was Adam "It's Because I'm a Gay Man" Lambert. Paula has had two careers, as a pop singer and larger imo as a judge on AI. We have treated her zaniness as a threat to the Republic ("oh did you see?") when the more important issue is the government running the country into the ground (Bush government or Obama government, doesn't really matter). Anyway I ain't watching this time 'round. It's not a kind of fervored protest on my part just a show that doesn't know what to do with itself. Did they want to get rid of her all along?

Our Earth Goddess has made a prophecy

OPRAH has announced her last show will be sometime in 2011 - "25 years feels right in my bones" (it does to me too) - and this was promulgated with the utmost gravity. The way it was announced though I thought her last episode was just two weeks away. It's apparently as important as a predicted astronomical event and one can expect a new understanding of Time itself: there was BC, AD and now AO for After-Oprah. So why can't SNL, the Simpsons and the Tonight Show with any host follow suit?

Knew a Jamaican chef once who said he couldn't put his finger on it but he just doesn't like her. "I know she's done good things with her Book Club and all but I just don't like her." Her beneficent and fruitful Womb has spawned Dr. Phil and now Dr. OZ. If she and Obama ever have sex we could have ourselves a new Creation Myth in about 2,000 years hence, the Renewal of the Earth and archaeologists will be unearthing the bones of Republicans and conservatives in the Gobi Desert.

Phil Donahue was big back in the day but not like this. He'd have on say a very sexually active grandmother and raise her hand and say "God bless you Mama!" with cheers from the audience but he kind of resembled a big channel catfish near the end foraging in the muddy river for chicken guts and doughballs the kind a good ole Southern boy night noodle or grapple with. He was a liberal who knew his time was up.

Somewhere in the cold winter nighttime sky between Orion the Hunter and the Twins lies the as yet to be discovered Oprah constellation, future beacon to navigators and seafarers alike and when she passes she will be mummified in a sarcophagus, lines will form around the Globe and Mankind will finally know Peace.

Ah-men.

Does being pro-choice mean you have to be pro-Roe?

Is this constant percolating tension between the social conservatives (SC's) and the fiscal conservatives (FC's) within the party a false one? Can one be pro-choice and anti-Roe vs. Wade? Soapie has said in the past abortion should be a states' rights issue though he is personally very much pro-choice but he seems one of the very few fiscal or libertarian conservatives to actually say this. Put it this way I could (though there are alot of other factors involved here) support someone for political office who is pro-choice but anti-Roe and I would say the majority of pro-lifers these days are not purists on the issue. The Human Life Amendment is pie-in-the-sky stuff except for folks like Judie Brown of the American Life League. If Giuliani had adopted this federalist approach even a few years ago he well might have been the GOP standard-bearer instead of McCain by default. I've never understood it, this internecine political rift between the SC's and the FC's when there is so much potential common ground here. Roe was wrong on so many levels that would be a separate blog unto itself, I'd probably have to break it down into 3 threads at least.

FC's do the same thing with Terri Schiavo, it's always the Congress shouldn't have gotten involved but I've talked to a couple of pro-choice people who saw it from other angles. When that case was living news a chef friend of mine whom I worked with at the time first said he wouldn't want to live like that (DUH, who would?) but then framed it as the husband was suspicious (no mention of Congress' involvement) point being can't the FC's look at pro-life issues from any other perspectives? My chef friend though I disagree with his politics (he's a liberal) generally thinks of things the right way, goes through the correct thought processes and I don't see alot of objectivity out there. Again he and I both had a common ground here about why not just let Terri's family take care of her and so you can't tell me there can never be any thoughts that coincide on the life issues between SC's and FC's or even between conservatives and liberals in general.

George Will once concluded that the abortion issue is stale, maybe that's because he prefers it that way. You take any issue under the sun and I can find new hues, other nuances, perspectives, shades of meaning. Maybe the problem is our limited imaginations.

Conservatism at its most primeval

I like every single conservative on the planet oppose the Welfare State but I come at it from a more visceral, more personal angle. Sure I oppose folks sitting on their duff getting a check for the usual reasons, fosters dependence on government yada yada yada but where I differ from most conservatives is when they say work automatically ennobles a person. Occasionally yes but more often no, let's face it work sucks for most of us so the main reason I oppose welfare is if I have to suffer then so do you pal. Not exactly high Newt Gingrich philosophy, won't make the GOP platform but there you have it. I oppose the beatnik philosophy of getting up whenever the hell you want to and doing whatever for the rest of the day because I can't do it. My brand of conservatism is you could say off-kilter, it goes all the way back to the Id. The Id has a few things to say about race too but I'll leave that for another day, well no let's do it here. Folks who are racist are that way because of black crime, not like they wake up one morning and decide to become a bigot. Obama bending over for the Japanese Emperor on his Asian trip, now this Emperor had a father once who was also Emperor by the name of Hirohito I believe who okay'd the attack on our sleeping soldiers at Pearl Harbor. Now I GET the criticism that we conservatives are just looking for stuff, the guy can't do anything right (your basic Shaw Kenawe position) but he's making it too easy. It's times like these when I believe you should be allowed to say without a peep from Keith Olbermann or Bill Moyers the guy's a FUCKING ASSHOLE!

I can't believe I'm living.

Sarah Palin Week & other thoughts you hear seldom expressed (if at all)

Yeah Sarah Palin Week is coming up. I know if you're a lib you're supposed to hate her and if you're a conservative you're supposed to love her but mine is a non-position just like I'm not for or against Dancing with the Stars because I don't watch it. I'm not into Sarah Palin, there's just something existential about it. I'm at the point in my life where I'm bored with alot of stuff but seems to me

we should have cured cancer first instead of impotence. Impotence is not a tragedy, it's a misfortune and folks often confuse the two. Cancer on the other hand...put it this way, how can you enjoy Sex if you're dead?? Our cultural priorities don't seem very logical but then again it'd give everyone something to talk about if you're lying there in the casket with a boner.

Can or should the act of onanism land you in Hell? Posed this once at a religion forum where I was deemed somewhat controversial but seems to me if you're gonna be damned for all Eternity you should at least have done IT with another party. I don't get Catholic theology on this one, not advocating for or against but just seeing the existential absurdity of it all. God doesn't want you, the Devil doesn't want you (you're not depraved enough) and so there must be some kind of Limbo out there for folks like porno pete.

Re Love % Romance I have alot of thoughts. Now what are the odds exactly of two people feeling exactly the same way about each other? No I'm not talking about being compatible, you both like bowling and hate Obama, you both ipod to Pink, you're both against the oral but the whole Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor, Antony and Cleopatra thing, a love for the ages -- "Elaine!! Elaine!!." Can you grow to love somebody? seems in most cases we have no choice, Life ain't that poetic or doesn't cooperate or whatever which if you go back in my blogging archives is one of my recurring complaints, a romantic peeve of mine. Here's the paradox although we won't admit it, the stalker's view of the universe is the correct one, it's the way Life is supposed to be, but his or her actions are wrong of course, after all as bloggers well know it's the hardest thing trying to convince someone else of your own POV although we sure as hell try. Most folks are against the happy ending, "reunited and it feels so good", and we seem to want to trudge through Life with our bad memories. Goes a long way in explaining
our divorce culture,

It's November the 15th and here in the Northeast it's balmy again. Wondering how long it will take before the rest of my conservative brethren admit maybe the Goracle just may have the smidgeon of a point, a sliver of the total picture. I don't know how to dress in the morning anymore, it's chilly at 6AM but then I find I overdressed around 2 in the afternoon. Wasn't this way in the past when this time of year was autumnal but that was in the era before global warming and the climate change stuff. We shouldn't disagree on this one anymore only question is why do we care so much? if it's 65 degrees out in January why the massive cause for alarm? Enjoy the day, I mean if you don't have cancer.

Obama, the Hamlet of foreign policy

It's the Nobel Effect. What's a peace-prize winner supposed to do, send an additional 30,000-40,000 troops to Afghanistan? although I did read in the paper just the other day he was on the verge of doing just this. Short of a mushroom cloud does the guy call anything a terrorist act these days? I don't feel comfortable.

Obama's erotic dreams of socialism

In case you missed it by now there's some sort of liberal consensus out there that we conservatives all go to the Big K whenever they have a big tinfoil hat sale. Well yeah to call Obama a socialist you have to wear a tinfoil hat so just the other day I got my new issue of The Fatima Crusader in the mail, Issue 93 - August 2009. Hey it may not be most people's main source of information here but the themes are the same and that's the beauty of the VRWC, many segments are deliberately kept in the dark about the other factions, it truly is what the V stands for and is as complicated as Whitewater so that should the day ever come when THEY decide to prosecute us it'll be too, shall we say like that George Clooney movie Syriana. Anyway an article by traditionalist Catholic writer John Vennari is germane here: We Must Choose Between Our Lady of Fatima's Plan for Peace vs. the New World Order Tyranny (http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr93/cr93pg37.pdf) Now to those of you whose eyes glaze over at every mention of the supernatural there's enough Glenn Beck stuff here to really sink your teeth into. A recap:

"Obama is essentially a left-wing radical, he is a globalist and he is one of the most (if not the most) pro-abortion political leaders on the planet...In a January 5 interview of CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Kissinger, speaking of Obama and the current economic crisis, said, "I think that his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period, when really a 'new world order' can be created. It's a great opportunity. It isn't such a crisis." There's some stuff on the Bilderbergers and "one of the main aims of the New World Order is to erode the national sovereignty of nations in favor of an international world government." yada yada yada David Rockefeller, special interests...oh God he's even more pro-abortion than Barbara Boxer!! Oh yes and then there's Saul Alinsky, radical left-wing organizer who died in 1972, Obama a big student thereof. The Rules for Radicals, Chicago, "it is crucial for the radical not to look like a radical" (hmmmmm.....). In a 2001 radio interview Obama said the liberal Warren Court didn't go far enough, didn't "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution" meaning redistribution of wealth for instance but you already knew that if you're good Glenn Beck fans. Education and health-care, euthanasia down the road, globalism and the UN, cap 'n' trade, climate change, communist treaties, government should raise your kid yada yada but I saved the best for last. The People's Weekly World which is the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA sees Obama as "the best opportunity in decades" (so where do they get their tinfoil hats?).

WHEW, let me give my fingers a rest. President Obama, you must be giving out the wrong signals dude! Hugo Chavez likes you, the Castro brothers don't think you're half bad, you pleased Putin, some Norwegian socialists gave you their highest prize (the Dalai Lama is soooo yesterday) and now the official paper of the Communist Party USA thinks you're great. They say they can tell you're one of them, they just know even if you don't yet. Maybe there's a latency here, some erotic dreams never talked about but if I were him I'd take a day (or two) and take a walk down by the lake without the wife and kids, go out on the pier in the fading sunset and skim a few pebbles across the lake and take stock, sort things out, work on some issues. SO WHY IN HELL DO SO MANY RADICALS IN THE WORLD LIKE ME??? The right-wing, they're nuts of course and yet the commies and the socialists just love me, well they don't exactly hate me like Ronald Reagan...hell call Michelle and take a couple more days and hit the cabin, you need to be alone, every Man needs to, call it a retreat. It's like when you're shopping in the supermarket and some perv comes on to you or when you went to high school the quirkiest kid in the class shunned by all the others took a liking to you and sat next to you and tried to be your friend. The right-wing is telling you you're a commie, the left-wing is telling you you're a commie. If you ask me there's some serious VIBE action going on here. Everyone thinks you're in the closet dude, whassup?!? time to get......reorientated?

Thoughts on Election Day

Does your vote really count? Sometimes I feel like a drop in the ocean when I go in there, if you don't have a million other drops just like you it's meaningless, a kind of existential politics if you will. What with corruption, voter fraud and the special interests in answer to the question somehow I don't think it really does. In a perfect world.

The theoretical -- What if you had 100% voter turnout? What if everyone eligible to vote in this country did how would it break down? Would Obama even be President? If there's such a groundswell of grass-roots opposition to him now how come this didn't manifest itself in the voting booth then? Are liberals just better organized? Was it corruption or is it simply a case of buyer's remorse? In this case it wouldn't be such a right-wing thing as the msm is making it out to be, a bunch of Glenn Beck podpeople mechanically doing what the Master says but let me not ruin a good story.

"He couldn't be elected dogcatcher." Do we even have dogcatchers anymore?

& Finally Corzine, throw the bum out on his keyster!!

The politics of the Breast

A theme is going to be emerging here, actually it has poked its head up already in the past and I didn't really go looking for it. God knows I'm a busy man but for me it's almost a certitude and it's this:

There is a cultural, a societal preference in favor of the Woman. Her needs, her emotions, her overall health, her general wellbeing is of paramount importance and her perspective is almost accepted without question.

It's happened within practically the last few months, the Breast Cancer Movement. It's everywhere you go. Take supermarkets. Boar's Head has the pink ribbon thing down pat including pink deli caps for the ladies although I suppose men can wear them too and so you pass the deli and then you see just up ahead a big bin of Breast Cancer Balls for $9.99 each. In the bakery section you see a setup on a table of pink roses in vases and pink cupcakes and then when you're paying for your stuff the cashier asks you if you'd like to donate a buck to you guessed it but let's stop right here and pull this rig over for a minute.

There's nothing at all wrong with any of this. I was in a food store just the other day and forked over my dollar, WTH? there's a collective feel-goodism about it all and you're making a difference at the same time but where are all the prostate cancer displays? Where are the brown ribbons? where is the symbol of the whole Prostate Cancer Movement? (perhaps something to do with a finger, I leave that to your imagination). OF ALL the forms of cancer why is the Breast the thing? If I as a man give to Breast Cancer Research because it's socially required, politically necessary am I not slighting my own sex?

The theme I highlighted above will be a recurring theme throughout my blog now (that's a leitmotif for you people in Rio Linda California). Even when women do wrong or go bad it's treated differently. 'Member Lisa Nowak the astronut? initial reaction to her even among male commentators expressed more than a nod of understanding (yeah Sean). Most recently Steve Phillips' stalker, Brooke Hundley, well put it this way, everyone knows her elevator is stuck between the 4th and 5th floors but at worst it's treated in appropriate comedic fashion whereas the men stalkers most recently in the News of late were treated with the Utmost Seriousness, don't recall any jokes from the Jay. On the workfront I've noticed the workers most likely to be fired or at least ripped a new one are Men and this happens on a fairly regular basis. A woman could suck, a female boss can be atrocious but it's overlooked, there are really no repercussions and it took me a while to figure this one out in my own jobs but women are special although this won't be posted on the breakroom bulletin board as official policy. It all goes back to the movies from the olden days, women have that special aura, due to the nature of their sex men give them deference, men want to protect them etc. etc. Humphrey Bogart. It's why Mother's Day has always been a bigger day than Father's Day. Men just ejaculate and then roll over and go to sleep, women have to deal with the rest. Pro-choicers will deny this to the max of course but the act of feticide is really a political statement although they could just as easily make this statement by urging the woman to have the kid and then sue for child support but somehow this is better.

If you want to call this a masculinist screed go right on ahead, call me a male Andrea Peyser if you like but it's time Bill O'Reilly devoted a whole hour to a discussion of the Politics of the Breast. Devote a whole show to the prostate too, Bill could even bend over on the air not for titillation's sake, oh no, but to show the seriousness, the utmost gravity of the i-shoo. Somewhere deep deep down you know I'm right.

I'm not an extreme libertarian, I say leave the gerbils alone

I've been meaning to do a blog like this for some time now but waited for the right moment to present itself and now it seems I got one. Former ABCer John Stossel has joined the Glenn Beck team. OVERALL I like Stossel though I disagree in a few areas (e.g. drug legalization). So why has a collective movement based solely it would seem on the concept of liberty (libertarianism) never really taken off? the wisdom of libertarianism would seem to be self-evident after all. It's why prostitution is still illegal in this country and we are still suffering under the income tax. Them be funny issues, I always thought the Supreme Court reasoning in Roe applied vastly more to prostitution than feticide and I have always maintained it's no business of the Government's whatsoever if the service you're willing to provide to others involves say painting their house or retiling their roofs for a fee set by YOU. Well maybe the reason is folks still have some social concerns. If a guy on angel dust wreaks havoc against others the libertarian would seem to say the larger issue is his liberty to use a dangerous substance, most others see a greater interest in protecting society at large here. With the whores they cause traffic jamups and other problems in nice residential neighborhoods. Same thing with the strip clubs, there's always some asshole with a grievance who can't just go there to have a good time, has to slash somebody. Now this consenting adults stuff that always gets thrown in your face like if you criticize Letterman, well sure up to a point but that doesn't mean you don't have the right to your private personal views on say adultery. Now let the other ball drop and say it was Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity who had affairs with staffers, why the left-wing bloggers would STILL be talking about it. Hell there are some sexual practices I have definite opinions on, the libertarian would seem to say it's all good, I say if you like somebody to stick a sound in your penis there's something wrong with you, same deal with scatting but I ramble...

Libertarianism, what does it mean to you?

Can Jon Corzine get any more pro-abortion?

Judging from his campaign ads against Republican challenger Chris Christie you'd think Abortion was the biggest issue facing NJ. You remember Corzine, this clown was speeding without a seatbelt in his SUV going to that nappy-headed 'hos meeting, now he's got corrupt rabbis in his state laundering money but as Governor apparently feels A Woman's Right to Choose will what exactly, stimulate NJ's economy and create jobs? Still and all the polls are practically neck and neck which hearkens back to an earlier political analysis of mine, only folks who actually plan on getting an abortion sometime in their adult life would care this much about where Christie comes down on the issue. Now I hear some pro-choice grumbles in the back row there but it's just like with adultery, as one young guy at work told me "I don't think people actually plan on cheating when they first get married." Now one might make the case that if the States were free to legislate on the Matter once again Corzine's strategy might make some sense unless he's thinking Roe is so shaky it'll be overturned any day now. Corzine, I never liked the guy, what can I say?

The verdict on Glenn Beck

Many even some of those on the Right call him crazy but later on today I'm picking up his book especially for my Mom. What others call crazy I see as daring commentary, daring commentary is by definition new and fresh (simply for the fact that most others are afraid to say the same things) and so anything that is daring, new and fresh cannot be boring and Z-man considers boredom to be the bane of existence. So those are my reasons for forking over some dough for Arguing With Idiots and has nothing whatsoever to do with having to agree with every jot and tittle of what the man says. Now some are bemoaning what they call the lack of moderate voices on the Right these days but I say if you can make a cogent argument backed up by facts and actual quotes then what's the problem? Re all those radical leftists, commie czars popping up in the Obama Administration at a charitable minumum it shows a woeful lack of vetting and for that reason alone pointing this out amounts to a vast public service. Out-Of-The-Box thinking, that's me and if you can't say or even think certain things then that amounts to a kind of intellectual straitjacket. For me the vast majority of conspiracy theories are just plain wrong but geez over the course of the centuries one or two have to be right but that's a subject for another blog. Free speech is free speech and we live in an age when anything and everything is out there. It's all good.

Obama, governing hard left in a center/right country

It's like an A&P carriage with the bad wheel that always pulls to the left. At a dinner the other day at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay group, Obama went the whole nine yards. Repeal don't ask, don't tell. Yeah now the gay guy can go off to some foreign war orchestrated by a bunch of neocons and get blown away - progress. He wants a law giving domestic benefits to gay pard'ners, he wants Hate Crime legislation enacted pronto but most off all he's urging Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (the DOMA). Now most folks are more than tolerant of gay folks now but the residual distaste for the act remains, they don't want to see it codified into law somehow. Now there be a few conservative bloggers in these parts of the libertarian bent who breeze all this away but for the Rest of Us enlightenment doesn't come easy, we're fine that the sexual menu has more on it today than in the past but there ARE limits. 'Member when I went to Mt. St. Michael in the Bronx and the morality/sex ed teacher said anything besides the missionary position is kinky, pity this guy's poor wife but by the same token we ain't gonna be buying a jelly fist anytime soon (the reader will note I left out any references to gerbils, I'd like to think that's a fringe thing). BTW that movie Al Pacino would like to forget about, Cruising is icky on an existential level, nobody and I mean nobody liked it, even the gays hated it. You're disoriented after seeing it and you just sit there but being the avid DVDer you just had to watch Pacino wave the yellow hanky in the gay bar and the guy in the swing. OK so this is all cultural stuff and I said a little ways back that the case against gay marriage is based more on cultural preference than hard logic but at any rate the larger issue here is that Obama doesn't care about any of this, apparently he'd rather be a one-termer who effected radical social change, it's THAT important. Abortion can't be far behind on the agenda since he's now catching up on his campaign promises so he says. IMO Obama should go to an abortion clinic himself for a few days and watch a few of them being done especially the later-term ones, at least see firsthand what he supports wholeheartedly. Do I think Obama's a communist? I'm slower to come to these conclusions than say a Glenn Beck but I could probably be convinced over time. Obama, masturbating his liberal base but will a minority but loud base in what is basically a center/right country carry him over to a second term? Well not if half the country turns gay. Moderate he isn't, triangulation ain't his thing and you probably won't recognize this country in four years. Stay tuned for FOCA...

But who else was in the running the Dalai Lama?

Well it wasn't gonna be Bibi we know that. As long as your name isn't George W. Bush you have a shot. I understand the rationale for Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, taking measures or trying to take measures to reduce the world's nuclear stockpile (only the most nostalgic paleocons yearn for those good ole Nagasaki days) and his outreach to Muslims in the famous Cairo speech obviously played more than a part but his mere nine months in office weaken the argument considerably I might add. Oslo Norway, known to be very liberal, don't they smoke pot over there?

So are congrats in the offing or in order from us right-wingers? not if you're Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity. Maybe O's decision to take away our radar in the Czech Republic and our interceptors in Poland had something to do with it, imagine Reagan doing this!!! but really who else was gonna win this one if you want to be totally objective about it? DR. OZ?

But Z wanted a Big News Event and he sure as hell got one!!

A philosophical question

Does conservatism or do conservatives in general come to preordained conclusions? Should conservatives come to preordained conclusions, the Insta-Opinion? Lately it's how to treat Roman Polanski (cut off his gonads and sautee them) but it could be anything. Is this good or can we at least differ around the edges?

Let me tell you what was happening on the Glenn Beck Program today

Beth got me turned on to him and so I sampled a little more today and he seemed like a different Beck but I'll get to that in a sec. So they made fun of him on SNL, that show is so lame and so well past its prime that unless Tina Fey was involved it doesn't even merit a blip. OK so today Beck was talking about the federal government may force your kids to get the new Swine Flu vaccine and he was talking about all those mothers who say HELL NO!! So Beck and his sidekick were hashing this out, this massive distrust of the government thing. Beck said it's not healthy and he divided the mistrusters into two main groups: those who think the government is incompetent and those who think the government is up to something nefarious.

FOLKS, Beck ain't immune to criticism either, he's human and by taking on a kind of fringe element here that even he disagrees with he looks moderate and reasonable by comparison. Point of this blog is not to say Beck is extreme himself but that's the common assumption and perception that's out there thanks in large part to the media although he does use actual quotes of people in making his case, Obama's past statements in interviews about the Constitution doesn't address income redistribution for instance, that's a pretty Marxist thing to say and no SNLer can bury it with parody. So on today's radio show if you just tuned in for the first time and had no clue as to who Glenn Beck is Beck sounded like someone taking on all those folks who distrust the federal government (POT - KETTLE - BLACK) but in answer to Beck's own question why are all these Moms saying no to vaccinating their children two words -- TUSKEGEE AND MKULTRA. We all know what Tuskegee was all about but for those of you who are new to MKULTRA this was an ultrasecret project of the CIA in the '50s and '60s that involved among other things dosing different sectors of the US population with LSD without their knowledge and studying the results (I'm still waiting for some conservative feedback over this, perhaps in a future Jonah Goldberg column?). So am I on the same side as these Moms who think the government is up to something James Bondish with the new Swine Flu vaccine? not in a million years but understand root causes here and am surprised Beck didn't bring them up. Yes righties, actual conspiracies do exist on occasion, the Moon does enter its blue phase every now and then.

Is Beck losing his cojones? If you find them will you please return them?

Hate speech on the Left - the murder of a pro-life activist

Go to http://bluewavecanada.blogspot.com/2009/09/reality-of-violent-opponents.html for the tragic story of pro-life activist Jim Pouillon's murder. Jim Pouillon was sitting across a school in Michigan holding his pro-life poster when a car pulled up and did a drive-by. The self-avowed pro-life hater also allegedly killed another man and was searching for a third when apprehended.

Do pro-choicers need to police their own speech? Does Keith Olbermann need to dial down the vitriol? Should we hold the NOW gang personally responsible for Jim Pouillon's murder?

Ya wanna know something? on a theoretical, abstract and even practical plane it's all good and despite the most heated verbiage on BOTH sides actual incidents of violence is something that's really few and far between. Ya wanna know something else? some people just don't LIKE free speech, lately it's the liberal crowd. Now ever since the tea parties and townhalls liberals in general like Bill Moyers and Frank Rich and the liberal msm in particular, well put it this way their absolute hatred for conservatism is coming to a rolling boil now, all the invective they can muster up is coming YOUR way but if I can sum up their overall theme about US we're totally for the rights of the individual against the welfare of the larger society or community, we're anarchists who are totally against the government or the State, potential McVeighs, we're against charity or caring for others, we're conspiracy-mongers (although what's wrong with the notion that the occasional conspiracy theory may actually be true?), in short we hate the State (well kinda true) but the biggest thing I'm seeing of late is that liberals HATE free speech, it's always free speech is good and fine and swell and American BUT (go over what they said about O'Reilly in the wake of George Tiller's murder) but on this front what would happen if we didn't always call for tempering or policing our own speech? what if we just let her rip? what if we just let free speech be, say what we will? I submit that in general

NOTHING

would happen, and the few extreme cases that are alleged to have been caused by the hateful speech of others however dubious the connection does not justify in the least chipping away, abridging or otherwise curtailing or suppressing the free speech of others. OR to put it another way so Ted Bundy liked porn.

A fan of neoconservatism (NOT)

Irving Kristol, godfather of neoconservatism 1920-2009

It's not just that the philosophy of neoconservatism has led us into many a foreign adventure. This is either good or bad depending on your viewpoint, for Pat Buchanan it's bad but I really have no problem if the guiding moral principle involved is to liberate an oppressed people but here read this from a 2003 column in The Weekly Standard by Irving Kristol (bold-type mine)

and as Glenn Beck would say READ CAREFULLY (ooooooh):

"Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on 'the road to serfdom.' Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable.

People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not.

Note the not so subtle digs at paleoconservatism or the purer form of conservatism. Z makes the case that you cannot have a large state that is also not intrusive, that's a neocon fantasy, and from my vantage point you only need something new or neo if there is something wrong with the old product. OR to put it another way who's more popular right now, Rush Limbaugh or David Frum?

How to put the racism issue to bed once and for all

Elect a black conservative president next time, say Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell. If we still hate the nigger then ok.

What really stands out about Patrick Swayze (1952-2009)

From Wikipedia:

"Personal life

Swayze was married to Lisa Niemi from June 12, 1975 until his death."

Ghost has got to be one of the most romantic movies of all time, a must have in any serious DVD collection. I really was hoping as we all were that he was going to kick this thing but I don't think they know how to treat cancer yet. You don't know which is worse, the cancer or the chemo but this has really turned into the Year of the Famous Dead Person -- Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson (they're STILL talking about it), pitchman Billy Mayes, Walter Cronkite and of course Ted Kennedy (and others I'm leaving out but those are the most prominent, you'd have to google the rest). I sure hope next year is less dark.

To hear liberals tell it

the conservative grassroots is filled with Hate. First the Tea Parties and then the town halls but the way I see it is Democracy in Action,

it's all good

and have liberals forgotten their own maxim that dissent is the highest form of patriotism? So some folks showed a little passion, it's nice to know some Americans still have some spunk left in 'em and I'm trying to diagnose the lib problem here. Is it we're not supposed to critique the nation's First African-American President? Well welcome to the ballgame bro! I think it's healthy that folks are up in arms about the lack of fiscal restraint by Government which among other things is what's animating the conservative grassroots these days. It's OUR money after all. Whether you agree or disagree with the tea partiers and townhallers there's nothing even vaguely unconstitutional about it all but libs are treating it as a hate crime.

I'm lovin' it!

The MSM under the microscope

As my brother is fond of saying take an average group of people and they'll likely tend to be non-ideological, you can have someone who is pro-life but for gay marriage at the same time, you can have a conservative who bashes Big Business (that'd be me) but the whole point is there are so many opinions out there and that's good. It's pretty much an established fact that the vast majority of the msm are liberal in their political orientation, ok sure you have your occasional Brit Humes, ok you have Brit Hume but on balance they always take the non-conservative position on practically any given issue. They won't call themselves liberal of course, we're objective you know (a Marvin Kalb piece of gospel they fall back on when challenged) but they certainly do harbor certain opinions and this seeps out every now and then in their coverage of the Whatever and the seepage is known as bias. I like to think of it as cat spray, marking their territory or a little septic action in the backyard but ok, so now here's the question before the Board today (or judging by my sitemeter of late is that the Bored?) -- do these budding journalists, aspiring reporters enter college, journalism school, the institutions of Higher Learning without much in the way of a strong political package to begin with either way and then something happens within the school itself that churns out a bunch of cookie-cutter liberals OR are they liberals to begin with who are merely honing their journalistic skills to better practice their non-bias bias? Again on ANY GIVEN ISSUE, Ted Kennedy - be respectful, talk radio - Bad, health-care reform - obvious, Van Jones - Glenn Beck racist......I MEAN WTF IS GOING ON HERE???

Introspection on abortion

Usually when I'm debating with a pro-choicer at some forum or blog, when things get to the boiling point and I'm driving my point home, when things get a tad too personal the opposition will throw the pejorative "self-righteous" in my face which they like to say characterizes the social right. OK I'm speaking only for myself here, can't speak for Sarah Palin, for the Rev. James Dobson, Randall Terry, Jeb Bush, just little old me. In my day to day I consider myself so far from the holy, for the bulk of my life I've never even remotely felt myself approaching sainthood and yet at the same time I've reached the conclusion that many pro-abortion folks are utterly heartless but it's not self-righteousness that spawns this evaluation as I've none of it to begin with. I think many pro-choicers are dark people and while I consider myself to be your rank-and-file sinner, I fully expect a lengthy stay in Purgatory at the least I don't want to take that final step over to the dark side (I hear BB cogitating a response) and the reader will note I was careful to use the word "many" here, didn't say "majority", "most" or "all" but candor compels me to admit for instance that many characters in the Terri Schiavo saga were downright creepy, I know a few liberals who feel the same way and again this is only a conclusion drawn from a sinner who is so far from the mark but draws the line at killing. As dear old Anonymous once noted "morality consists in drawing the line somewhere", you don't have to twist my arm if Beyonce and Britney, Eva Mendes and Jessica Alba are playing nude volleyball on the beach but I don't like to see dead fetuses in garbage pails. I guess the latter makes you a right-wing extremist, a fringe guy or gal these days at least according to polemical rules as defined by liberals who seem to feel that flexibility in one or more areas should guarantee your pro-choicedom. The other pejorative they'll frequently throw in my face is "Mr. Religious Fanatic" which for me is, as Mike Tyson would put it ludikwis since I've never gone out on a theological limb in any discussion or forum or blog with my latest calculations of who's in Hades these days, quite the opposite. Just an autobiographical note here SO GET IT STRAIGHT!!!

Think tanks, beavers and other things conservatives won't talk about

My friend and I are what you would call non-ideological conservatives. In my view the main problem with politics today is that the vast majority of libs and cons read from the same playbooks. Do libs have to be for abortion at every turn for instance? Anyway we got on the subject of think tanks.

Think Tanks

Many companies today use them. My friend seems to have a thing for supermarkets, always seemed to have been working in one at any given time so he was telling me he has it on good authority that the supermarket business in particular is heavy on the think tank stuff, hiring expensive consultants to implement their recommendations. Think tanks, yes they literally do meet in a house and chart the course of your workday from giving everybody only one day off a week to making most workers part-time but giving them almost full-time hours. Being pro-Big Business the average conservative is not going to talk about these things which is why you have me. On the other hand a rather small but not insignificant portion of the population seems to be happily unemployed and that's where the rest of my conservatism kicks into high gear. If I have to work so do you. At least work gives a discipline and structure to your life as opposed to all these people I just saw waiting for the library to open. What's wrong with this picture?

The Environment

Geez it would be nice if conservatives had at least some love for the environment. I remember when I was a kid my Dad took us behind Warehouse Lane in Elmsford, NY Back then it was mainly UPS there and in this stream you could see the beavers working, gnawing at twigs and building their dams, using their tails to pat the mud down and so I was telling a friend about this and we went there the other day. Have to relegate it to a fond memory though as the place has been more built up since those days with other businesses now but the thought occured: now we're not what Rush would call lefty-commie-enviro-whackos but considering that the beaver population had been so heavily decimated in the past due to early trapping when you do encounter actual beavers today in a populated area doing their thing one would think it has a special value. One would think SOMEONE would have left the place alone since a more reasonable environmental philosophy would recognize that the beaver should have a higher status than the snail-darter and so be worth protecting. In short I want the Palisades Mall AND the beaver and don't see why such things have to be overly political, either/or political pigeonholing. Gotta build! Gotta build! Well having gone there the other day it did bother me, ya gotta leave some things alone not only on an environmental level, there are romantic and poetic considerations as well. Maybe it's my midlife crisis but you should be able to relive some of your childhood memories.

So think tanks make your job rough and you don't even have the solace of looking at the beavers anymore. My schematics say something is wrong here.

Our over-the-top media (as usual) - why I'm not into political necro

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy 1932-2009

I'm sorry but whenever I hear Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" I think of him ("If you told me you were drowning I would not lend a hand") but more on that in a minute. It's funny to hear the msm refer to Kennedy as the liberal lion of the Senate but that's because he described himself as a liberal so it was ok, the msm had no choice. It's kind of like coming out of the closet, the media won't do it for you (the responsible media anyway), you have to get the ball rolling yourself. If not they would have happily referred to him as a moderate because in the universe of the msm, must have something to do with the warping of space/time, parallel universes and wormholes but there are no liberals. OK on to the murky waters of Chappaquiddick.

MY THEORY and it's a darn good one is this and it was first proposed to me by a woman -- Ted was not in the car that night. He gave the keys to Mary Jo when he shouldn't have, everybody must've had some that night and so she was the one who drove off the bridge all alone. This helps enormously to help clear up some discrepancies like why he didn't notify the police immediately afterwards and why he was spotted early the next morning outside his hotel room all clean and with fresh clothes on and seemingly not a care in the world and that's because he didn't know at the time. Not exemplary behavior to be sure but not the monster he was often made out to be by right-wingers to this day.

OK a true John John story. JJ went to a nice restaurant with a woman and the head waiter told this other couple he was relocating them to make room for the Kennedy scion and so the guy was naturally miffed. JJ must have sensed this because after he came in he invited the other couple over to join them for dinner. Years later JJ bumped into the man again and remembered him and asked "so how was your dinner?" That to me speaks volumes, that's all I need to know about the man.

Liberal and conservative views on the CIA

Pretty much conservatives are very pro-CIA. I've a more varied view of the spooks but before I get to that I do think it's a terrible terrible mistake for Obama's AG Eric Holder to decide to prosecute any CIA officials for authorizing or using certain interrogation techniques of terror suspects that liberals have felt went too far. You might make the case from a technical moral standpoint that the methods were somehow wrong but what I for the life of me don't get is this apparent soft spot among the leftie community for those who wish to do us great harm and for Obama to approve of this prosecutorial approach merely cements his repuation as a liberal. From stimulus to health-care to this, it ain't hard to figure. It's not a centrist or moderate pattern at all, it obviously masturbates his base but to point this out you risk the ire of folks like Bill Moyers who, how do I put this? you're engaging in hateful mythology even though you're merely connecting the dots and highlighting the truth. Anyway to balance out my view of the G-men found this under the Wikipedia link for LSD:

"Beginning in the 1950s the Central Intelligence Agency began a research program code named MKULTRA. Experiments included administering LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions, usually without the subject's knowledge. The project was revealed in the US congressional Rockefeller Commission Report."

Yeah so Bill O'Reilly is not a big fan of those Matt Damon/Jason Bourne movies because it casts a bad light on the CIA, liberals can't bash the CIA enough and so perhaps BB can shed some light. Perhaps the late Bob Novak had the best take on politics in general: "Always love your country but never trust your government."

The Freedom of Choice Act

Interesting that Obama has spent so much time on health-care "reform" when he had made a promise at some Planned Parenthood confab a few years back that signing the FOCA into law would be the first act he'd do, Priority Numero Uno. Everyone (libs included) should start seeing him for the bullshit artist he is. Gotta laugh though, when Obama was elected many in the liberal msm sounded the death knell for conservatism as a movement, funny how a few fringe people can derail such a massive project as health-care reform. He tackled too much too soon, wanted to ram everything through and couple impatience with arrogance and it ain't a good combination. Conservatism was never really dead, just waiting for the right moment to reenergize itself and as for FOCA I'd be really surprised at this point if anybody brings it up. With 40 million+ abortions to date since 1973 where is the legislative urgency? Obama has been a boon to the conservative movement so be glad he was elected. We as a country got to Make History and we get our country back too, not a bad deal by any stretch!

Obama is in deep denial

Even many Democrats have turned against the public option and so the best analogy I can use is that Obama is like some man who has so much to offer and yet he's being rejected and so the initial stage is denial, it ain't happening, people don't understand, maybe I need to 'splain better. I said this over at Pamela Hart's blog but Obama putting out a government website to "correct" all the "misinformation" about health-care reform would be like to expect a bunch of JFK conspiracy theorists to consult the Warren Commission Report. Hey dude you need to get over yourself, you ARE being rejected and that cute little tv spot of a bunch of cars cutting off the ambulance (i.e. those special interests blocking much-needed health-care reform) well it was clever but it ain't gonna change anyone's minds. Obama has to know in the back of his head that this is soon gonna be the first major failure of his presidency, no amount of shucking it up at those townhallers is gonna help and he's like some guy coming out of the local porn emporium with his little care package and the pastor sees him, the town widow, the postman, Brian with his yo-yo and the wind opens up his trenchcoat and what comes flopping out but it says SOCIALIST all over it. No man public option wasn't a make or break deal, I got these here for a friend and ah fuck it man, I'm more liberal than my own Congress. I got my Harvard cred, I thought you were with me on this. Nothing personal about your Grandma but that AARP crowd, they're what's known in the game as a bunch of useful idiots. I had the msm on my side all along and even they couldn't help me now how depressing is that?

Interesting questions

Is there free will in Heaven? http://catholicdiscussion.yuku.com/topic/1585/t/Is-there-a-potential-for-sin-in-Heaven.html

Why is there no repentance after death? http://catholicdiscussion.yuku.com/topic/1513/t/Why-no-repentance-after-death.html

As well as my own: If God is Eternal then that means He existed for all Eternity going backwards in Time, how is this possible?

Beth and I discussed the importance of appreciating the gift of life God gave you (and presumably this also means if your life sucks) so basically if you wind up in Hell you can say you had no say in the matter of YOU coming into existence so you're only there 'cause God created you in the first place (for this you'd need a good lawyer).

AND the really really BIG QUESTION of the day: Why is Charles Manson follower Squeaky Fromme getting out of jail but Bernard Madoff has something like 8 life sentences or something?

The msm really really really really wants health-care reform

I wish they'd just go back to reporting the news instead of giving opinions. Hey Charlie Gibson pal, if it bothers you that much write an Op-Ed and oh, those Fact Checks they can shove up their ass. Funny how the "facts" always seem to go against the critics. I don't want some government bureaucrat sticking his finger up my rear, I have my own doctor to do that thank you. Better yet since Obama's so worried about little old me maybe he can put on the latex himself. Hillary seems a little testy of late. I don't think she's happy as Secretary of State, I think she really wanted his job, the bitch wanted the whole enchilada. Maybe they can have a Cash for Clunkers program where you can turn in your fat wife.

Rick Pitino, another crumb

OK so a few years back famed University of Louisiana basketball coach Rick Pitino had an affair with this Karen Sypher woman and gave her money to have an abortion. So unless my closed-captioning deceived me and I seemed to read the same thing in the paper the next morning they had sex in some restaurant. I've said it before but a main problem with the whole pro-choice movement is the basic fact, there's no getting around it that widespread abortion fosters and encourages social irresponsibility and yet the pro-choice movement never seems to care or talk about the moral context in which many of these "procedures" take place. The other thing is with Bill Clinton sexual scandal made him stronger, boosted him up in the polls but with everyone else it's wrong and maybe a career death sentence. Call this the Bubba Triple Standard, some asshole woman reporter by the name of Nina Burleigh once wanted to give him a blowjob for his role in keeping abortion legal, hell put a dead fetus in the room and maybe this chick can start squirting. Hey Rick keep the snake in its cage next time! if your wife won't give you a Slurpee go to 7-Eleven.

Life is like the bad job that never changes

A blog inspired by Beth's theme of late and as I said there sometimes I have to rejigger theology in my own head from time to time due to events. The late playwright Arthur Miller who as I recall was not known for being a religious person had this to say in his autobiography TimeBends: "Fuck you Death!" Probably for many of us we've come to accept death as natural and normal if not really a great thing, it's not and I think Miller tapped into something here basic to Christian thought without even knowing it and that is there is something fundamentally flawed with the Universe, in the original Christian understanding death did not enter the world until Man sinned and I covered alot of this ground already in my blog about why emotionally I can never be pro-choice (http://not-the-left.blogspot.com/2009/01/spiritual-view-on-pro-life-im-entitled.html) .

It's not an either/or situation, you can hold that God exists and yet Life is absurd and without meaning at the same time (although this is largely subjective since the happy and the unhappy cannot seem to relate to each other). The atheist "solution" besides ignoring Intelligent Design is too easy and doesn't address this central existential problem head on. Now whenever I've drifted towards this view people call you depressing, negative, pessimistic...relax, I'm merely stating a hard philosophical truth and do counsel people to get as much out of Life as you possibly can, you can and should enjoy Life to the max anyway but the answers religious folk give in such situations are too pat. So why do those of a spiritual bent continue to fool themselves insisting that God has plans for all of us which are too inscrutable for us to even figure out, always on some unknowing mystical plane? What about the 8 dead in the Taconic tragedy? I'd have thought a divine plan would not be so easy to foil.

The thought occured during my walk in Piermont this morning that maybe we're not meant to be here that long anyway and yet we cling to this life with all its absurdity and tragedy and yet maybe the good angels are whispering to us to just let it go. As soon as we're born we start to die, life's a bitch and then you die so why do we try to reconfigure a reality that isn't? Man sinned, we muffed it and can't seem to get back on track. Why are we here? Why were we born? I have no answer to that just know that it's not our true destination so if it's merely a sojourn does the duration really matter? IMO the real problem is secularism which teaches us to become too attached to this one life and meaning then becomes derived through materialistic means: career, house, money, sex etc. Final Thought - Your life here on Earth is very short, even the average lifespan of say 75 years is short when you stop to think about it so how the tragic affects us emotionally and spiritually is finite too and when the time comes when everyone looks back on this dot called Life, well as I said it really didn't make a whole lot of sense and we're in Heaven now so seen against the backdrop of Eternity its relevance is only temporary.

If it's Bubba it has to be bad

Now you'd think the safe return of those two American journalists being held prisoner by North Korea would be a happy event even if it did take Bill Clinton himself to go over there but listening to Hannity during my drive the other day and, must be manic-depressive politics or something but he seemed to be saying Clinton shouldn't have done that and what did we give them in return? Oh I don't know, maybe Bill got Kim Jong-Il a couple of strippers or a little ulterior motive action, maybe he just wants a little Asian favor in return (once you go Asian you never go Caucasian), how the hell do I know? Wonder if the families of Laura Ling and Euna Lee feel the same way as Hannity but somehow I doubt it.

Well since I brought up strippers funny story. Many years ago my friend and I were supposed to go to my brother's birthday party or party of some sort or some type of social occasion involving brother, brain cells dying on a daily basis so the details are fuzzy at best but long story short we didn't go. We wound up at our old haunt Barnes & Noble as we didn't feel the party was socially obligatory and when I talked to my mother later she scolded me, said we were supposed to go and that we were probably at some strip joint instead having a good time. No Mom we really are that boring.

In the East life is cheap, in the West life is expendable

In the East: "Here's a pack of cigarettes, fix my car."
In the West: "Sorry, that cancer drug's not covered."

Maybe the government should fix your car too. Kind of missed Obama's speech last night, didn't know it was even on as no other president has spoken to the nation so often but caught some snippets on PBS after it was all over. With ObamaCare it has become almost impossible to not see Obama as a socialist or having socialist tendencies or at the very least belonging to some variant subspecies of the socialist genus (let me consult my field guide here). He's so convinced his vision is correct, a charge often leveled against us conservatives, his is an almost messianic mission. His rhetorical device of always painting the opposition to whatever he believes in, nay knows to be true as obstructionists to Progress, I know what he's doing the slick SOB. Obama has often been compared to Ronald Reagan but he's the opposite of Reagan in almost every way. He's killing us softly.

Hot Topics

The 40th Anniversary of Man's First Steps on the Moon

I think we had it backwards. Any rational species would have cured Cancer first, maybe wiped out the Poverty, the Hunger, taken care of a couple other items and then hurtled off into Space. I'm not against space exploration but worry about our own little dot in the Cosmos first.

Walter Cronkite

I know he was a journalistic legend but I got nothing out of him. Very memorable and poignant, him announcing that President Kennedy just died was for me his most classic moment but the Most Trusted Man in America? Who comes up with this bullshit? I think it's because I was born with a bug up my ass but I just don't See Things the way most folks do. Barbara Walters, another one.

The Wendy Williams Show

This supposedly hot hot show has pushed my Channel 9 News past 10 o'clock well into 11 because I have to listen apparently to this happening chick prattle on endlessly about absolutely NOTHING. People in the audience ask for her advice, for example a 28-year old woman stands up to ask if there's anything wrong with her going out with a 23-year old and Wendy all hip says "do him" but I'm thinking what's so radical about a mere 5 year age difference? It's the type of show you find yourself watching about twenty minutes too long with the remote in your left hand and the Christian Brothers to your right and then it hits you like a revelation, why the hell am I watching this?

Sex Tapes

Supposedly there's now one of John Edwards with the lady not his wife but I don't wanna know. The last one was horrible though, Amy Fisher and her fat Italian ex-husband like she's giving him a blowjob and he's squatting there all hairy after he ate too much pasta. It's the kind of stuff if you were housesitting one night and you're all alone and someone left it on the coffee table on top of the gardening book and the TV Guide and there's really nothing at all on TV like Wendy Williams, some lame 2 & 1/2 Men syndicated repeat and some crime show on Ch. 2, you're like you're only gonna watch it for laughs. You ARE gonna pop it in for perusal, not at first, it's only a theoretical concept then, just an intellectual note that it exists and you're aware of it for keeping tabs on the culture but then your robotic arm puts it on the beckoning discholder and it will be rationalized as a comic evaluation to talk about some day around the water cooler should the topic ever present itself and you'll be the knowledgeable hipster but even porno pete is ashamed.
Obama

It's like the man has legislative OCD or something. He's like the person at work handing around a petition, "here here, quick sign this" and you don't even have a chance to read it. If he's doing this much in six months what's he gonna do in four years?? Maybe I'll just be like my cat and sleep it out.

The REAL purpose of Government

I've heard it said that the First purpose of Government, maybe the only legitimate purpose of Government is to keep us safe. It's not to pass health-care reform, God knows it's not to take over the auto industry, it has absolutely nothing to do with teaching kids about sex. It's not paying for abortions or funding some aspiring artist who may be controversial, it's not any of this and yet in their primary purpose the Government fails miserably. OK we've done a better job with terrorism since 9-11 but just the same the average citizen should be safe from violent crime in general ya think? So why is it the chief role of Government to keep us safe? so we can enjoy our God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that's why. I know I'm speaking as an old fart here, soapie and I be geezers with our walking sticks who aren't with the times but if the Government can't keep you safe on the street or in your home or at the airport or on vacation here or abroad WHAT THE HELL GOOD IS IT?!? OK good I now have government-run health care but I've just been shot, well whoop-dee-doo!! OK so just to review the real purpose of Government is what again?

Sarah Palin's resignation

This is hard for me. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced her intent to resign last Friday, July 4th eve and libraries were closed that day, the holiday of course and Sunday too due to summer hours. She did it on purpose but just wanted to say this was a slap in the face to every Alaskan voter who voted for her. They wanted HER to lead, HER to govern them, no one else and she obviously doesn't recognize this moral and political obligation on HER part. Either way you slice it it ain't good, somewhat fruity and nutty in the middle, slightly eccentric on the outer edges. It either makes her look suspicious (there was a menage a trois between her, SC Governor Mark Sanford and this Chapur babe down in Argentina) or weak (who knew DAVE had so much power?). Oh God it feels good to get this out ("I'll be out in a minute!").

Cancer detectives

We covered alot of ground in our phone conversation last night Beth and I and so I wanted to explore further a theme about cancer I brought up and it's this: just how old is cancer? when did it first appear on the scene? when exactly did people start dying from it? Even as a kid there is something about the cancer problem that has always struck me, something unusual, we act like it's an old disease, ancient in fact but is it? I've read alot in my life, reading lists we had in high school and then just for the pure enjoyment of it later on and I said I don't even remember cancer being a topic of conversation let alone people dying from it during the Middle Ages, in the colonial period, even during the Abe Lincoln era. Did Shakespeare ever remark "the Queen just died from cancer?" So we mulled this over and Beth said maybe cancer existed back then but people didn't know what it was but I lean more towards it didn't really exist until modern times and by modern times I mean at least the framework of the 1900's. I'm now looking at cancer historically, in the context of History. It's the timeline that interests me the most and as we all know that Nazi doctor Dr. Josef Mengele became infamous for conducting medical experiments on human subjects including dwarves but what kind of experiments were they exactly? specifically what was he looking to do and what kind of work was he really doing for the Hitler regime and why? Does cancer disproportionately affect people of certain races? Does cancer have something to do with the explosion of modern technology and were we all better off in the days when we lived a more natural life as Beth seems to feel?

You know one of the most beautiful things about blogging is you get to exercise total creative control over your work, I'm happy with it and if you don't like it just move on and so what I try to do here is to come up with an Original Thought or two every now and then. Just heard on the news this morning that Obama has appointed some type of Cyber Czar to monitor people's online habits so where are all the liberals on this one? Frightening! but at any rate they're more than welcome to read this.

I don't have all the answers, I only pose the questions. BTW my sitemeter crashed the other day, it's apparently broken like some odometer that goes back to zero so pay no attention. I'll be off tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday of course since that's the schedule of most public libraries in my area around this 4th of July weekend. Make it a safe one and enjoy and see you back on Monday.

Sentencing day for Bernie Madoff

Let it be said if I were speaking to the judge I'da said many of Madoff's victims were greedy and stupid themselves, after all how much money do you need to retire? (of course I would have needed heavy security to just go home). I'm living comfortably now, don't need much, I don't have millions to invest anyway (poor Steven Spielberg - boohoo!). So today Manhattan U.S. District Judge Denny Chin sentenced Madoff to the maximum meaning 150 years in prison and everyone cheered and got off but what else could he do? The sentence is an existential absurdity, murderers have gotten out in less time. Oh but it will be pointed out that Madoff's a murderer himself because three of his victims took their own lives but truth be told only weak people kill themselves. Everyone's acting like 150 years is a hell of a long time, does it apply to successive reincarnations? Getting back to MJ......

Just a screw or two that needs tightening (Phillips or flathead?)

I liked the original version better, that Republican Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford couldn't take his job anymore and without telling anyone just hit the Appalachian Trail to clear his head for a few days, I mean anyone can relate. Turns out though he was getting his skin flute played by some Latin mama down in Argentina. Some poetic e-mails have surfaced, have to say not bad from a literary angle from the usual junk we've been accustomed to (fingertips, soul connection). Having an affair is kind of the norm these days, that and smoking a doobie in your yoot so if you haven't done either you're some kind of weirdo. As the song says so where do we go from here?

A campaign spot by Michael Bloomberg you'll never see

This arrogant man got the law changed in New York City so he could run for a third term as Mayor. Just saw on the news last night there have been 32 deaths here in NYC due to the H1N1 virus or Swine Flu. I'm tired of hearing "underlying causes", maybe liberalism is the underlying cause. Thirty-two deaths, that's unacceptable, we're not living in the age of Typhoid Mary after all. He's been running some ads by a state pro-abortion group touting his work on behalf of women's health. Abortion is never mentioned so you can forgive someone for mistaking it for a breast cancer spot. Bloomberg is one of those hardcore pro-aborts, beyond pro-abortion. He's the type that would do them himself if he could ("give me the f****n forceps!"). He called a reporter who questioned him on changing the term-limits law "a disgrace." He's always been just a touch mental, when he walks around he reminds me of that Yul Brynner robot in Westworld. Just glad I don't live in the City just a surrounding suburb safe from this RINO.

Why people are threatened by miracles (or the bias against miracles)

A miracle strongly implies a God, a God in turn we suspect has a moral code for us to follow, a moral code means we have to make a decision in the end for either Heaven or Hell, damnation or salvation. To someone who ain't livin' right they will go to the ends of the earth to disprove the most obvious miracles, he isn't into them and so to be into them means he would have to turn his life around. The next question becomes maybe miracles are more common than we realize but we'd rather not go there so we downplay them or rationalize them away so we can continue with the life we've been accustomed to. If Science can't explain it then that means we have to throw the porn away or the drugs or not get another abortion sometime down the road or be nice to our neighbor or give up our seat on the bus to some elderly woman with a limp. The atheist can't be bothered with Fatima even though it's the most fascinating subject because the implications are disturbing at least for him.

A pet peeve of mine -- Intelligent Design is NOT, I repeat not Creationism. All it says is there is a Prime Mover behind it all, a Creative Imagination but has nothing to do with the literal seven days of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis. I can only think this is a quite deliberation obfuscation among liberals and it's getting old. I DO believe a sublime force made the cosmos, I don't however believe in talking snakes. Get it right!!

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.