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

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

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

It's not so much that Mel Gibson and Shirley Sherrod are bigots

I just think we like to talk about Race. It makes us feel more virtuous about ourselves apparently. Mel Gibson's real crime in the past was that he said something against the Jews, don't go there. Shirley Sherrod was a great right-wing blogging topic until more came out. Samir Shabazz of the New Black Panthers is a racist psycho plain and simple and his type is the most dangerous not a drunken Mel or a heavily edited Sherrod is the way I see it. Might we expend our energy and our righteous rage on the folks who really matter? Jesse Jackson once infamously referred to New York City as Hymietown and while it was obviously anti-Semitic in nature I prefer to see it more in the nostalgic light of a brain fart. It's his liberal record that I'm against. Maybe an important part of a post-racialist America will be being able to laugh at race. Race is a quirky topic because it has been so heavily circumscribed by political correctness that we can't say much on it unless you're David Mamet. Sometimes I think we're better off not even discussing it. Fred Barnes is a racist? that's not even blogworthy in my book.

Hated in life, beloved in death - George Steinbrenner (1930-2010)

I heard some people complain because they broke into "Judge Judy" halfway through an interesting court case -- BREAKING NEWS -- because Derek Jeter had something to say and it wasn't just WCBS, all the major stations in New York cut in. Sure it was only a tiny fraction of the Jacko treatment but I thought the guy was no good after what he did to Yogi and taking away dental coverage for Yankee employees and firing Billy Martin so many times and he couldn't even appear as himself on "Seinfeld" and......God you know I remember in the Boss's heyday NY sportswriters always bashing the guy for this or that and now he's a Saint? I really don't have any overriding passionate conviction about the man. His passing is newsworthy of course just pointing out that his pre and post-death coverage seem to be about two different men but that's the way we are I guess. RIP

Sperm, War and God

Why atheism falls short

Had this thought this morning. My Dad served in the Navy during WW2 and I was conceived well after the war. Now if he had perished the atheist would say I wouldn't be here right now but I think most folks would simply say I'd have a different Dad. Now when my father's sperm cell united with my mother's egg that led to ME but if a different sperm cell of his had done the trick would I still be here? Again most people would say I'd still be ME but would have black hair and brown eyes maybe instead of blonde hair and green eyes, maybe I'd be shorter too. If you backed an atheist into a corner over this he might be forced to conclude you had only a 1 in a million chance of coming into existence since that one sperm cell that united with your mother's egg led to YOU but that would in effect make us all into a bunch of walking Lottos. The math doesn't add up, this science of probability that the godless would be forced to fall back on. So if my Dad had sacrificed his life in WW2 and I still would have been born in some form that'd point to Somebody being in charge. Likewise since he survived his tour of duty if another sperm cell of my Dad's had united with my Mom's egg and I still would have come into existence that all points to some type of principle of consciousness at work, the existence of some sort of soul dynamic and ultimately to Somebody being in charge. There's a spiritual, mystical sense to it all even if the rest of Life doesn't make sense. I just want the Bill Mahers and the Christopher Hitchenses to explain the Math. Religion isn't irrational, atheism is.

The Rehab Racket

Was debating whether or not to do a Lindsay Lohan blog. It was either that or I Love Obama/I Hate Obama and I sure as hell ain't gonna do a LeBron James blog (egotist!) so we're gonna go with the Lohan.

Look I don't wish ill on anyone. I'm not from the Andrea Peyser School of Writing which even when I agree with her I think she's way over the top. Call her P-Block as she just wants to DESTROY whoever's on her shitlist for that day. So Lindsay Lohan has gotten 90 days in jail from a Beverly Hills judge for violating her probation over her two DUIs. Now these court-ordered shrink sessions, in her case rehab which she hasn't been faithfully attending, there's something vaguely police statish about forcing someone to talk to some bald-pated bespectacled pc creep (can we throw in "w/orange goatee"?) with advanced degress in what is basically a very inexact science. I say punish the person for whatever they've done and basically be done with it, save moral education for another day. The other thing that bothers me is this enforced puritanism. Puritanism has never really died in this country, it has just taken on new forms. Ms. Lohan is only 24, to expect her to never have an adult beverage for the rest of her life, well that's putting the demon back into the bottle when we need to demystify it. WHY do people drink to excess? THAT is the issue not the alcohol per se which in moderation has far more pleasant effects imo than getting stone-cold drunk (never understood this). It's a psychological issue but since we don't put it in its proper perspective we're left with rackets like Alcoholics Anonymous, a saccharine confession/sacrament of your sins in front of the class as your initiation ritual. It's time we grow up and eschew this creeping puritanism as the road to recovery when it only becomes more of a tempation since even one drop is forbidden. It's fashionable to be against the spirits, everyone at work acts like they're Mother Cabrini and never touch the stuff but I thought we were Adults. Can we talk?

Lindsay Lohan has done wrong and needs to be punished but not for skipping class. Punish her for the original misdeed and btw WTF's up with Mel Gibson???

abortionsport

In New York City it would qualify as an Olympic event. Forty years ago New York became the first state to legalize abortion, old news but as of 2008 according to the NYC Health Dept. there were almost 90,000 abortions in the five boroughs (- a few 100 but Z likes to round off, it makes the math easier). In other words 7 abortions for every live birth and among black women the ratio of abortions to live births was 3/2. Well abortion itself is old news but it's the liberal response to these numbers that, well let's hear what NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn (Democrat/Liberal of course) had to say:

"We can reduce the number of unintended pregnancies by expanding access to contraceptives and increasing sex education."

THIS is the standard liberal line when uncomfortable subjects like too-high abortion rates come up. On the surface this seems perfectly logical and who can argue with it although Z with his libertarian thrust opposes ALL sex education even if it comes from conservative chastity advocates simply for the reason that SEX doesn't belong in the classroom but in the home with your Dad finding your Hustler under your mattress and scolding you that you're gonna make some fat Jewish guy rich. Teach kids to make a living that's what I say. But whatever, the reason why this doesn't work in practice is that if abortion is widely available with hardly any social stigma attached to it at least in places like New York City people feel no pressing or urgent reason to use contraceptives in the first place. Abortion simply becomes A method of birth control, maybe THE method for some folks. You could airlift boatloads of rubbers over the Manhattan skyline and drop 'em down with little smiley faces on them but only a certain % are gonna use 'em, the whole taking-a-shower-with-a-suit-on thing, and well this might be a good time to get to Black Culture.

UH-OH

Like my bro worked for a company once with a few black co-workers, you had a black stripper who'd basically hump 'em & dump 'em, married women, didn't matter and he was party to at least five abortions at last count. It's not like my bro pumped him for information either, he was right upfront about his lifestyle choices, you know, bj's caught on cells, that kind of thing. Plow a different chick on the sofa every week, Springer on in the background and, oh yeah another one called out sick one day and said to the boss "I'm calling out sick today, I have to take my girlfriend for an abortion." Now to be sure

They're not all like this,

but I'm talking about a kind of ghetto mentality even if they're no longer in the ghetto, absentee fathers, you know the usual stuff Coz got in trouble over for even discussing. A subset of the population, all the negative social indicators writ large...hey don't get on my case Margaret Sanger wanted to eliminate them. (Standard conservative racist line follows): Now most of them aren't like this, ya got your white upper middle-class Heathers chicks getting their "uterine contents" aspirated out on a quite frequent basis too but taken as a whole we got more methods of birth control than ever, sex'chal matters being discussed quite frankly in the Schools and we still got this abortion craze. I'm surprised Speaker Quinn being a lesbian herself didn't say Go Anal...hey I got The Weekend off, let me have some fun. Worked with a young guy a few years ago, white trash type who split up with his girl but made nice to her for "one last piece of ass" and so came to work one day and quite openly asked everyone how much an abortion costs. There's a thread in all of this if you'll notice, abortion being taken quite casually not the usual liberal line that abortion is this agonizing moral choice for people, Macbeth hallucinating a bloody dagger, existentialism and all that. I mean isn't it time pro-choicers take on their own side for a change? The widespread practice of abortion undermines social responsibility and ya wanna know something? I can't even blame Obama for this one. You ain't livin' right.

Happy 4th of July folks!!!

Obama's socialist ranking

"We are poised to pass the toughest financial reform since the ones we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression." - President Obama at the White House

"Never let a crisis go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel

CRISIS - SOLUTION

This new consumer protection bureau to monitor credit-card companies, mortgage brokers and banks will be housed in the Federal Reserve. Getting the willies yet?

OK, we had quite a discussion here back in the day whether or not Obama is a socialist. Daniel pointed out that based on the true technical definition of a socialist and a socialist system Obama is not one so let's posit that. BUT he goes right up to the edge of being one, always two or three steps removed. To put it in movie ratings terms you have your R, your NC-17 and your hardcore X. Obama is definitely in NC-17 territory, never quite the technical definition of a working socialist but, here read this from the Washington Post today:

Lawmakers guide Dodd-Frank bill for Wall Street reform into homestretch by David Cho, Jia Lynn Yang and Brady Dennis
(re Goldman Sachs)
"...In the coming year a regulatory council could force the bank to shed its sizeable hedge funds and private-equity activities. It also could be banned from making financial trades for its own profit instead of for clients, shaving roughly 10 percent from the firm's revenue."

So we're gonna have alot more regulators than we had in the past with vastly more powers. Risky activities, somehow I always thought they were the hallmark of capitalism, they could be limited in the future but derivatives haven't been banned outright under the proposed bill. Also if this passes and it will banks will have to have more money put in reserve for those bad times but the regulators will figure this out don't you worry. I know I know auto dealers have been exempt from your new consumer protections and most mutual fund and insurance companies made out ok, community banks are good but on the capitalist/socialist scale there's a sense out there that Obama's philosophy is closer to the socialist end than the capitalist end. Liberalism has gradations just like conservatism has and Obama certainly doesn't talk as if he's in love with our capitalist system. Ours as soapie is fond of pointing out is a mixed economy, not pure capitalism but I don't like where this is headed. It moves us further along on that scale even if it would be more important to plug that damn hole in the Gulf first. I've yet to hear Obama say anything positive about wealth and wealth creation which doesn't prove ipso facto that he's One of Them but he's definitely an NC-17 kind of guy pushing the envelope. Question is if he does get a 2nd Term will he go hardcore?

The Westchester County Gun Show

When it comes to guns I'm a superfreak. I'm a little liberal on the issue but in the end take your basic conservative position, well yeah conservative but without your NRA extremism. Today there's a gun show going on at the Westchester County Center here in White Plains NY. Now the last County Executive Andy Spano, a Democrat banned the thing but now we got a Repub in office, Rob Astorino and he brought it back. Now what is the main purpose, actually the only purpose of a gun or firearm? It's to kill people at least theoretically so I've always found those who drool over guns at these shows to be somehow, to be charitable here of the Ozark mentality. Not quite right in the head, a couple screws need tightening is all, Off-Center and it's like the time at my sister-in-law's. The story goes they saw a deer in their yard once as they live in the sticks and while everyone was ooohing and aaahing one of the friends goes "I wish I had my gun right now" and, well it was kind of those brain farts again, the type of thing you shouldn't express at least in mixed company anyway. Basically the guy's a dickhead but he's kind of emblematic of the species. Now my bro ain't into guns either but few years back as a favor he took a friend to the same gun show and there sitting at some table was some guy with swastikas on his belt selling some white supremacy books. Friend goes ignore him most folks ain't that way but my brother wanted to get the hell out of there just the same. Now on the other hand I've always said pass all the gun control measures you like and for the record I'm not against all of them but it'll only affect the law-abiding and honest among us. Criminals by definition break the law, that's why they're known as criminals and so to somehow disarm the rest of the populace seems well to me that's it's a complicated issue not given to easy liberal sermonizing. So gun shows attract weird people and I kinda have to go with Spano on this one although he effectively booted himself out of office by constantly raising people's property taxes. Rob Astorino, good ole Republican boy gotta open up the cowboy show again. If I'm somewhat Satyish on the issue that's because I am, the gun crowd gives me the willies, the heebeejeebies and you can sex it up all you want by having Sarah Palin eating a bowl of Moose Nose Stew but when I'm driving up the line on the Taconic in the Dutchess County area and pass Farmer Joe's Road you can't help but think of some farmer/Dad sneaking into his daughter's room at night, gap-toothed perverted overalled church usher bastardo on Sunday (don't like me making jokes? change the name of the road). I know I'm stereotyping but then again my friend and I were driving on Sprout Brook Road recently by some nature preserve/trailway system, that's kinda in the general hillbilly geographic area I'm talking about here and the sign had a bullet hole in it so I said let's get out of here. Conservatives who are birdwatchers, dayhikers, yuppie cyclists, Pelican-cleaners, photobugs, mallrats, I-podding skateboarding mofos, I think we need to go with them and leave the gun enthusiasts/masturbators at home. It's just a vibe thing.

How come lib critics of the President aren't racists too?

(I have borrowed some of the following information from Moderate Republicans' blog of 6/17, Obama, Oil Spills and Rhetoric. Mod Repub, ever a useful resource)

First it was Kirsten Powers who seemed the first to fall out of love with him, then the Ragin' Cajun' went ballistic. I heard also that Olbermann had something not nice to say. So what was the impetus for all this? The Crisis in the Gulf of course, yes it took something of this magnitude for them to finally turn this spaceship around and head back towards Earth but here's a list of some other liberals who've had critical things to say:

E.J. Dionne (Wash. Post) - a fair lib imo not given to hyperventilating
Gail Collins (Ole Gray Lady) - I recall her name from somewhere and it wasn't for her conservative musings
David Broder (Wash. Post) - I think he's some type of lib but I'm not really sure. Seen him on gabfests with Gwen Ifill on PBS and he always looked kind of boring to me like he'd get out his lawn chair with a few other oldsters and sit outside of Macy's on a hot sweltering day in July. Looks like he uses the stall in the Men's Room alot.
Tina Brown - THE Tina Brown
Robert Reich (HuffPo) - we all remember him.
Roger Simon (Politico),

& on it goes. Now many of them are saying the same things you or I might say. You know I gotta break this down and get to the Westchester County Gun Show but I'm just sayin' if you're a Tea Party motherfucker you're a racist by definition but if you hang with the above set your criticism is somehow more cerebral and fair. In short why has criticism of Obama become niggerized but only on the conservative end?

The Mother Hen retires

It's not that I find Helen Thomas to be an obligatory subject for a blog post. Quite the contrary, I pretty much blog about what I damn well please but how does this grab you? She had every right to say what she said even though it was offensive and racist and whatever else you want to throw in there. You see that's the thing about Free Speech, it's only real test comes when a Helen Thomas comes along or a Don Imus or a South Park or a Glenn Beck or a Larry Flynt or a......and it seems like in too many of these cases we simply fail the test. A rabbi asked her what she thinks of Israel and she said they should get out of Palestine and move back to Germany and Poland and so if he didn't like the response why'd he ask her? So is Helen Thomas an anti-Semitic bigot? at 89 probably as I'm sure she didn't just wake up one day on the wrong spot.

The thing about the Middle East is I don't pretend to understand it. It's one of those things you need Monarch Notes for and both sides insist the other side is 100% wrong and they are 100% right. Obama is getting alot of heat these days for being anti-Israel and for snubbing Bibi as some war criminal but again unless you're a Mideast junkie who's to say? The Mideast is the world's most controversial issue and I think the sheer tenacity of the issue over the years is what grates on me most. It's 2010, the Palestinians should have a homeland by now so we can move on to other pressing international issues that desperately need attention. I've always found the continent of Africa interesting with its long history of wars and despots and coups, its diamonds, tribes, culture, dialects and way of life and was pondering the other day about the usual conservative rationale for toppling Saddam when those phantom WMDs failed to materialize. They said and continue to say sure that was some f*'ed up intel but not only Iraq but the world is now better off without him and I was thinking the same can be said of Robert Mugabe. Africa has always been some type of nightmare continent, well parts of it anyway and as a kid growing up I was always thankful I wasn't born there to maybe wind up as part of Idi Amin's dinner banquet. It's a continent that desperately needs saving and its Third World status has gone on way too long. Let's talk about THAT.

Helen Thomas, this is what happens when you're still working at 89. She apologized for what she said and seems to me after 50 years of covering the White House there's a better way to go out.

How did liberals become so conservative on the matter of the Oil Spill?

Normally they wouldn't be. If Bush were in charge today, OMG if Bush were in charge today you can bet dollars to doughnuts that that scalawag Michael Moore would probably do a scathing documentary on it. Pretty safe bet that MoveOn.org would have something to say too. Now I wasn't gonna do a new blog on this subject so soon but Shaw's blog yesterday inspired me. Actually alot of folks both right and left have some very good points to make. Mal's point that the government and BP should just get together and solve the damn thing first makes the most sense, assign blame and let the bashing begin but LATER. I also get Saty's point that the government doesn't have the technical know-how to cap the damn thing but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be involved at all and pretend it ain't happening. Actually I find the liberals to be most inconsistent here first because they're normally such big environmentalists and such strong advocates of the government taking the leading role in other environmental matters such as global warming and climate change. Nay in the liberal cosmos those aren't just matters but crises as well. Funny thing though is if we conservatives said what they are saying we should say, namely advocate for no governmental involvement in the matter whatsoever we'd be lambasted for that too. Basically the reason the libs have come up with this curious application of a very basic conservative, libertarian free-market position/approach here is really quite simple: they are still so damn in love with Obama that it's the ONLY logical position open to them whereby they can still defend their man. It's parabolic logic at least for a liberal, a default position and they know it just like if your brakes fail you pump the pedal up and down or turn off the keys or just jump the hell out of the car. I strive for absolute honesty here in my blog and on another matter if I am mildly curious why the Gores are separating or divorcing then you liberal bloggers have every right to opine why Rush seems to keep turning off his wives. Have at it, it's all good. On the crisis in the Gulf the consensus has been reached rather quickly among people as varied as James Carville, Colin Powell and Malcontent that Obama has been disengaged from this crisis from Day One, doesn't know how to handle it but the hardcore libs still aroused by Obama deny he's been Peter-Principled into office and would rather attack conservatives as if this is gonna somehow save all those Brown Pelicans and the Louisiana shrimp industry. Actually this is the one issue that we should all be nonideological on, could've been a proud moment. As liberal Matt Rose has said Obama is a loser. Just admit it, it'll make the pain go away.

It's not race, the fact of the matter is...

...that when this country chose to elect a one-term junior Senator from Illinois and put him in the White House he was in effect Peter-Principled. He is now 49 years old so the question is can he unPeter-Principle himself? I don't think that's ever been done before, it goes against the Principle itself. Two and a half more years of PP'ing, at least look at the blogging material!!! For all you libs look on the bright side, Sarah Palin can be Peter-Principled too.

Progressive conservatism

Z said I should do a blog about this and not having much else to blog about these days besides Oil and maybe Lindsay Lohan it's a good idea. It's a term I used the other day in the Rand Paul discussion and it really means things like if we've made some social progress, in this case regarding race, then by all means just accept it. Don't go back and reargue the whole 1964 Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater is not the guiding force of the movement anymore. Progressive conservatism is meant to directly take on what I consider the drawbacks of libertarianism or rather extreme libertarianism. Some drawbacks of extreme libertarianism in my view:

(1) Free association means if you're a private establishment you have the right to discriminate against blacks (or anyone of your choosing). It's retro and backwards and definitely out-of-the-mainstream. It's an interesting intellectual point but ultimately folds in on itself. Libertarians are not big on civil rights, the rest of us got with the program a long time ago and have moved on. They're in a timewarp.
(2) The War on Drugs is somehow invalid in libertarian thought. No it's not and it's kind of murky if libertarians actually support drug use as a harmless recreational activity or simply it's legalization. The War on Drugs seems to conjure up alot of passion on their part but explain WHY it's invalid. The root of the anger at government over this is also interesting, is it as simple as you want to drop some acid? Not sure why the National Review has become a leader in this vanguard, maybe Wm. F. Buckley Jr. toked towards the end. Rich Lowry is usually more sensible than this.
(3) Pro-Life. Libertarians hate social conservatives and their concerns. This is why Barry Goldwater became testy in his old age towards the Right. They got no problem with starving the cognitively disabled to death as long as they're able to order Chinese and a pizza while they're visiting their aging uncle who is now on the ultimate diet and a burden on the family treasury. On the unborn they really really hate you and get all fidgety. They've no use for Pro-Life as there's no $$$$$$ involved, the only thing they seem to care about. They tend to be secular (tend?).

Those are just three items plucked at random. Even though they're not racists themselves their intellectual framework would allow racist practices to flourish. They have no problem with narcotizing the masses even if you have some LSD and PCP mind-bending mofos walking around. If you somehow make it past the birth process they'll deny you food and water in your old age or disabled state or allow others to do so (BUTT OUT!!!). Most of us here are libertarian to a point but our libertarianism is moderated and allows for other social and moral concerns. It's a blend as any successful recipe has to be, theirs is one ingredient. LIBERTY AT ALL COSTS has never really caught on though and despite the wide variety of political beliefs in this country theirs is as minority status as you can get though they somehow feel their influence is so important it should be more dominant within the party.

Progressive conservatism - Accepting racial progress, drugs are bad for society and it's better to have a pro-life culture to name but a few. Progressive conservatism, if the enemy does something good give him credit but as of this date the only good thing I can come up with (seriously) is when Obama gave the go-ahead to have those Navy snipers shoot the Somali pirates and that's going backaways. We can throw in progressive conservatism is by no means hawkish but not pacifist in nature either. We don't need anymore cowboy diplomacy but we don't need a president apologizing to our enemies either. Progessive conservatism is forward-looking and hopeful and it's a theme I'll have more to say on in the future.

WTG Rand Paul!

Historic and landmark civil rights legislation has been bothering you for how long now? The new Republican winner of the KY primary recently told MSNBC that private businesses should not have to abide by civil rights laws. Rand, who has strong Tea Party support, is known as a libertarian kind of guy. Just when Republicans have finally shed the skin of a largely undeserved imo racial reputation

DUDE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?

Pretty funkadelic. Rand reminds me of that quirky member of your extended family, some relative down the line, say some aunt who's visiting. You're all sitting on the patio conversating on a nice day and Mamie goes "Hitler was a very intelligent man." Now you don't exactly know what she means by that but she says it loud enough so the guy bbq'ing next door freezes just for a nanosecond in the midflip of a burger and you're like "Mamie, can you lower your voice? You're not exactly part of the mainstream."

I know someone here is gonna strongly object but anyone else really wanna jump on this here Bandwagon?

Scientology - dangerous cult or religious fad?

So what do you think of the sci-fis?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_McPherson
http://www.lisamcpherson.org/

The sad story above predates Obama's Rise to Power as do alot of Other Bad Things. Yes we will on occasion explore some older topics here as it's not an Obamacentric Universe. Wondering too why so many Hollywood celebs today never gravitate towards the more traditional faith systems, it's either Kabbalah or Scientology these days. I guess Jesus never rode on a spaceship before, I mean how uncool is that? Tom Cruise is the best-known sci-fier, I just think he's naive but they all remind me of the creepy characters out of that Mel Gibson movie Edge of Darkness only instead of nuclear criminals you're dealing with a bunch of conspiratorial cultists. So how did such a weird religion catch on? BTW you are perfectly welcome to tie all of this in with Obama, I mean he is some kind of Omega dude isn't he?

Confiscatory taxation as a violation of the purpose of work

Dunno if Aristotle would say the things I'm about to say but I'm borrowing a very important concept of his and using it in my own way. Aristotle used a word, the telos, and basically what that means is the purpose or end of something. Teleology is the study of the nature, purpose and ends of things so what is the telos of work? For a very few it might be something aesthetic or emotional but let's go out on a limb here and say for the majority of us work means to be able to have food, clothing and shelter. As soapie likes to point out it's a means to an end at least for most of us.

The Problem With Overwork

Let's say I with my normal 35 or 40 hour workweek have enough to procure the basic necessities of life. I'm not living high on the hog like King Henry VIII throwing ham hocks over my shoulder but I am now able to afford adequate food, clothing and shelter. Now let's say I have a workaholic boss who wants me to go over, work alot of OT well then that violates the telos or purpose or end of work for me. Those extra hours and that extra work go far beyond fulfilling what I consider to be the telos of work as it relates to me. Now somebody else might look upon those extra hours as an opportunity. Now the telos as it relates to him or her is to be able to afford more food and clothing and to pay off and secure more of that shelter but the problem with the modern Work State is that the telos of work applies differently to different people. Just because you want to work like a Mexican shouldn't mean I have to.

So Where Does the Idea of Income Taxes Come From?

Having settled upon a workable definition of the nature and purpose of work or the telos of work I'm gonna go a little further out on that limb here and venture that for the majority of us the purpose or end of work does not include giving part of our earnings which we contracted for with a second party and forking it over to the government to do with as they see fit, no way. Giving various percentages of our earnings to the government in the form of taxes in order to redistribute the fruits of the sweat of your brow is a new definition of the telos of work and could only have been invented by a liberal (try Karl Marx) but it certainly isn't the original purpose or end of work as commonly understood.

So the problem or issue with work for many of us is twofold: we are working longer hours and doing more and harder work to please others (e.g. the boss, the company) when that extra work may go against the telos of work for us but more importantly confiscatory taxation is violating the principle of work for everyone regardless of individual work ethics. Now we just mentioned that the reason many folks are willing to work those extra shifts is to help pay off the mortgage or put their kids through college let's say so if it's mutual the telos of work has not yet been violated but let's say you're a bus driver and happily put in a 60+ hour workweek anticipating your next paycheck but then see that a good chunk of that extra income just went to the government well then the purpose or end of work has been seriously violated. One of the basic differences between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives get the concept of telos more certainly as it relates to work whereas liberals expand the telos of work to include more on their social agenda and that is because conservatives and liberals see the purpose or end of government, the telos of government as being two very different things and that is the subject of our next lecture. For your assignment......

Rigatoni Gorgonzola - a fine summer salad

Boil three boxes of Mezze Rigatoni (that's the smaller rigatoni). I like Barilla as it holds up well. Boil for 8-10 minutes or whatever the instructions call for. Personally I'm not into al dente but just go slightly past al dente, you certainly don't want your pasta overboiled and mushy. Cool the pasta off in a colander or strainer under cold running water. Now get yourself a nice big mixing bowl and add 2 or 3 cans of medium black pitted olives and 2 or 3 of those small containers of baby tomatoes you see in the produce department. Get yourself a nice red Vidalia onion but don't dice it, slice it up and throw it in. You should be able to find the gorgonzola cheese in crumble form in any of the finer delis at the cheese island. If they're out of gorgonzola your average blue cheese works perfectly fine as a substitute as it has a similar gustatory effect and they're all from the same family anyway. Make sure you put enough cheese in there. Put a decent amount of Italian dressing in the bowl, put on your latex or vinyl gloves and mix well. If it's your preference you can spritz on some dill weed.

Serves 3-5 (or one fat person)

Was Jesus a liberal?

This is really a Dave Miller thread. I just might watch Beth and Dave from the grandstands for 3 innings or so as I enjoy my piss-warm beer and overpriced hot dog.

Nothing else matters

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

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

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

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

The Smaller Gov't Test

by not voting.

Now let's say Bob Smith is a rock-ribbed all-American Republican so we all get on the Bob Smith Bandwagon, blog in his favor etc. Bob Smith is such a stud. Now here's the basic problem or dilemma for the libertarian -- whomever you pull the lever for in November, your local city councilman, your state guy or gal, your Senator or Representative in the Congress you are voting to put a legislator into office and what is the primary function of a legislator pray tell?? well it's not to repeal laws (that Barry Goldwater fantasy) but to pass them. Now if you're like me we have enough laws already, strike that if anything we have way too many. Got this brand new cast-iron pan at Bed, Bath & Beyond a few days ago, Emeril-Ware if I may plug that, and yesterday got that baby nice and hot and seared a couple of nice old salmon steaks in there and time comes when you stick a fork in that baby and say MG she's done! Same thing with our system of government or laws, the F'n thing is done, anything else is gilding the lily. So basically for your true libertarian voting for even a Republican makes absolutely no sense. Whether Democrat or Republican I'm voting for what? a lawmaker, now why would I do that? Now Beth just blogged that we are a nation of laws and they say that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Yes it is if you have too many of them. We've tried everything else, why not try the libertarian experiment?

The #1 Rule of Cooking

We're all aware of places people eat out that cut corners and if we aren't then Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" has brought that home. You see it all the time, you'll walk into a supermarket let's say and see on the hot table some gangster meatloaf, some gangster spinach lasagna rolls that have already been in the packout section and are expiring that day, some overdone gangster chicken, gangster mac & cheese, gangster turkey burgers. So some hapless soul will get a little diarrhea, it ain't gonna kill you. You hope nobody will notice, it's Thuganomics but a really good chef friend of mine gave me an important piece of advice one day, he's a proud Culinary Institute of America grad and you could say it's the #1 Rule of Cooking -- If you're not willing to put it in your own mouth don't have somebody else put it in theirs.

That's what she said to me.

Will the oil spill become President Obama's Katrina?

& it really doesn't matter if it's fair or not, just that it happened on his watch and the buck has to stop with someone. One thing it shows if we need more proof is government is inefficient, even downright incompetent at solving major problems. Turns out 200,000 gallons of oil gushing out into the Gulf of Mexico every day may have been a conservative estimate and there's talk this may be worse than the Exxon Valdez. Dead sea turtles have already been washing up on shore, I got a problem with that. Long story short do you really want them in charge of your health-care too?

4 very provocative questions

& I'll give you my answers in a bit.

(1) In your day to day do you find yourself enjoying less freedom?
(2) Do you accept Obama as your president?
(3) Is capitalism a perfect system?
(4) Should the Archie comic strip have a gay character?

OK as for (1) in large part the answer is no but that's probably because of my simplistic lifestyle. I got up this morning and had a cup of coffee, went to Stop & Shop, hit the library and otherwise did what the hell I wanted to do on MY terms and nobody but nobody stopped me. However if I were building an extension to my house most likely I'd need some type of permit or if I planned on starting up a small business I'd probably be burdened by onerous rules and regs so in that case I'd have more of a mixed response and I'd like to hear yours. (2) is surely the most controversial and if you even consider the option of saying NO then you're considered dangerous by the liberal set although what's interesting here is I think it's safe to say a good bulk of 'em didn't even consider George Bush to be a valid president, I mean it was a no-brainer as far as they were concerned. For me re Obama this remains an open question. If he truly is a socialist or Marxist then no I can't accept him as my president but this question seems to be still very much up in the air at the moment with conservatives saying yes he is a socialist and libs saying we all go to K-Mart to get our tinfoil hats. Certainly when a president goes against almost everything you believe in and hold dear, when he is so diametrically opposed to your own way of thinking it becomes very hard indeed for anyone liberal or conservative to accept him as a valid president but most times you should. When you start commenting here I want honest responses, just give us a straight Mal answer yes or no. (3) OF COURSE capitalism is not a perfect system despite your rank-and-file conservatives acting like it is but overall it's the best system on the face of the globe and the operative principle here is freedom and any shortcomings of the capitalistic system should be corrected in their own way. As you know the Dems are preparing another rush job of some major legislation and this time instead of trying to reform health-care they're trying to reform Wall Street, some 1,300 pages worth and again they don't want the country to have time to read it. Gotta love 'em! (4) and we saved the most fun for last. The Archie comics have introduced their first gay character, Kevin Keller, who is going to Riverdale High with the rest of the gang. He explains to Jughead why he just ain't that into Veronica and so Jughead is gonna have a little fun with this and let Veronica figure it out on her own (heehee). Now my answer has absolutely nothing to do with being anti-gay but I just think the strip should be non-controversial. Now presumably Kevin is gonna act with decorum and is not gonna grab Jughead's balls but what's next? Veronica gets an abortion or Betty has a stalker? ("Oh Archie I killed our baby, I can never live with myself!" or Betty: "should I buy a gun?") I'm just sayin' Archie used to be an oasis from all of this, the complexities of the Larger Society. On the other hand it does make the storyline more interesting, I mean how many times can the gang go to the malt shop?

The Person of the Week Who Should Just Go Away Already -- Ashley Dupre. She's become a larger scourge on this country than bubble-gum pop. If that Billy Mumy character from Twilight Zone were here he'd just wish her into the cornfield.

Is the lunatic fringe really the lunatic fringe

or are certain discussions off the table? For me it depends on the topic but in many cases it's what I've just said. For instance the Tea Party is not part of the lunatic fringe but the 9/11 truthers are and if I may speak frank here I'm really getting tired of this group that can't accept what happened on that fateful day. Now if you break it down it all starts to make sense IF you're of the conspiratorial bent but where the case breaks down as in totally is the charge that it was really a missile that hit the Pentagon. So what happened to all those missing passengers on that particular flight? did they all get issued new IDs and simply relocate to other countries like Switzerland and Norway? As in the fake moon landing conspiracy theory which would have required massive numbers of people being in on it to successfully pull it off did not one of these people say "hey wait a minute, I ain't going along with this"? Not a one??? So the more people that are required to pull off a successful conspiracy the less likely you are to have a bona-fide conspiracy in the first place. Point Two -- if the conspiracy is actually true then if you're trying to shed light on the sit'chation then they come after you, take you for a ride in the back seat of that big black sedan G-car, have a little talk with you and then open the door where YOU can make a rolling stop. If true then Charlie Sheen should be dead right now instead of making some crappy sitcom whose only formula seems to be about some carefree guy with too much leisure time on his hands who gets laid five times a day and whose only real problem is where to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon (that's the subject of another blog, in what universe?).

So is Obama a Marxist hellbent on socializing the entire U.S. Guv'ment and nation? This may or not may not be true but it's plausible and if something is plausible then by its very nature that does not make you part of a lunatic fringe so the Beckster skates away scotfree on this one although for a while there it seemed close. You know when you think about the work detectives do on a daily basis they come up with myriad workable theories to solve various crimes and while some of their theories may turn out to be wrong in the long run they have to go by what's plausible, by what's workable so to simply ask questions or try to connect the dots in a plausible way does not a lunatic fringe guy or gal make. Now if you insist that Barbara Olson may still be alive climbing the Matterhorn that proves one of two things: you are either mental or took some acid. See how it works?

Bottom line this phrase lunatic fringe is so vastly overused it no longer has much meaning and you don't know who it really applies to anymore. It's the latest card in the deck and it's getting just as dogeared as the race card. Also calling a tea partier a teabagger doesn't change the nature of reality. Lawrence Kudlow - tea partier, Richard Simmons - teabagger. Get it straight!

What if the Bilderbergers only talked about (......)?

So I'm watching Alex Jones' latest documentary last night, The Obama Deception and since my #1 Rule for anything is that it not be boring it passed the night very well. So if you don't already know the story of the Bilderbergers they're a group of about 125 people, not just millionaires but multibillionaires which seems to be the price of admission into this elite little club and they're among the most powerful and influential people in the world to put it mildly. So in the movie they're all driving up to have one of their infamous 2-day annual meetings at some Marriot or other and Alex Jones and a group of like-minded protestors are yelling and shouting at them using bullhorns and their hands, calling them a bunch of elitist criminals who want to enslave the entire planet under a dictatorial one-world government, who orchestrate and engineer entire socio/economic calamities to make their evil globalist agenda more palatable to the public-at-large but I had this thought. Let's say Alex Jones was able to infiltrate these ultra-secret meetings somehow, probably not him as he'd be recognized of course but let's say there was a way and the big confab was about to begin and ALL they talked about for two straight days was Sports...and Sex. The mouths on those gentlemen!!!

Alex Jones: "WTF!!!"

anyway there were some funny parts like legendary rapper KRS-One calling Obama "the New World Order with a black face" (a good one) and Professor Griff, founder of Public Enemy not buying into the whole thing either. The theme -- Our historic president Obama is just a puppet in the hands of the money-masters who really rule the world just like Bush was and before him just like Clinton was and before him...Now you probably won't be able to find it at your local Blockbuster but it's a good one, makes for an entertaining evening and what the hell else is on anyway?

The topic of faith has often come up here and the whole business of divine intervention (or lack thereof), where is God anyway? He hasn't been picking up His phone of late or answering His e-mail. So I had the day off today and decided to go on a nice long drive up the line to Brookfield, CT near New Milford. Destination: the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes where you write your prayer intentions down in a notebook. I'm spiritual anyway and it truly is a beautiful place with a lovely grotto and the Stations of the Cross so as a kind of test case I wrote a few intentions down private and personal to me (unless I was tailed by a Bilderberger), nothing earth-shattering or that dire but I wanna see if any or even a few of them come true (I realize the boss situation probably can't be helped). I'll keep you posted.

Food Review

A friend and I ate at a Red Lobster the other day and let's just say the place generally lives up to the commercials so my friend says later "Red Lobster is two notches above McDonald's but it's good." He'll often say things that make sense but you have to think about them a little. He came up with the phrase fear sleep as when you have a bad night sleeping, tossing and turning all night, maybe a little sweating, some urinary issues and weird dreams and you wake up and think there's a squirrel in your room and you go to work tired. Trouble is these days many people don't think before they speak. Went to the local library after work once and saw a guy I used to work with and he sees me and goes "what are you doing here?" What, I can't be here? I was in a laundromat once doing my clothes and one woman bumps into an old acquaintance and goes "what are you doing here?" and she goes "doing laundry?" This phrase "it's not the end of the world" as when someone goes off the deep end about something stupid, what do you say when it really is the End of the World As We Know It? & we'll leave it there for today. BTW just thought I'd let you know but Sean Hannity is the #1 trender right now, must've said something.

If Obama didn't exist we'd have to invent him

He has certainly re-energized our politics, no doubt about that and we probably wouldn't have heard of a Tea Party Movement without him. My friend and I were talking about Alex Jones and Glenn Beck yesterday and he seems to feel that while the bulk of what they're saying is right on they're also riding ($$$$$$) the wave of The Crisis and while we don't know the exact nature of Alex Jones' financial status he has probably made more money off the New World Order than anyone. Now we hear that Alex Jones has distanced himself from that Michigan Hutaree militia group which I guess the finer point here is that by your wayward actions you distract from the real threat the NWO poses or maybe Alex Jones is kinda like the Hef of politics objecting that one offshoot of his thinking may be too hardcore and gynecological for his tastes. There's gonna be a Tea Party in my area at the Westchester County Center on April the 15th, glad to see we still have some spunk left as a country but to the average person who merely scans the headlines in between his two jobs this might all get glumped together, certain key words and phrases from the endless political gabfests on cable, the Internet, the more traditional papers and any other media you care to throw in (a sampling of key words & phrases: Alex Jones, Tea Party, Hutaree, John Birch Society, protestors at funerals of dead soldiers). It's all a part of this vast Right-Wing Universe out there so maybe we need something other than the Nolan Chart to find out where we stand and oh yes, there's no polar Left-Wing Cosmos out there, no yin and yang to balance it all out, no Leftist Fringe at the other end of our political solar system according to the leading lights of the msm. It's simply THEM vs. US (the Moderates).

When not to play the race card

If you absolutely suck as a worker don't play the race card. Makes no sense. You come in late, you call out sick and you're otherwise a lazy bastard, you're not Nelson Mandela. Even your brothers are going to say "but you suck." If you're a good or fair to middling worker you can give it a shot but to constantly be espousing your racial theories at work to anybody who will listen when you absolutely suck as a worker it's, how shall we say setting people up, dig?

Conservatives obsessed with reading Ole Gray Lady editorials, then they have to write about it in their own counter-columns. The New York Post even has an occasional Times Watch (does the Times have a Post Watch?). I've solved this problem a long time ago, I go out of my way to NOT read the New York Times. Works for me and gets me through the day. Letting a Times editorial or Op-Ed ruin your day, it's a form of conservative masturbation. I've given up those habits, I'd sooner read the TV Guide or Popular Mechanics. A corollary to this is the Frank Rich problem or the Maureen Dowd problem, I don't read them either. It's amazing, I feel so much better and I've lost 10 lbs.! you can too.

Thoughts on pluralism

Pluralism is ten people in a room watching a Geico caveman commercial and all nine of them find it hilarious but the tenth one goes "God I have these commercials! they're so stupid" and there's a silence in the room and a couple of people politely leave to go to the kitchen shaking their heads, "holy shit." Pluralism is one guy out of 100,000 who likes his nuts tied up. Most of the time it's the minority who feels the strongest about his position (ok so you don't like the Geico commercials, shut up already!) and while we like to tout our pluralist society it's problematic. We even disagree on the essentials, what form of government we should have and instead of the Statue of Liberty maybe we should just have a giant phallic symbol in New York Harbor (I'm open to various metaphorical interpretations here, fire away). Pluralism by its very nature means lack of consensus, I mean Saty thinks the rest of us are nuts. There are folks who disagree with each other out of principle, the contrarian mentality. It's like Neo and Agent Smith, I'm the pole who has to combat your pole, I have to cancel you out and will disagree with you at every turn. You have these at work and it's not my imagination but some people actually feel threatened by you, by your competence, your intelligence. Call this the undertow but you can actually feel it, that vibe in the room, the resentment. Pluralism means working with some people who are spaced out all the time. Said to a guy at work the other day you ever get the impression everyone here is in LaLa Land and he agreed. They say pluralism is our strength but to me it also shows we honor and celebrate those with faulty thought patterns, I mean you don't know a fetus is a life yet?

What are your thoughts on pluralism?

This rush into health-care "reform" reminds me of...

...the rush into the Iraqi war. We had no choice in the matter, it was a done deal, forces beyond our control, it was out of our hands. I feel like with Bush and now Obama no president represents me anymore, the independent conservative along with independents of other stripes who are supposed to swing elections. Bush was a polarizing president, Obama even more so and it's like all you can do is sit on the sidelines and watch the show go by. By signing that final version of the health-care bill yesterday Obama has also in one swipe of the pen federalized the whole student-loan industry. At what point in time will we stop saying this is not socialism? In both cases we paid dearly, the one in lives lost and the other a debt problem to hand down to future generations. To be as nonpartisan as I can about it Obama has none of the virtues I am looking for in a leader: deliberation, reflection, nonpartisanship and the rest of the statesmanlike qualities. Then again neither did Bush and that old old conspiracy theory that the money-masters are really in charge of the world well that's not so radical anymore. So fight on Tea-Partiers but you're really the flipside of the liberals who were against going into Iraq. If something's gonna happen it's gonna happen, there's a reason for it. Call it the Matrix of Politics, you don't even know you're in it.

Thoughts on unions and a note on Idol

Unions: fine in theory, worse in practice

Conservatives usually focus on larger more general issues when bashing labor unions, the fact they are a left-wing group supporting only left-wing candidates whereas for me it's more personal. The long and the short of it is that unions make it harder to fire people and this seems to be the main complaint I've heard from young conservative managers I've worked under. I worked in a library once, a heavily unionized job if there ever was one and it was my job to do Interlibrary Loans (ILL), alot to do as books come from all over the country. As a sidenote this is weird but one of the more popular books that folks reserved was Mortuary Science but anyways this young woman, we'll call her Amy, was being groomed to be my backup on those days I was off or on vacation. Took a week off and enjoyed my vacation thinking all was well and when I got back found out she called out sick the entire week so I had more work than ever. Seems to me the director should have been able to take her aside and say to her "look Amy I don't know what's going on in your life right now. Maybe it's all legitimate but you do have this pattern of calling out sick alot and you cannot in my view contribute effectively to this workplace. Good luck in your future endeavours." So that's a problem. Now do unions make for a better work environment? You would think so but having a long and varied resume myself consisting of union and non-union jobs I would say the answer is in large part no. Shit still happens that's not supposed to happen despite your dues going up all the time and believe me they will. I've also found that many times and it doesn't seem to matter what the issue is unions will often side with management, a form of collusion it would seem. Another interesting sidenote: even during the last Democratic primary season our union early on endorsed Obama over Hillary so what does that tell you?

& there's something weird about this season's American Idol

Admittedly I'm a heavy channel-surfer but from what I've caught it goes like this. A week or two ago this young singer named Didi was up and she belted out her version of Linda Ronstadt's 1974 hit "You're No Good." Now I'm not a professional when it comes to these things, had no musical training whatsoever but to me it was near perfect so Randy got the ball going and the rest always seem to follow his lead. It's all kind of Stepford Wive-ish so you're getting that vibe of something not quite right but anyway Randy said the girl was "pitchy" his fave phrase this season and the rest, Ellen, Kara and Simon all panned her with nothing good to say. Now I've heard another viewer say they've had flat singers come on to rave reviews so clearly something's up and it ain't with the singers who are singing their hearts out. DJ's the next morning often scratch their heads. Your options:

(a) Is the show fixed?
(b) Are they all on drugs (mysterious substances to be determined later)? or
(c) Have they simply made a fetish out of being quirky?

If I may tie this all together we will now be forced to buy health insurance or else pay fines and they're calling this health-care reform, you got Al Sharpton talking about an N-word tape that only he has seen, ya got your Idol problems, unions are no good and things in general just don't make sense. If you're a woman Tiger Woods wants to slap you around and choke you a little according to the latest e-mails recorded for all posterity by his porn mistress so that goes beyond being your average red-blooded American male imo. It's not just that we're liberal or conservative, always have been, but we seem to be meandering along in this fog of weirdness we're in, not quite thinking straight and not knowing we have a problem and if you point out that something is wrong then you're from the Fringe ((key up weird Suspiria music)).

Don't be scared but I'm introducing a new phrase myself here (btw don't try this at home, leave it to the pros). Re the whole health-care debate white liberals have niggerized the discussion, the whole process and that basically means they wanna keep the old racial flames burning. You see if you niggerize something you can never really put our old racial history to bed, let folks live in peace and Move On. You're in crisis mode all the time and you like it, it's your whole goal to agitate, to roil, to masturbate people's minds.

a'ight?

The Polarizer

It was a depressing way to go to bed. Wasn't gonna but caught some news before I turned in and they really shouldn't do this on a Sunday night, shit like that is bad for your sleep but I've got other things on my mind. The final score in the House of Representatives on the health-care bill was 219-212 with 216 needed to pass and 34 Dems voted no. I was informed that all Republicans voted against it which in and of itself is interesting because if even a RINO voted against it that tells you something right there. Though they're treating this as historically as important as the passage of Social Security and Medicare (and it is) the fact that 34 Democrats voted against it shows you're a polarizer even within your own party. Now the very subject of polarization I'm not gonna get into here, I don't always think it's a bad thing but that would require a bit of a dissertation. Having glanced at the comments to yesterday's blog abortion is one of these subjects but I think the major complaint I had last night before I went to bed was this: admit that you are a polarizer rather than the healer, centrist and reconciler that you campaigned as. That president Obama is a polarizing president is a perfectly apt and objective description despite your politics and at this point he needs to explain this polarity that drives him, that animates him rather than continue to pretend he is some type of pragmatic moderate reaching out to all sides (where is tort reform in the final bill?). Bill Clinton was a triangulator, felt that need more to come down somewhere in the middle (then again he had a Republican Congress) but Obama is none of that, he is pure ideologue. Politically he is a cyborg, he came into existence with a mission, cannot be reasoned with and his mission is nearly complete. None of this is to judge him as a person but the will of the people seems hardly even a factor in his thinking. Used to be conventional wisdom was that politics in the end was all about compromise, to use a TAO phrase "the moderation of ideology" but Obama represents a new political breed with a kind of Nietzschean twist. He is Superman beyond all that, beyond our usual understanding of the paradigm of politics. His vision is so clear it approaches metaphysical certitude and again all those wonderful things he campaigned on probably played a large part in getting him elected in the first place but it wasn't his essence and it fooled alot of people who are now suffering buyer's remorse. The nonpartisan guy, the moderate, the centrist, the non-ideologue, the healer, the reconciler, now we know although some of us knew all along that's not him. He is the Polarizer and he's just getting started.

Personal autonomy, where libs and cons differ

I'm gonna break this down in porn terms but apply it to the abortion debate. Philosophically where do you come down on this issue of personal autonomy? Take a young woman who decides to become a porn star. That in and of itself shows a totally autonomous decision, a decision many of us are not even capable of. What it says is I don't care what my mother and father think, if I embarrass them, what my family and friends think, what my pastor thinks, what my neighborhood thinks, what society-at-large thinks. I would go so far as to say it's not the right decision, a very poor decision but a totally autonomous decision. On some level you have to admire if that's the right word the sheer audacity of the decision. So here's the issue: is it more important for a decision to be the right one or a totally autonomous one? For a decision to be the right one you have to take into consideration other factors besides your own personal autonomy, for instance how will this affect my family, my standing in the community, my career and a myriad of other factors. The totally autonomous decision-maker says I'm gonna do what's right for me. So for a liberal or perhaps the better word is libertarian the totally autonomous decision is also the right decision, the two are interchangeable by the sheer fact of it being autonomously made. For the conservative, the socially conservative ones anyway, the right decision and the totally autonomous decision are not one and the same thing, indeed the latter smacks of moral relativism because YOU are the sole arbiter of Right and Wrong. As applied to abortion the fact of someone practicing total autonomy is the attractive feature here, it's very Randian, but to not consider other factors would seem to show the lack of a complete decision. So where do YOU come down on this issue of personal autonomy? it's not so much the wrongness of the decision that is of importance here but the fact that you can make it freely without undue societal and religious pressures, that's the libertarian position anyway. I can kind of guess soapie's position on the matter but maybe some things are deeper than any one philosophy can offer. I'm in a philosophical frame of mind.

Get it all in now

before they pass a law against it. Do what you can while there's still time. Stock up on soda, hit the restaurants before they're forced to serve hospital food. Have your doctor you've known all these years stick his finger up your rear one last time before some government bureaucrat does it. Eat drink and be merry, enjoy the Whatever before the Whatever becomes subject to legislation. In the Future the only thing it'll be legal to do is to kill a fetus.

Digital TV

I don't have even your basic cable so basically I have two sets, one upstairs and one downstairs. Of course I have to use a converter box but that's not the problem. Upstairs I get some programming I can't get downstairs. Watching a very interesting program the other night on Ch. 58-2 on the last flight of Amelia Earhart (hey Jess was she murdered?) and so go downstairs later to play around in the kitchen and can't even get that channel on the other set. On the downstairs set I get at least five channels playing the exact same Spanish show then I get a whole slew of Korean fare I don't even get on the upstairs set. No great loss there but I'm just sayin' In the old days ALL tv's had the same basic channels, now with the much-heralded digital transition they scan differently depending on which part of the house you're in (maybe the attic gets porn, dunno). I don't get the Home Shopping Channel on either set which I was kind of into only as a last resort when all else failed to interest me. I think it's all a conspiracy to make you buy cable so that Verizon Fios guy can come to your house. How is this progress?

The politics of obesity

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

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

So what animates your conservatism?

& please don't say Smaller Government, we all agree on that, but what other things? For me some of my animating principles:

free speech -- I have over the course of time distilled a new (really old) Z-Principle and it is this: In the majority of cases free speech should prevail. Sounds simple enough but much more complicated in practice. Now I know free speech is not absolute but what would happen if we had near total free speech? Well we'd have to Deal With It and so if (a) nappy-headed 'hos didn't cause (b) the planets to spin out of their orbits then there really is no need to lose sleep over it. (a) Pornography may be debasing but if it doesn't lead to (b) cancer than it clearly falls into the zone of protecting freedom is more important than shielding us from bad taste which segues nicely into,

freedom (to not have a police state) -- A few years ago I was in the village of All-White-Dobbs-Ferry-on-the-Hudson going through one of those personal problems/issues phases in my own life kinda mulling things over on the street corner, wasn't bothering anyone, walking around a little and this young woman comes up to me and goes "you can get arrested for that." Now if memory serves my penis wasn't exposed so she must have meant loitering even though I was only there for about 20 minutes tops. Now here's where my animating principle comes in: does this mean Dobbs Ferry NY has a police state? no but if the village adds 50 more laws like this one then you do wind up with one so I am opposed to not only a police state but anything that foreshadows a police state. Beth's Nolan Chart doesn't deal with stuff like this but I'm filling you in anyway which leads up to my third animating principle:

minimal laws -- It's simple logic, the more laws you pass the less freedom you'll enjoy so for me the test is so simple it's astonishing even to me: if the old law or proposed new one doesn't serve some dire need, in short if it's not absolutely necessary to the survival of, to the cohesion of a just Society as we know it then it shouldn't become law or if a law should be repealed instantly. Again if my presence in Dobbs Ferry bothered that young woman that much then Deal With It, this in a village that used to allow later-term abortions where one young Spanish woman even died undergoing the procedure and they covered it up but I'm the problem apparently.

pro-life -- Not even coming at this from a political angle per se but just feel it would be better if Society were pro-life. The opposite leads to all types of things like the time I boarded a bus in White Plains and the driver had to take some time to lower the handicapped ramp so a disabled guy could get on and some young woman in the back started bitching about it. That be an ugly society indeed and again my bar here is very low, despite our political views on abortion why can't we all be personally pro-life?? Doesn't seem much to ask and if we did we could all tell the bitch in the back of the bus to STFU!

spend spend spend -- Don't feel guilty about it, you can't take it with you. If your Mom tells you you spent too much on a carton of ice cream don't worry about it. On a related subject it's also why I'm against dieting, well the more spartan ones anyway. There's an anti-pleasure principle at work here which goes against the fundamental ethos to just enjoy Life (God must be scratching His head). John Tesh is a major spokesman of this approach but he must be driving Connie Selleca nuts. Spend $$$ and enjoy Life, you'd think this would be obvious.

war only as a last resort -- When I was growing up leaned heavily towards the pacifist position, thought two countries fighting each other was the height of human stupidity and folly. Call this the Henry David Thoreau position but as I got older saw the world was far more complicated than this but despite my much more reasonable older self the invasion into Iraq didn't cut it for me. To be willing to give up your own life for your country is the height of bravery imo, takes your moral character to a whole new level but it has to be absolutely necessary not because Dick Cheney thinks it's a good idea.

Just so we're clear.

Maybe he deserved to be Borked

Robert Bork, conservative icon, should've been on the Court and helped knock down some pretty bad decisions but I've really changed over time on this one. So I was channel-surfing the other night and came across some program on the Constitution on NJN2 the theme being Original Intent vs. an Evolving Constitution. Now I'm mainly an originalist myself but I actually found myself agreeing with at least one of the libs on the program who said what conservatives like Bork really want is to go back to the old days and by old days I mean olde olde days, it's like they're stuck in a kind of Victorian timewarp, Oscar Wilde got what was coming to him and so there was Bork saying things like liberals have used the courts to push sexual permissiveness, "to create a right to homosexual sodomy"...ok let's stop right here and have a cup of coffee.

Of all the conservatives who populate our corner of the conservative blogosphere, hell conservatives in general, is there anyone out there who seriously wants to put folks in jail who have gay sex with each other? I'm not talking morality here, views and tastes differ but should anal sex even be included within the purview of the Law? I'm finding Bork's brand of conservatism to be......disturbing. So what other acts of a sexual nature is Bork ok with a legislature or political body banning? Bork strikes me as the kind of guy if his wife was starting to do something orally creative he'd push her off and go "get off me bitch!" Again when it comes to Sex opinions definitely differ, folks do all kinds of freaky things in their early years they may regret later on in Life but again this properly falls within the sphere of personal morality and not law and I think most folks would agree it's far better to ponder on your life and the things you should or shouldn't have done in the safety and privacy of your living room with a bottle of Jack with the tv droning on in the background than in a prison cell.

Think of the conservative landscape out there and how vast it is. At one end you have your libertarians smoking dope, getting down with the 'hos but otherwise being very fiscally conservative and for smaller government. In the middle you have your soccer Moms, PTA gals, committee members who go food shopping, attend the neighborhood watch meeting, vote straight Republican (even McCain) and otherwise live quiet suburban lives. Then all the way around the other side of the globe intrepidly trudging across the frozen tundra in Viking helmut sun glistening off their frozen snot are folks like Bork harpooning those buggering homos on the ice floes. Welcome to the Land of the Strict Constructionists, guy masturating in an igloo, tie him up on the sled and bring him in. So how did we all manage to inhabit the same planet?

Not getting hired because of something you said online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The philosopher class

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

The Plowman Cometh

Having been through two blizzards so far this winter, second one worse than the first what happens is you shovel all day, clear your space out so you can just glide on out early the next morning for work and just as you're done for the day all proud of your achievement and go in for a hot toddy HE comes. But he already came once or twice already but NOW you have an embankment of snow to deal with, the third or fourth embankment so far this day as you already cleared away the first two and you'd better get to it now 'cause in a day or two that baby's gonna be rock hard. We need a meeting of the minds here and folks generally fall into one of two camps:

I clearly belong to the second camp. Once the plows have been through the side roads twice that's enough, any rational citizenry would say we'll deal with the rest and we will. Get that snow out into the road which apparently you're not supposed to do anymore and the traffic will take care of the rest. This can't be though because of the first group, larger and more influential and these yahoos will raise holy hell, write letters to the editor and call their representatives if the plows don't come through their street in a timely fashion. Yes they have a point, your tax dollars at work should help your streets get clear but how much plowing is too much? Are they overcompensating for fear of the yentas?

I have no easy answers. All I knows is my body is sore and all for naught.

Faith systems

Along the lines of Patrick M's recent musings on faith, what faith system coincides most with our own personal belief system this is a tricky one indeed. I would go so far as to say all the official faith systems of the world don't do it and fall short for a good many of us. Born and raised a Catholic, still am, theologically very in sync but there are problems. Just to choose four issues out of a hat:

Birth control: Tried understanding the Church's position on the matter time and again, damn I tried but I think what it all boils down to is this - Sex is a fairly animalistic act when you get right down to it and the Church is trying to ennoble it, pleasure for pleasure's sake even to express love become issues so have the act be open to the transmission of human life at all times even if it means winding up with ten kids if you're the sensual type...anyway don't recall the subject even popping up in the Bible per se so I'm very Sola Scriptura on this one you could say. It's a blue moon moment, me and the Rev. Pat Robertson see eye to eye on this one.

Confession: Probably my biggest difference right now as the oldtimers accept it without question but never got the logic here - Jesus or God won't forgive you and you'll wind up eternally damned even if you're sorry as hell unless you explain in morbid detail to the priest your most personal sins and then some. Makes me instinctively uncomfortable, is there some kind of prurient interest at work here and you have to question any person or institution that says thou shalt not use your mind, put reason away and obey blindly. The priest will point to the confessional, you'll feel like a million dollars afterwards, my thing is why do you need to know?

Transubstantiation: The doctrine that when the priest at Mass consecrates the bread and wine they literally turn into the Body and Blood of our Savior. Not buying it and it has cannibalistic overtones, why can't it just be symbolic? Literalism can get you in trouble but they insist so again it's not a perfect fit.

Priestly celibacy (and hell why don't we throw in nuns too?): Doesn't seem nat'chal to me at all, why can't a woman or man bring you closer to God? Of course you could be a layman and practice what I call involuntary celibacy but I don't want to get into that right now. Valentine's Day is hard for lots of folks but at least we have it as a goal, for them the goal is illegal.

So call me a cafeteria Catholic if you want, it seems to be the only way. Soapie HAS TO have some thoughts.

Obama has plumbed new depths

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

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

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

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

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

How much should you criticize your own side?

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

The Avatar Phenomenon

Haven't seen it yet. My friend did, he's really into this kind of stuff but if anything they come out on DVD so fast now I'll probably see it then at my leisure. Yeah my friend thought it was great and all, definitely a watchable flick but this James Cameron guy saying he had this concept of the blue humanoids since he was a kid, trying to give it that old artiste edge, the creative genius who had to wait literally years for IT to all come together like it's the greatest opus of all time or something. Yeah right!! my friend said he probably had some weird acid trip and just wrote it all down afterwards. Highest grossing film of all time surpassing even his previous work Titanic and I'm sure when the DVD finally does come out it'll be chock loaded with Extra Features including that annoying option of watching the movie with the acclaimed director's commentary throughout. They always have those extra 10 unedited minutes too like I hear Mel Gibson has an extended version of The Passion where you can see Jesus getting scourged for a few extra minutes or so. Anyway wha'd'ya think?

& then there's Racial Matters

Having had a long and varied career, I always seemed to choose the career path of The Whatever, didn't matter what job I had this theme ALWAYS came up and for the record I never brought it up, others said it to me:

Ya got yourself a real slacker who happens to be black and he's getting away with it whereas the white person always has to bring in a doctor's note when he or she gets sick, gets chided for arriving at work ten minutes late, didn't complete the workload that day and it's like wha'happened? you know the deal but the black worker seems to be getting away with it. In fact NOTHING ever happens, never written up and so someone makes the off-the-cuff remark that it's because he's black. Now stop right there, is it really this simple?

Boss: "Moussa's late again but I'm not gonna say anything because he's black."

Is it really that conscious of a decision? I'm not saying it's not or can't be but if it is that's a truly sad one. Then again my brother worked for years with a self-avowed lesbian who regularly told customers off, even dropped a few f-bombs and nothing ever happened to her but still I have a hard time making this calculation.

I was mugged when I was twenty and long story short I'm riding around with two white cops and they start making racial comments. Now I'd never do this, didn't condone what they said but a part of me understood. They deal with this crap day in and day out. Wanna reduce white racism reduce black crime since the one drives the other. Folks don't wake up and decide to be bigots, have a Jew in a yarmulke rob a Sunoco station for a change. The Oscar-winner of a few years back Crash dealt with matters of race honestly which surprised alot of folks and the racist white cop played by Matt Dillon turns out to be a little more complicated after all by the end of the movie but the other thing is conservatives who in matters of police brutality against blacks routinely and as a matter of course always side with law enforcement. Hit the nigger on the head and they'll come up with an excuse. Funny but you used to be able to joke about STUFF like when I worked in a flower shop in the Bronx and one florist was gay and the van driver and he got on the Abner Louima case (for those of you out West he had a plunger rammed up his ass) and so the van driver goes to the gay guy "you'd like that wouldn't you?" and nobody got offended or threatened to sue but that was back in the day.

You'll often hear that those who use crack cocaine (mostly black) are dealt with more severely than white hedge fund managers who snort coke but as a correctional guy I was talking to once at a party said "ya wanna know something? don't do drugs." Then there's the high % of blacks in prison, much to-do has been made of this by Jesse Jackson but the only injustice here would be if most of them were innocent and railroaded and so choose a different career path like Thomas Sowell or Bill Cosby did.

Howard Stern has probably said far more racially insensitive things (insensitive to whom?) than Don Imus but Stern has wisely made the decision to never apologize and so they forget about him after like a day or two and Rumor Has It that's he's poised to replace Simon on American Idol. Now how did this happen? It's because there's nothing the racial pimps love more then when you grovel and when I saw the I-man do this I was like will you cut it out you big pussy!! that only fuels them on more and how can you prove that one of the girls on that team wasn't a ho anyway? all of a sudden everyone's a spokesperson for Focus on the Family signing chastity pledges. It's wrong to stereotype of course but how come in porn you always see some big black buck with a twelve inch dick (don't they come any smaller?) plowing some 18-year old black girl who looks scared like they just plucked her out of some CVS and she has a baby to support? the thing is more like an anaconda looking for its hapless prey & btw how come Jews and other groups don't address each other by their respective slurs? "how's it hangin' kike?" "tell the spic, he'll get the job done."

Worked with a white meatwrapper once (or is that meatrapper?) and so she got pissed one day because she had to unload some U-boat and I'm just walking past: "fucking motherfucker!" she said but what's with the adjective? Isn't it superfluous? I mean isn't motherfucker strong enough to stand on its own and why do they always have man hands these women meatpackers? imagine them caressing your organ after a hard day's work but I'm gonna cap it right here...

Motherfucker!