The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, spinning out of control

As you know by now Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey has brought Murder 2 charges against the shooter of Trayvon Martin. Even Trayvon's Mom said she believes her son's death was a kind of tragic accident at the hands of George Zimmerman a way overzealous and quite possibly racially charged neighborhood watchman. Now for the bulk of this case I've taken what you can call the "liberal" side for lack of a better word but 2nd degree Murder is way out of whack, some type of manslaughter charge would have been much more appropriate and it's my opinion that Ms. Corey will eventually run for some type of office down there in the Sunshine State and she wants this high-profile case. So what we have here is maybe a second travesty of justice and it's a damn shame IMO. A word about guns, I'm not a fan of 'em even though I'm a conservative. They make me nervous and yes I understand the 2nd Amendment but I think there's many many people out there who don't know how to use them responsibly, to exercise proper judgement and restraint and this goes for licensed gun owners who've been "properly" trained. One lesson - public pressure is fine, it's our right and constitutionally protected but it doesn't always lead to the right outcome:)

The Obama Platform is what exactly?

I mean when things finally get down and dirty between him and Mr. Romney what is it shaping up to be or to put it another way why is it self-evident we should reelect the man? He can't run on the strength of his first term because there wasn't any at least that's not the word that comes to mind I'm sure even among his most ardent supporters. His main achievement would seem to be health-care reform and a majority of Americans are hardly behind him on that one so should he push it even if the SCOTUS strikes him down? He can always trot out of course the OBL Card but even here that video the news networks keep showing of bin Laden talking and the other one of him watching the boob tube wearing a wool cap looks like some B-actor out of a bad spoof (he found time to watch porn too?), too SNLish to have the gravitas of a world-master terrorist at work and maybe if I were the networks I'd keep it in the can. There's Obama's race to consider naturally and the nostalgia born from the historic and emotional moment of this country finally electing the first black president hasn't worn off and this is understandable, it was a good moment historically and it's like you want Tiger Woods back in the game. You can make the case that he played a major role in Khadafy's demise but even here he has been pretty much laid back on Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad. I believe at last count the death toll there of the citizenry stands like 9,000 or something so maybe when it reaches 10,000 he'll get off his duff. Taken as a whole, snowballing it altogether is all this reason enough for those who voted for him the first time to do so again? Of course for Shaw et al. it's a no-brainer but why would you not have a Democratic primary season especially when your main guy is so weak? My Dad who served in the Navy during WW2 and is as rock-ribbed conservative as they come said to me one day Hillary would've been a far better president than Obama. All you liberals out there make the case here because I'm not getting this one, it's way over my head:)

In a weird way I kinda agree w/Obama

Conservatives have said the President is "threatening" the Supreme Court on health-care reform but Obama is saying here in effect why are the courts the most powerful branch of the US government? Now I oppose ObamaCare myself especially the part about the individual mandate but I'm confused by conservatives' newfound love for the SCOTUS. I mean weren't tons of books written and speeches given on the Supremes having too much power over the will of the people on the various contentious social and political issues of the day Roe being the classic example of course but also affirmative action and so on down the line? When I went to the Mount in the Bronx and I always remember this in History class we learned and it was right there in the textbook that we have or are supposed to have 3 co-equal branches of the Government - legislative to pass the laws, executive to enforce the laws and judicial to interpret those laws, a kind of checks-and-balances system. I don't like the health-care but I find myself kinda agreeing with the President philosophically here. Apparently I'm in the minority though as usual:)

So why can't liberals give Bush the Obama treatment?

You see this is why I HATE politics, it all boils down to you hate our president and we'll hate your president. Political debate in this country is still in its infancy, nothing new but browsing through some left-wing blogs here the other day the main point seems to be we're not giving President Obama a fair shake. We're not basing our POVs on Fact and we're blaming him for things he really has no control over like high gas prices and how he deals with foreign affairs. Basically we just hate the man and deep down we probably don't like blacks. OK ok ok I get it but by the same logic liberals need to go back and retract some of the things, many of the things they said about Bush. That'd be Bush Jr. of course but why complain about our treatment of Obama now but we shouldn't complain about their treatment of President Bush then? Politics seems solely based on emotion these days but look I'm gonna take them up on their offer to go easy and cut some slack where justified for the current president ONLY if they go back and take back some of the things said about Mr. Bush.

(silence)

So as I was saying I can't stand President Obama because......

thoughts on mortality

I didn't want to start a label called "death" because that'd be creepy but at 48, just had a b'day a couple weeks ago you begin feeling that tug from the other end. I remember in that movie Uncle Buck or something John Candy is in bed and the kid he's in charge of starts talking about The Topic and he goes just think every single second of your life right now, every moment, it's one less second or minute you have left yada yada so the kid finally falls asleep and John Candy is laying awake in bed all night just staring at the ceiling. HELL -- I've gone both ways on this and for most of my adult life didn't really believe in it but lately you can't say everybody makes it and that's the thing. Everybody dies and they're strumming banjoes in Heaven looking down on us and smiling? Whitney Houston dies in a bathtub with coke and other drugs in her system and she's in Heaven?!? Not saying she's in Hell either but why even try to live a good life if we all wind up in the Good Place and right away at that? I don't believe most people go to Hell over sexual sins, I think there has to be something more (gangsters, Mafia yes) and I think the Church over the years has taken private revelations like at Fatima and maybe added stuff like the vast majority of people in Hell are there because they're lovers of the flesh, a kind of anti-sex message. Is there Sex after Death? You'd think there would be for all those times you couldn't get it in real life, would kinda even things out. I think the idea of reincarnation is rather neat since there's so many things I want to do in Life and one lifetime's not enough like be a private investigator. Let's be honest, the job sucks there's no fulfillment there and technically the very first day I can retire I'm doing so and sit on my front porch for the rest of my life and take up gardening:)

Failed business models

Seems like every now and then when I take a little vacation and come back there are some major upheavals and changes on the workfront and it got me to thinking during my walk today. Now I had a bad manager back in the day, may or may not have been a psycho but definitely an asshole and there was alot going on back then, had some health issues which seemed to start around then, blogged about some of them at the time yet Upper Management made a decision to bring him back. Dunno man but I say if somebody is at best a question mark let them be a memory, a part of Back in the Day but all this work stuff got me to thinking about bailouts and such. Now of course the bailouts didn't start with Obama, Bush really got them going but as a general statement I'm against bailouts philosophically and here's why. If you let the free market work as it's supposed to companies that deserve to go under are allowed to do so. It may sound harsh but there's a reason for everything, maybe they don't treat the workers right, maybe there's corruption, whatever but government throws these economic life rafts and blankets out constantly now and it interferes with the whole natural process, a kind of business Darwinism where the undeserving are allowed to fail. The usual rationale is but the people will be out of their jobs but they can always dust themselves off and find new employment with hopefully better companies but they tend to pigeonhole themselves (once a butcher always a butcher). Now let me ask you if a major company goes bankrupt and then has to file some austerity plan on orders of the Bankrupty Court and so then there's a wage reduction and then a wage freeze for years on end and other major gutting of certain bennies and perks hard fought by the Union over the years HOW is such a bailout beneficial to said workers as a whole? That's called Taking It Up The Ass, Thuganomics 101 and there's a certain loss of basic human dignity involved so what good are unions in the first place? Wouldn't it have been much better for the business to simply close up shop like in the old days because they were fiscally and even morally irresponsible throughout the years? That's the beautiful karma of the free-market system at work folks, the workers will dust themselves off and pick up better jobs if not now then down the road. So how is a massive bank or gov't bailout (really the same thing) gonna help change the Peter Principle? Back in the Day if a place went bankrupt there was a reason for it and there was no chance in hell of getting a bailout or recovery loan. Let me put it in more simple terms and we've all done this us men -- you screwed it up with a chick bigtime, that's all your fault and you have the rest of your life to think about it and chew it over but that's called learning from experience and starting over so when was the last time somebody came up to you and said I'm bailing you out with a new chick?

Racial unrest in Florida

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/sanford-city-manager-says-were-barred-arresting-trayvon-134007644.html

Al Sharpton is visiting the Sunshine State today, always a voice of reason and calm but I see this one as having the potential for riots and bearing national repercussions. I don't see how you cut it you can defend this guy Zimmerman, a one-man neighborhood community watchman/vigilante and I think on the merits I agree with the black activists and the black community in general on this one (now when was the last time you heard a conservative say that?). You shouldn't be shot dead if you're a 17-old young black man carrying a bag of Skittles through a probably mostly white gated community so how did this happen? Now I live in a neighborhood where when I look out the window, that's kinda the extent of my community watching here and if I see something dubious or questionable or in any way a gray area and let's face it some of these situations do involve young black men 9 times out of 10 I don't call the police. It's too, how shall I say vague...what do I say when I get the sergeant on the line? I'll call the police on average about one time a year over something happening in the neighborhood but by all accounts Mr. George Zimmerman was the exact opposite, hyper-alert and hyper-observant and probably hyper-imaginative as well. I think his racial adrenaline was flowing heavily juiced on by the reality of black crime is my view. This story has picked up so much steam I had to blog about it. I don't even see how the case justifies as an act of self-defense and he should've been arrested by now but I've had my say. What's your 2 cents?

This eternal social conservative/libertarian war within the GOP (& my solution)

I knew there was a problem many many years ago when I was driving a van for a wholesale flower company. That was back in the day and you really met a garden-variety of people on your routes and one young guy in particular ran a flower shop in the countryside and he made no secret of his strong dislike for the then Democratic president at the time Mr. Bill Clinton and liberals in general. I never really brought up the subject matter at the time, why would I I'm only delivering product but apropos of nothing he complained to me out of the blue one day that abortion within the Republican Party needs to be taken off the table. FF to the present day and you have Patrick M, soapie, Pamela Hart and Malcontent to name but a few righties here who are pro-choice for lack of a better word and would pretty much say the same thing. OK so it's obvious to me this social conservative/libertarian tension-hatred/rift within the GOP goes way back even as far back when Sean Hannity was discussing Hummergate on practically a daily basis and even beyond that to the Barry Goldwater days when in his senior years he started making testy and snarky comments about Jerry Falwell and evangelicals in general. Libertarian-minded conservatives act like they can somehow drive a stake through the heart of social conservatism once and for all, the good guys if you will in an updated political version of Vampire Diaries but you know how that goes, there will always be one of us Originals around and it got me to thinking. The only real solution would be for social conservatives to leave the Republican Party AND for libertarians to leave the GOP as well. Why should one be asked to leave and not the other? Whose mansion is it anyway, can I see the deed? Why do we even need opponents of gay marriage and those who want to legalize angel dust in the same party? Instead of trying to purify your own party from within in whichever direction you happen to be, a never-ending task where there's more agita than rewards have your own party going and go all out with it. The 2-Party System is bankrupt anyway, not much of a choice for the average voter (yes yes I know there's tons of other parties out there to choose from but they're not mainstream in any sense of the word more like political trivia questions). Pat Robertson living in a house with fetal parts backing up the plumbing system, makes no sense to me:)

Thoughts on the Tyler Clementi/Dharun Ravi case

Instead of summarizing this tragic case myself here is the link: http://news.yahoo.com/former-rutgers-student-convicted-webcam-case-155436220.html
Why oh why did Dharun Ravi give up that sweet plea deal? He could eventually be deported to his native India as a result of his conviction on all 15 counts including invasion of privacy a no-brainer and the more gray bias intimidation charge. Even the judge in the case found the NJ statute muddled and I remember Sean Hannity once discussing hate crime laws in general saying how they punish thought. If an obviously gay man is mugged is it because of his orientation or because he just came out of an artsy museum with his boyfriend and this points to some affluence? I have a Non-Opinion in this case, I've read several divergent commentaries and they all sway me to some degree but basically Ravi was convicted of a hate crime here. That's always a difficult thing to do to police somebody's head but then again there were the tweets and the texts although many friends said he harbored no strong anti-gay animus. What if the original tryst were of a heterosexual nature would it have been caught on cam too? You see that's the difficult part at least for me to get inside someone's mental universe although by pretty much universal consensus even among Right and Left Mr. Ravi is some serious species of Jerk. Of course there's the requisite jokes that now Ravi will be raped in prison but the judge will not sentence him to be raped in prison and the whole issue of prison rape needs to be highlighted and not made light of. Is a bad toilet also part of the punishment? There's a strong and I mean strong social conformity bias in Society. Just the other day a woman co-worker asked why I'm not married. I thought it a rude and prying question and I would never think to ask this of another co-worker and while I don't agree I can well understand the genesis of the whole hostile workplace environment construct. Why should you be uncomfortable when you work or go to school, when you're laboring or studying? at a minimum it's very distracting. I'm not gay but the woman after posing her very personal question may as well have stuck a pickle in her cheek and moved it back and forth. The case opens up a much needed national discussion and I'm not sure if it was the right verdict or the wrong one and I know you gotta come down with Instant Opinions these days like Sanka. I'm very big on nuance and intent and am fluid in my thinking and would probably aggravate the other jurors no end, a modern day Henry Fonda keeping everybody from going home. Dharun Ravi was not charged of course with causing Tyler Clementi to jump off the GW Bridge in September of 2010 but let's be honest here that's why the whole case was brought to trial in the first place for closure purposes and a debt to Justice in this young man's death. So chime in here and convince me of your position I'm swayable.

Does the Left hate the Right more than the Right hates the Left?

Browsing through the leftworthy blogs lately you're dealing with a sheer hatred of the Right and all things Rightward. We're talking exorcism-grade hate, pea soup, projectile vomiting, F-carpet-bombing in some cases (ahem), closing one nostril and shooting a booger at the opposition with the other one, an ultra-serious hatred with no humor attached whatsoever after all this is serious business and nobody on the Right can sincerely hold a certain belief ever. Said belief will be meticulously scanned for inconsistencies, who doesn't have those? ok that's fair game but then we get into Motives and those of conservatives are always dark of course. WE HATE WOMEN, we wake up in the morning us white males we do and what inspires us all day is how to hold women down. WE HATE OBAMA because he's black never mind his first three weak years of his first term. WE HATE SEX and we only use it to reproduce ourselves so we can eventually take over the Planet. WE HATE THE POOR, WE HATE THE GODLESS......Personally speaking if we hadn't gone after Bill Clinton with the sheer passion that we did I think our rather strong dislike shall we say of the current president might point to some real flaws in character and policy instead of being chalked up to the usual pathological hatred of any Democrat who occupies the Oval Office, a derangement syndrome and I have to say I was far less harsh on Bill Clinton back in the day and still am than your average conservative and I believe it stands me in good stead to this day. I'll leave the title of this blogpost an open question I'm just wondering why Sarah Palin is a cunt:)

Old Father Time & the Gov't

So why does the Congress still get to decide what time it is? I like my Dad's idea, he said they should change the clocks back one-half hour, kinda split the difference between fall back and spring ahead and just leave it like that and let Nature takes its course. Does it still serve a purpose? I think it had to do with farming at one point. Took me a couple days to adjust to the losing an hour's sleep and I felt rushed all day like some invisible hands pushing me from behind, the clock read 5PM when it should've been really 4:00. I'm only guessing but I think the libertarian POV would be To Leave the Clocks the Hell Alone!

What will an Obama 2nd Term look like?

(Of course the following depends on the makeup of Congress over the next four years)
He'll be a lame duck as Beth has pointed out. This is only a hunch but I think he'll be pushing abortion big-time in a second term. Birth control/contraception now and in the rad-fem universe you can't have the Pill without rampant feticide. Let's remember before he was even elected to his first term he promised Planned Parenthood he'd sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) into law as one of his first acts as president. He kinda reneged on that but it's almost as if the whole Sandra Fluke thing is laying the ideological groundwork and the msm will of course do its usual job of glossing over the real issues and present the issue as one of the moderates vs. the extremists as they always do. There will be more Supreme Court justices and federal judges too in the Elena Kagan/Sonya Sotomayor mold but I would have thought the nation's first black president would have been more of a uniter, a healer rather than a divider and polarizer. Even Bill Clinton was not unresponsive to conservative concerns at times as witness the passage of welfare reform and you still see those workfare signs while driving on the thruways. Granted he had to deal with a Republican Congress led by Newt Gingrich but Dick Morris his chief political strategist was big on what came to be known as Triangulation or splitting the difference between conservative and liberal concerns and issues. President Obama is not a triangulator by any stretch at least I'm not seeing it but rather pure hardcore ideologue and he seems to enjoy kicking around the embers of the Culture Wars. I don't buy the argument for a minute he didn't see the controversy coming that his whole contraceptive mandate would cause religious institutions and since he made time to call Ms. Fluke perhaps he can get around to calling a few war widows too. I make no political prognostication here, he may well win a 2nd term and then a Sandra Fluke clone will appear before a Congressional body on why we need to pass the FOCA now, hell it may well be her again as she's the leader of some campus group called Reproductive Justice or something. Obama's Justice Department under AG Eric Holder has even expressed interest in probing the NYPD's spying on Muslims which really splinters up the whole kind of concerted effort we need to win the War on Terror, just what we need at this time. I could go on but I'm voting for Romney.

Kony 2012:)

The whole taking out Ahmadinejad's nuclear program thing

Obama has said to Bibi I got your back, I think he also said wait 'til after the election. Dealing with Iran - on paper it makes perfect sense but something tells me it's not a good idea. Israel or rumor has it has already taken out at least four Iranian nuclear scientists or those in charge of its burgeoning nuclear program, preferred MO seems to be two guys on a motorbike attach some kind of remote control device to the bad guy's sedan and KABLOOEY like a Jason Bourne movie so Israel seems to be doing a good job all on its own. OK so we'll have a more secure world in the future, maybe, but you think you're paying alot in gas now! Also watch for world markets to destabilize and tumble and an increase in terrorist attacks. WHO will replace Ahmadinejad btw and I think it's safe to assume he'll be part of some overall collateral damage? I mean are there alot of moderates waiting in the wings here, some burning lava lamp of democratic fervor bubbling beneath the Iranian soil? We've had a dubious relationship with our nominal friend and ally Pakistan, if they turn totally rogue do we do them too since they already have the nukes Ahmadinejad has only been dreaming of? Again it's not my call but are any of you getting antsy about this?

The Giggles Layaway Plan or should the Gov't subsidize sex toys 'n' gadgetz?

Now there be some poor folk out there who can't afford some of the finer Giggles products or any Giggles products for that matter, they work hard all day for chump change and so some dumpy frumpy middle-aged housewife with an alcoholic husband is caught filching a dildo and winds up on some poster called Loser of the Month with her name and where she's from for all to see. The sex'chal needs of the Poor, they're not being met. IF there is this overriding societal need out there to prevent conception at all costs, the Senate just ko'd some conscience bill put up by the stuffy Republicans to cancel out Obama's contraceptive mandate, then by the same standard the sex act itself needs to be enhanced, better enjoyed and performed for overall physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. You cannot have one w/o the other, pills and other birth-control devices without the other sexual accoutrements that normally go into a fun and romantic evening. It's time to finally get Government out of the bedroom once and for all by subsidizing sex toys and marital aids, along with the free pills for women insurance can now cover at no rise in premiums of course the other goodies. K-Y is important of course, just saw a commercial for this fine product on primetime mainstream television no less just the other day. Anal beads, butt plugs, masturbation sleeves, cock rings and so on through the catalogue and so as not to discriminate against our gay friends and co-workers the Jelly Fist should be covered at no extra cost. It's enlightened, it's progressive and it just makes good sense. Now this is sure to create a firestorm, a brouhaha, a controversy with a capital C and it's only shocking because the idea is so new. Of course when the first few bills come up it will quickly break down into predictable party lines with the Democrats taking the more permissive position as they can always be counted on to do and the pasty Republicans can then be painted as a club of mostly repressed Puritans, mostly male and white at that, anti-poor folk and anti-the women. What they really want is a Theocracy. By opposing the sex-toy mandate they just want the good ole guv'ment more in your bedroom than ever. Let's get it out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where it belongs:)

The Politics of Dad

Over my Dad's the other day and he's watching the news and His Eminence New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan was giving his first Mass at St. Pat's after being elevated to cardinal by Pope Benedict and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was sitting in the front row of course with NY Senator Charles Schumer and the Governor of the State of New York Andrew Cuomo and the old man goes "all those politicians sitting in the front row what a bunch of jerks!" That about sums it up:)

That old hobgoblin of Religion

I've encountered people in my own life and in the blogosphere of course especially lately who whenever you however remotely mention the whole subject of religion or faith have an overwhelmingly negative view of religion as a whole, the institutions of course and many individual adherents. They never see its positive side in that it inspires people, often helps them through individual and group crises and then there's the massive charitable works people of faith engage in. Now the usual suspects are gonna chime in and the underlying theme is always or seems to be religion poses some kind of ever-present and existential threat to Politics. Sometimes it can but I think the case is often overstated. I've always felt religion and religious people just like anything else should not be immune to criticism of any sort but to flip the same coin politics often poses a threat to religion as we've been discussing. Instead of dwelling on the negative though I prefer to see the wonderful religious infrastructure in this country everything from religious hospitals and universities, orphanages and social-service organizations to the of course stellar Catholic educational system in this country and for you snide ones out there at least put it up against the flagging public schools. So why this reflexive reaction against religion? it's like the most negative subject out there for some folks:)

Why the social issues ARE important

I'm getting the distinct impression from recent comments from BB, Dave Miller and Shaw that President Obama should not be judged on the poor state of the economy. That's just my take but if we are not to judge a president on the economy because there are certain economic forces beyond the control of his Administration, a kind of theory of economic fatalism if you will then by this standard Jimmy Carter was a great president. BTW I think Saty and Shaw keep coming back here because they like the challenge and even when Saty was recently seriously ill and had to rest in the living room before making her way to the kitchen feebly clutching the drawer and knocking all the silverware over while sucking on a bag of ice chips she still found the time to visit the site. OK so all we hear about these days, the new conventional political wisdom even among many conservatives is take the social issues totally off the table so as to better focus on the economic theme which seems to be the only thing of interest to them. This is certainly BB, Dave Miller's and soapie's position but can anyone tell why this analysis is so dead wrong exactly, way off the mark? Think for a minute, no you still don't get it?...well it's because everyone's narrowly defining the social issues as being only about abortion and gay marriage but oh there's so much more, a real treasure trove of social concerns out there. The very phrase "social issues" has the word social in it, we're a Society right? Drug abuse is a social issue, an important one so is broken homes and families, divorce. Gang violence while largely a law-enforcement issue is also a social issue as is crime in general as read about any 82-year old grandmother killed by a stray bullet in the Bronx. Say a porn store wants to open up shop next to a church and a school well there's your social issue right there and it ain't even related to abortion or gay marriage and if you're a local politician you'll be forced to take a stand no matter how much you may want to talk about the economy and chances are very good you'll come out against the porn shop. How can you NOT discuss the social issues? Obama despite running as a uniter has divided the country more than ever and well maybe because some folks believe the economy is beyond his control anyway he can afford to lay back and throw another log into the fire of the culture wars on things like birth control (been there discussed that). As for soapie's legendary consistency, apparently a part of his sexual charisma for Shaw and Saty that oozes out of his every pore I say you have the right to be inconsistent. As I see it there's a certain stridency to his philosophy which may be off-putting to many readers, it's one worldview his and Ron Paul's and if you don't agree apparently you're part of the same Cosmic Problem the growth of Leviathan and the loss of Liberty. Oh yeah smoking is a social issue too, a biggie. In fact if I listed all the social issues of relevance today it'd take up the whole page and maybe the better part of Page 2 so just wondering why liberals see everything through the prism of abortion and gay marriage. It ain't an evangelical thing you know:)

Look Death happens

For the best perspective yet on the tragic demise of Whitney Houston it's our man Bill O'Reilly:

http://www.billoreilly.com/column;jsessionid=E5791B76D2239868188A0BD5266670?pid=35777

Obama - more concerned about birth control than rising gas prices

It'd be like if JFK were more worried about fat kids during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Obama's Political Understanding of Sex: Get Involved. Do you really want government in the bedroom though telling insurance companies they have to pay for contraceptives for women? Now to me Sex is a private affair and I wouldn't think of walking around White Plains all day begging for a handout to pay for some rubbers and a tube of Astroglide but they're saying now gas is gonna hit some kind of record this summer, might reach $5/gallon and this of course has to do with Iran (many say oil speculators - http://weblogs.wpix.com/news/larrymendte/2011/05/wall_street_does_it_again.html). Now you'll notice once Khadafy bit the dust the price of regular began to dip ever so slightly but Jim Cramer of Mad Money said this morning on the Today Show that as long as Iran has its nuclear program gas will be a problem, oh God you mean 'til the End Times!?! True Iran only exports about 2.5% of its oil to the US but the bulk of it goes to Europe and then there's the critical Strait of Hormuz to consider which Iran has threatened to cut off. So what does Obama do? he grabs the horns of the Catholic Church over an issue formerly understood and settled, Don't Go There. Pick a fight with the RC Church in an election year with gas set to hit $5/gal - WTG!!! your political advisers must hate you. BTW congrats to His Eminence from NY Cardinal Dolan. I was reading in the paper the other day that David Brock of Media Matters is literally spending millions of dollars to get more favorable media coverage of Obama (HUH?). They'll be more than happy to do it for free David with Brian Williams sucking on his left nut and Rachel Maddow directing the jizm onto a poster of Rick Santorum. Just read on Drudge the European Union has just approved a whopping $172B bailout for Greece. Of course there has to be some deep cuts and oversight......hey Obama are you following any of this? Now I realize many of the Kool-Aid drinkers out there still see Obama as some kind of Savior but even as Messiahs go he's pretty weak. I think Dolan sucked all his charisma out of him and I just know he has a big old cold one on tap if Obama goes down to defeat.

Honesty (not so much)

I'm gonna have to take my car in for an oil change perhaps next week. Now every mechanic you ask will tell you have your oil changed every 3,000 miles (don't believe me go do a survey) but when I was reading my Honda Civic manual a few weeks ago it said every 5,000 miles. Hmmmmmm. Your doctor tells you to drop the weight and we'll take you off the blood-pressure meds, it was ALOT of hard work with constantly reinforced social pressure at places like work to not lose that much weight and not only that but you shed 5-10 bonus pounds just for good measure and your doctor still keeps you on the pills and you politely remind him of this. Does he have stock in the pharmaceutical industry? perhaps the Vytorin tissue box in the waiting room is an indication. Older married woman at work with an autistic son, kinda uses her personal situation for leverage to get the hours she wants and to get out of jury duty. It's not like she's a single mom and he's at home alone and can hurt himself and autism is the thing these days anyway, they get by. Look I have a couple of autistic cats. Those high school girls in upstate NY you may have heard in a town you probably never heard of by the name of Le Roy, they mysteriously came down with Tourette's-like symptoms but the authorities and experts and resident psychologists are chalking it up to, you guessed it Anxiety. Look there's alot of free-floating anxiety in the air these days, God knows I've been dealing with it my whole life but I never twitched or cursed somebody out because of it. What a bunch of bullshit and I don't think even the paid shrinks believe one word of it. Turns out that according to one local newscast here there was once some sort of toxic train wreck once in Le Roy's history and Erin Brockovich has gotten involved not that anybody's not telling the Truth here. It's like at work with the weird psychedelics in the water, well if you're not feeling well one day they'll always chalk it up to you're known to partake of the adult beverages on a fairly regular basis, you may have made the mistake of letting this slip in loose conversation perhaps in a humorous vein and he has been dieting recently (read: starving himself). You see Truth these days is like the Constitution, it's elastic. It's not outright dishonesty or lying, it's a shading, a stretching, selecting the best elements of truth out there that most strike your fancy like those Le Roy girls probably do have some anxiety (who doesn't?) hence ~~~ or since most new cars do require a more frequent oil change well a car's a car or yeah you lost over 60 lbs. and we did say weight is a major factor but your blood pressure's still too close to 140 (actually maybe it was 132 over 84 that day and that was right after work) and well you can never be too careful (read: lawsuits), it's your health after all. Honesty, now don't be a glutton now:)

Would libertarians have gone to war against Hitler?

I was pondering this thought today and I think not. The fact that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust would have been deemed an internal affair by the libertarian/isolationist mind and in this thought experiment I have to kind of leave out Japan and Pearl Harbor since even Ron Paul I believe would go to war if our country were directly attacked. What's up with China and Russia these days, are they some sort of evil Axis or something? Maybe there's some truth to the various evangelical/ultra-traditional Catholic apocalyptic scenarios that they're gonna be two very heavy players in the End Times and not in a good way. Syria's Bashar al-Assad continues to kill innocent Syrian anti-government protesters practically on a daily basis now, the UN finally gets some gumption to at least condemn his tyranny and to call for regime change but China and Russia shoot it down by exercising their vetoes. In fact some Russian minister explained the decision by saying the proposed UN resolution amounts to a call for regime change, well DUH!!! The guy's a despot and mass murderer in the best mold and then President Obama who has finally gotten somewhat heated over the situation says a military option is off the table. That would be grudgingly respectable had he not gone after Col. Moammar Khadafy but consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds as they say. I do agree with Ron Paul on a number of things, turns out the Bunny Ranch in Nevada is enthusiastically supporting his candidacy because he's for states' rights and has said you can't legislate virtue. I'm not so sure if I'd want the 'hos and potheads behind me though but he's ultimately unelectable imo and I believe that is due to his extreme isolationism and the Hitler question proposed at the top there would be an excellent excellent question to pose to him in debate again leaving out the whole Hirohito angle and truthfully I don't think the Jewish issue was why we went to war in the first place. Hitler did in fact pose a grave threat to the entire world if you understand your History but the salient point here is even if a libertarian were to say it was right to go to war against Germany the Jews would not enter into the equation and that's what I'm getting at which brings up the whole other issue of anti-Semitism. Apartheid in South Africa and the government killing of anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, was that our concern too? Rwanda? Yes for me at least but a libertarian is apt to say no so that brings up that whole other can of worms regarding Race. I'll let soapie sort out the fine print, I'm only posing the Questions.

The secret to ending political partisanship

"There's a Kool-Aid drinker born every minute" Z-man

When both sides finally realize that they're all full of shit. Gerald Ford probably was the only president who actually gave an honest State of the Union address: "The State of our Union...is not good." Politicians, they're shaking your hand with one hand and jerking you off with the other.

The Newt & Mitt Show

Up until now I have for the most part avoided those endless GOP debates (are there supposed to be so many?) but I mainly tuned in last night at Rock Center on NBC to see if moderator Brian Williams would Go There, you know the Newt marital material which liberals are suddenly interested in but as I watched all I got was Cuba is 90 miles off the coast of Florida. I watched about the first hour off and on, it was fairly exciting to tell the truth with Romney and Gingrich attacking each other. Newt kept saying he wasn't a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, Romney put his tab at about $1M/yr. with Newt giving a much lower figure of course and truth be told I thought Romney's points were relevant and Newt gave off a stink cloud like an octopus obfuscating the issue, reminds me of some of the debates here. Meanwhile over at Bain Capital......Santorum and Paul looked like those Jeopardy contestants who just stand there and never ring the buzzer, Williams seemed to notice and got them in there too. Uncle Paulie thinks there are too many wars we can't afford but it was clear who the night was all about. Obama HHS Sec'y Kathleen Sebelius telling Catholic hospitals they have one year to figure out a way to provide birth control services to women, I would have thought it better for Mitt and Newt to go after Obama who seems to me likes to stoke the Culture Wars - "throw another log on the fire Corey" - but I guess they have to get rid of their respective threats first before they can go to the next level. Gosh man so how many more of these to go? it's becoming a weekly series like American Idol. Maybe Marky Mark can host the next one.

Church & Gov't - the Original Mistake

Now this is convoluted and I haven't really followed everything on the Pro-Life front like I used to when I got pro-life stuff in the mail back in the day (PLEASE please don't tell Janet Napolitano!!) but my pastor was explaining this past Sunday that due to something in ObamaCare, the finer print now all Church institutions like hospitals and universities will have to provide contraceptives and sterilization to their employees. OK so by now you know my thoughts, if sex is a private affair then so is birth control and leave me and everyone else the hell out of it. I mean why not hit me up for some lube and anal beads too while we're at it and I totally agree with my pastor regarding religious freedom and conscience exemptions but there's a BUT here and you knew that. The root cause and what John Kennedy once warned about is the Church and the Gov't getting in bed together. Once you work with the government, once you as a religious institution or body agree to some federal funds and yes it's always altruistic at first be it helping the homeless, getting immigrants set up and assimilated, low-income housing projects, drug rehab, whatever, once you get in bed with the Government you then have to do its bidding maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe in a year or two from now but THEY will be setting the Terms make no mistake. Take Catholic Charities which accepts some federal funds for their charitable work, laudable stuff to be sure but not that long ago they were told by you know who that they also have to place kids for adoptions with some gay couples because that's the law and so they stopped placing kids for adoptions altogether. The point is this, the Church should be the Church and the Government the Government so while I agree with my pastor I am somewhat agitated that the Church still doesn't get it, understand the root causes here. You wanna do something with Habitat for Humanity and work with Jimmy Carter and Bob Vila knock yourself out, have at it but your funds should be your funds and their funds their funds and may Obama stay out of it and just watch the Superbowl or go shopping with the missus or go on another Hawaiian vacation and crack open a coconut. Just be careful is all, you may have to pay for some poor worker's IUD down the road:)

Straights have destroyed the institution of marriage

& over time gays will too. You want leaner and meaner government? that'll be when the gov't finally says we are no longer going to recognize failing institutions like marriage. I was thinking about this the other day, polygamy is technically illegal but that's a religious issue isn't it? Why not have the gov't simply say have at it, we're not gonna recognize it but you won't go to jail over it? Word now that ABC News is gonna give one of Newt's ex-wives two hours to dish and it's gonna air on the Monday after the SC primary. Apparently there was some big internal discussion over there about when to air it, personally I wouldn't air it at all but what's with the two full hours? American Idol season premieres get two hours but this is what journalism has turned into. Newt must pose some sort of threat or something. I once had a workable theory that gays have gay sex because straight sex often leads to feticide and well maybe it's some sort of protest act over the destructive power of women but there's holes if you'll pardon the expression in the theory as gays are often the most pro-choice. Ah my meandering mind! Funny though both gays and straights, even those who are for and against the gay marriage have one thing in common, they both seem to feel that marriage is still some type of viable institution or something. One final question though and it's been nagging at me of late: how come many of the same people who are for the so-called woman's 'right to choose' want to take away your right as a consumer to purchase an incandescent light bulb? Liberals are only libertarian on the social issues but not much else and listening to people like Shaw and Saty wax poetic about the golden right to abortion I'm, I'm just getting into a mood here and I might accidentally delete something:)

GOP Has-Beens

The subject of has-beens interests me. One day Rocky and Blaine are one of the biggest things in the NYC radio market, the next day they're frying chicken at some Popeye's off the Interstate. These days the GOP has-beens are Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, that pizza godfather guy and maybe, make that probably Newt who can already feel the powerful vortex of the has-been hole sucking him in. IMO the architect of 1994's "Contract with America" deserves more respect than he's getting but that's just me. Michele Bachmann, too many brain farts and maybe the last straw was her mistaking Elvis' birthday for his deathday. I know it's not a big thing but taken as a whole you don't want her trying to reset Russian relations or pondering ending the embargo against Cuba. I want to devote the bulk of this blog though to Sarah Palin. Now when her star was early rising in the political sky (it didn't hurt that most men would've done her) early conservative commentary focused on such things as a family that hunts together stays together but the Gander Mountain voting bloc is only so big. Many many people have a mild distaste for the sport of hunting not through some elaborate theory of critter rights but Sarah and her family having a fine bowl of Moose Nose Stew on a snowy winter's night doesn't exactly impress them. Those be all-American values, heartland stuff to be sure but maybe not to a Manhattanite. So what makes a has-been or who has has-been potential? Could simply be just the inexorable Passage of Time, I mean Danny Bonaduce had to beat up a tranny to get back on the radar screen but in Palin's case and this is a biggie it was her overall Lack of Knowledge especially on the foreign affairs scene. You don't want this chick going up against Bashar al-Assad or negotatating some Arab/Israeli peace deal. I think the final nail in the coffin though, no it wasn't Tina Fey but Back in the Day some 8' giant black man who played the hoops plowed her. Sure it was back in the day but it's still a shock to the evangelical mind, yeah I know she's for the smaller gov't and pro-life and all so we can forgive her her youthful dalliances, her sex'chal 'perimentation but we kinda can't forget it either. Thanks Joe McGuiness! Oh yes Herman Cain and that's the really painful part of being a has-been nobody talks about you anymore. You know gimme someone who quietly has staying power through the years. Um I hate to say this but you can kinda say that about Romney. I hope to never become a blogging has-been btw, please lemme know:)

Romney

I'm not gonna be spending a whole lot of time on this guy, hell I may not even vote. To all the Ron Paul critics out there and it's all good but tell me why I should vote for Romney. He probably has the nomination wrapped up by now but to me it's boring, hardly blogworthy on a daily basis anyway. It's been rather apparent for some time now that the conservative infrastructure in this country, pundits, commentators, talking heads, chuckleheads, opiners-at-large while not maybe passionately in love with Romney at first have tacitly nodded their assent and the question is why? I kind of pride myself on my astute political analysis but to me it's a mystery, all I can come up with is he's not scary. Saw him recently on The Charlie Rose Show and he's articulate and can talk and again maybe he makes mainstream conservatives comfortable in a coffee, cruller and blog sort of way, throw in a nice sweater and a cat on the couch. I honestly don't even think pro-choice Republicans are that threatened by him and even here I think his flipflopping may be the wrong term. He's gone from pro-life to pro-choice back to pro-life again and in physical terms, to put it in the jargon of science this is more like a vibrating strand of energy, a string (pro-life pro-choice pro-life pro-choice pro-life pro-choice pro-life pro-choice) and it's not to be taken seriously, it could be a mood. It's fluidity that's all like tipping that glass chemistry tube with the blue liquid inside, swishing it back and forth to study it and if he was pro-choice once he can be pro-choice again since he's able to see so many angles and sides. He ain't no static Santorum that wants to outlaw buggery or something and take away the coils and pills. Mormonism is an interesting subject and I've been meaning to google it, oh hell let's do it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism. It's just a touch Secret Circle-ish to me but that don't bother me none, hell if the guy's a Mormon the guy's a Mormon. I don't think though that ABO (Anybody But Obama) is the right way to look at it, the political calculus for modern conservatives to live by. On another note "I ain't no angry black woman." OK so go tell Oprah:)

You see this is the reason the people don't like celebrities

The Most Important Birth Since Christ

There was no room at the inn but they had Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. They took over a whole wing, some folks weren't happy, you know the 99%. Beyonce's mahogany suite with the bulletproof glass which one can expect some minimal anti-paparazzi measures but C'mon! and some guy couldn't even see his twin preemies in the ICU. The NYS Health Dept. investigation into the Matter went the way of the Natalie Wood reprobe, actually that one lasted longer. One hopes the Blessed Child develops some gender-identity issues later on in life and embarrasses the proud parents, a little Chaz Bono action (Sonny hit a tree skiing and couldn't live to share in the Joy) or else becomes a porn star like Laurence Fishburne's daughter but Jay-Z does seem to be really in love with her, it ain't no sham - a Kardashian marriage not. A nursing note: why so many C-Sections?

(lite agitating fare - about 230 calories)

Conservatives miss the point about Tim Tebow

It seems that everything has to interconnect these days, Politics and Sports in this case and some conservative commentators are making it out like liberals making fun of NFL quarterback Tim Tebow's religiosity is a war on Christianity itself. He blesses himself and prays before the game or something and thanks God at press conferences. Not the first athlete to do this nor the last, you'd think it was never done before. Yeah liberals never miss a chance at a cheap shot but the Larger Point missed as usual is that

God doesn't care about a damn football game:)

It's not so much the Republican candidates I hate...

...it's the conservative political commentators. These movie critics of the political scene who have to overinterpret every daily up-to-the-minute pollette or subpoll and who dismiss various surges as the flavor of the week (as a group they heavily tend to lean towards Romney for some reason), these union commentators who tell you how to vote, who tell you Ron Paul is a system-hater when maybe all he wants to do is return to the Original System, these self-important chuckleheads who tweet and blog and pontificate and opine which leads me to a very important political maxim here you would do well to heed:

By all means know a candidate's political positions, study his or her belief system, judge their sincerity for yourself and how they'll impact on your life personally but you're perfectly capable of doing that already aren't you average American that you are. DO NOT however read the political commentary, do not allow it as a critical mass to influence the way you vote or think. If Newt tweaked another woman's nipple not his wife's, well you already knew that didn't you? You don't need me or some other pundicrat to tell you that's baggage, you don't need to read George Will's petulant commentary on Newt's view of the judges in this country just 'cause his wife is advising the Rick Perry campaign (look Will has a frenulum too). John Podhoretz, Michael Goodwin, David Brooks, Jonah Goldberg, Peggy Noonan, Carlmax Newsmax or whatever the hell it's called and so on down the list, just don't read 'em. I'd rather read soap's take on the ethanol subsidies situation anyway:)

Why we're not an intelligent country

Trending right now at least when I first signed in around 10:30 this morning are:

(1) Gaga boyfriend
(2) Kim Kardashian
(3) Katy Perry and Rus......
---
(5) Rachel Uchitel

I never got this, you go to the library let's say or are at home and have a very valuable chunk of Time and you're looking this stuff up? So what was I trending just now? Old black news anchor Bill McCreary who once hosted a show in NYC called Black News in the '70s on Channel 5 and oh yes I found for Saty a fully employee-owned company at http://www.scottscornermarket.com/ and just the other day I was googling different detox teas and that whole subject and well I'm eclectic but not stupid. Did you know there's such a thing as Radio Frequency Hearing which often gets misdiagnosed as tinnitus? I mean I follow the Gaga stuff just a touch, tangentially like I know she's 25 and doesn't have a boyfriend (Patrick get in there!) but millions of Americans googling these same stupid subjects day in and day out across the fruited plain? amateur experts on pop ephemera and we VOTE!!! Kelly Clarkson just endorsed Ron Paul btw (http://www.gossipcop.com/kelly-clarkson-ron-paul-endorsement-support-president-2012-republican-twitter/). So I'm gonna be gone a little bit and go check out that food market again:)

New Year's Resolutions

I've none, I already lost the weight. They say most folks gain a few pounds over the holidays. Well for me the way I combat this is I took a long walk the day before and on Christmas Day itself I ate very well of the main course offered and then some traditional desserts and no I didn't hold anything back but I didn't eat anything before this or after this for the rest of the day but it lasted me the whole day and into the night. Scotch, now there's a tricky potion. Got some Dalmore as a gift and later on that night with nothing on the TV I got bored, depressed and a tad irritable all at the same time thinking about work the next day. So I was all set on my day off this fine Tuesday to go to Balducci's the Food Lover's Market in the lovely and very Bronxville-esque town of Ridgefield CT and was doing some online research just now about getting there from the scenic Merritt Parkway when lo and behold they closed down! another victim of the bad economy and most of the stores and places I've become accustomed to shop over the years have likewise closed down. Rewatched Easy Rider few days back and the classic scene where the two bikers go to New Orleans and hitch up with two gals one played by Toni Basil and later drop acid and are wandering through some cemetery on some pretty bad trips. There's something weirdly hilarious about the scene and just heard on the news that moviegoing this year is down about $500 million from last year and all sorts of reasons were given but how 'bout most movies suck these days, they don't make 'em like they used to. I don't know what to do with myself today but might hit some Asian store later, the Ridgefield arc of my day is lost. Back to the regular sucky non-holiday music on the radio, don't remember a time in my life when music sucked so much and this is bad for long trips which I am wont to do. Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas, I've no problem just don't make me feel guilty if I go with Merry Christmas. So where are Jay-Z and Fitty's special holiday albums? (suggested song titles: Silent Night Deadly Night, Frosty the Blowman). This is what happens when you pigeonhole yourself in the bad, folks will laugh if you do something nice for a change and I read somewhere Fitty dropped a whole boatload of pounds going on some liquid diet so he could play some cancer survivor in a movie, might be interesting. Happy Whatever:)

WORK

Most people seem to accept IT and it's the reason why I've not been online that much of late. WORK - it's not that I'm for it or against it but as Beth once said a long time ago she doubts if when we're on our deathbeds and we look back we'll be happy with all those hours we put in. This social commentator handyman who used to come in, one day he says to me "ever wish you were fired?" and I go "yeah, maybe then you can finish that book you always wanted to read." Unless you're in business for yourself or doing your own entrepreneurial thing you're really not in control of your own life, the master of your own ship like today I have to go in late and some days you can't go for that long walk you planned or go up the line to Walmart. I'd like to hear libertarians who are all for Maximum Freedom explain this. Libertarianism is a pipe dream in so many ways and the fact that most folks have to get up at some ungodly hour and go in with their lunchpails means others are in control of us, we're working on their terms and again it's not a good or a bad thing, it is what it is but Maximum Freedom it ain't. WHO invented Work and why can't we change or shift the paradigm a little so as to have more leisure time to cultivate, oh I don't know Family Values which conservatives are so big on? My brother doesn't complain that much about work, his philosophy is work is supposed to suck that's why they call it work and if you want to get all theological about it you can blame Adam and Eve our first parents. I'm in a work frame of mind today, it's an old old topic around here so why not let it riff?

Cap'n Obama will get us through this

The economic weather of which he has no control over, at least that's my gist of what he told Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. It's a kind of interesting analysis this fatalistic version, wonder if the public will buy it. It'd be like if Jimmy Carter had said the same thing that despite long gas lines and inflation I'ma gonna be the guy to steer us into better waters and nicer climes. All Obama has to do is push the right policies that will make a difference in people's lives like make them buy health insurance, can't help it if Fate's a racist. Obama the Orator vs. Newt the Debater, should be a good one:)

Disorganized Religion

If you're Catholic you've probably heard, starting tomorrow there'll be some changes in the service. I don't know about you but when I go to church I want to rest my weary head, I don't want to work, have to figure things out. Going to Mass should not be like going to school. I got a flavoring of some of the new church songs or singing parts I guess you could call them and I like the old music better. I don't really know what gave impetus to all this but my guess is that after all the clergy sex-abuse scandals they want to rejazz the Church and get folks interested again. Again for me it's an effort and I go by the old adage if it ain't broke don't fix it. For the past few weeks now our pastor who has a passing resemblance to Newt Gingrich btw has been explaining the new translation as they call it and I just tune out. The Church is more like a corporation than a religious institution these days and every so often they feel they have to rejigger it or reset it or something. Some of the ushers look like game show hosts in their suits, all that's missing is the big Gene Rayburn mike. When I went to grade school they made us go to Mass some mornings and before the service there was a rosary group and the woman leading the group did it so fast it sounded more like an auction or a horse race. 'Member they made us go to Confession too and once word got out the strict priest was in the right booth and the good one was in the left all of a sudden the line switched all the way over, I mean you could have killed someone and he'd just go say Three Hail Mary's, maybe an Our Father too. Oh God I got alot more of this stuff like abusive nuns straight out of some Gothic novel but I'll just save it for the Comments Section:)

Happy Black Friday!

Let's face it, it's not so much Happy Thanksgiving as you can't wait to go out to Kohl's or Walmart. It's no longer even 4AM on Friday morning but in many cases 10PM after you've just made your turkey sandwich from the day's leftovers. Oh God I am so not a herd mentaliter, did the bulk of my Xmas shopping at a more leisurely and enjoyable pace starting in early November, just a couple more people on the list. Never got the atheists this time of year, even porn shops celebrate Christmas. Ah the joyless crowd. Never forgot the story my mother told and this was many a moon ago when she didn't even know what Black Friday was. My Dad and Mom decided to go to the Danbury Mall, a quite nice ride from the big YO and she figured it's the day after Thanksgiving, folks will be relaxing the day ater recovering from their meals and maybe even a hangover or two so her first reaction was who the hell are these people and the rest is history. SUCKERS!!! all I gotta do is my wrapping and it's done. I hope nobody gets stampeded to death this year but even then it'll probably wind up on some sick website like that poor guy who got pummeled by some teen thugs on the subway with nobody coming to help. Sat seems to feel I'm devoting too much time to Natalie Wood, it's distracting fluff from all the Real Problems and Issues our country and society faces but I say this. Even if we got rid of all the distractions, forgot about the Bieber and K-Dash, say suspended X Factor for a time so we could as a nation give these critical issues our undivided attention wanna know something? They ain't getting solved, there's too much corruption in high places. Just look at the Super Committee and speaking of X Factor Astro somehow feels he's obliged to win otherwise it's just some cosmic conspiracy against young black rappers from Brooklyn. Lakoda Rayne looked cute last night, oh I forgot that's a Distraction. Sorry, gotta go home now and do my recycling:)

Can you be a conservative and still believe in climate change?

I say Yes, it's not agreement or disagreement with the Theory that determines whether or not you're a true conservative but what do you do about it? In a word Nothing:)

The Rise of Newt

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had a very respectable showing at the last debate moderated by CBS News Scott Pelley and really shone on foreign policy and is even getting traction in the polls. By now it is conventional wisdom however that Newt is unelectable so why is that? It is because the Powers that be say so and this is reinforced by the echo chamber of the conservative punditocracy (e.g. the New York Post's John Podhoretz) and trickles down into the psyche of the voting public. I know soapie will disagree with my analysis here especially since Newt has gone all green on us but whenever I read that he is unelectable I never really hear the reasons why. Is it because he once dumped his breast-cancer stricken wife in the hospital? is it because he's so yesterday, some retro-90s fit? is it something else? We say so so it shall be so, he has no place in the Matrix of Politics. Then again he's not Ron Paul:)

Jaded Politics

This past Tuesday (Election Day) I chose not to vote. People act like you have a duty to vote even if all the candidates suck, never got this. Anyway Democrat Mike Spano won the mayoralty of Yonkers, wasn't even that close so because she brought it up first this Italian woman at work asked if I voted and I said no so then I asked her who she voted for just to make lite conversation. She said Spano of course and so I then engaged her in a series of questions all the time being the epitome of Civility because HELP ME TO UNDERSTAND!!! I'm just curious I said why so many voted for the guy, what was the attraction? Did he say he'd lower taxes and she said he talked about Education (oh) and she added children are our future (I've never heard this before) and so I said but they all say that and she conceded the point. I said Obama talked about education among other things and she even helped me finish my sentence - "but look what we got." The Yonkers election was personal for me, all those red-light cams in the big YO were put up under the Republican and pro-life administration of Mayor Phil Amicone so my philosophy is what difference does it make, nobody really represents ME and my interests and values and me, my brother and my friend too always somehow vote for the losing candidate. The power of your vote is definitely overrated, it's a kind of Quantum Mechanics, chaos theory applied to Politics (see I have been watching The Fabric of the Cosmos over on PBS) but getting back to the woman at work it's as if pols have some sort of Svengali-like influence over people. We hate their guts and make fun during normal times but when it comes time to vote and they open up their mouth we buy into it. Help me to understand. So basically but I didn't put it in these terms exactly I said to my co-worker but we know they're basically full of Shit and we vote for them anyway. All it takes is a charming facade......Now I hate Hitler analogies as much as the next responsible blogger but around Yonkers someone painted in a Hitler mustache on Spano's face on a bunch of signs of his and the motto underneath put there by the Spano campaign themselves simply says A NEW APPROACH. Get it? you have to laugh at this stuff. Funny thing is the cops didn't even take the signs down yet, maybe it's the first crack in political correctness after all. It's all good:)

Thoughts on the Michael Jackson verdict

An LA jury finally gets one right, certainly there was no other choice on the technical merits than guilty of involuntary manslaughter and Dr. Conrad Murray will serve his four years in a county jail rather than the state prison or word on the legal street is he'll probably even get some form of house arrest and YET,

in another sense MICHAEL JACKSON is really the guilty party here and all his enablers down through the years, friends and family, everyone. People who suck you into their madness......Michael Jackson became a whining, cloying and needy creature ("give me my milk") and on balance Dr. Murray probably would not have gone with the powerful anesthetic propofol had not Michael Jackson insisted and become a baby about it Here's what I don 't get, MJ by then had already gone down as a legend in music history, he made his billions and yet these celebs have to stay in the limelight it seems, it's an obsession of theirs and so if he was just content with his monumental and phenomenal success up 'til that point so what if he couldn't sleep? What of it? he didn't have a 9-5 job or even a 7-3 like the average slob so in his life his chronic insomnia was really quite irrelevant to making ends meet so if need be screw the need to tour or whatever, your health's more important anyway. In a way Michael Jackson ruined Dr. Conrad Murray's whole life and career and as someone said to me yesterday maybe he's in his own type of hell right now. The perpetual Michael Jackson fan club is missing the Bigger Picture but they always do. I say this, if you wanna be weird be weird on your own time, don't involve the medical profession:)

A Herman Cain/Kim Kardashian blog

Herman Cain, shades of Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill. Look this is what happens when you're a conservative uppity nigger who thinks for yourself.

Things went downhill ever since Kris Humphries had to sit on that plane next to Ray J, he of the original Kardashian sex tape. Kim comes across as nominally more intelligent than Paris Hilton and somewhat less annoying than J-Lo who loves herself and she even has a line of something at Sears or Macy's. Andrea Peyser of the New York Post calls her a fame whore. I don't get all that worked up about it, for me it's just to pass the time while reading the morning paper. Word on the street is Justin Bieber may have gotten a girl pregnant. He's dipping and Kardashian is back on the market, hey ya never know. You know what gets me about Montel Williams who tokes the medical cannibus on a daily basis is he doesn't look or act like he has MS, bopping around on that infomercial with the juicer and he did do that talk show all those years, didn't look the worse for wear. Despite years and decades of steady medical and scientific advancements you mean to tell me the only thing that can manage your pain is pot? c'mon! I think he's fronting or as they say in England fron-Ting. A word to the Madoffs, next time try jumping:)

What is the role of government?

This is the essence of ALL of our blogging when you get right down to it, a distillation of our political POVs. Soapie likes local states but not the federal government, Dave sees a clear role for the feds. Beth is a charitable person but wants this to be her own decision. Saty says time and again we don't understand what socialism is, we need to do our homework but I beg to differ, we have enough of an idea. Throw this out there, would YOU eat at Soapie's Libertarian Meat Market and Deli? (this is of course a utopian place, a figment of our imaginations where the USDA rules don't apply to him). I was struck my Mal's rather agnostic position on abortion as stated in the previous blog, basically take abortion as an issue off the political table, scrape that dried crap off the plate and into the garbage bin which is interesting since pro-choicers then would no longer have any say in party platforms either. While we're at it get RACE off the table too, don't wanna offend the guests. Herman Cain, the current GOP frontrunner is pro-life among other great things. I say this, his 9-9-9 is at least better than the 666 Plan but should we not vote for him because he doesn't subscribe to Mal's wisdom which also happens to be Pam's? OK so you go into soapie's place and ask for a roast beef wedge with all the trimmings and a big pickle and a side of potato salad only his deli clerk ain't wearing any gloves, maybe you just caught him scratching his nuts as you walked in but as my instructor in a food-safety course once said latex or vinyl gloves are overrated, people somehow get a false sense of security with gloves since they get dirty too especially if you're not constantly changing 'em and then you gotta order extra gloves which runs you into some money. If I may put words into soapie's mouth since I kinda got the gist by now and I know he's on a coffee break at his law firm and is reading this and will respond shortly -- better that one person get diarrhea so his staff can learn than have the feds come in and say how it's gotta be. So the free-market has some dribbles, that's the beauty of it. I would hazard a guess Dave ain't eating there either:)

The libertarian conundrum

If a child cannot be born (because of abortion) how can it enjoy Liberty? WE have a great libertarian package for you IF you manage to be born.

The death of Khadafy which begs the question......

why all the instantaneous graphic imagery but not with bin Laden? We were even treated to a bullet hole in the head shot but we STILL have nothing on any bin Laden death photos, in a vault somewhere. Shaw has recently taken some of us to task because we conservatives don't want to give Obama credit for taking out bin Laden. Speaking for myself it's not that I don't want to honey it's just that OBL's death was never independently verified by objective sources other than the government. Oh yeah another difference, the Libyans still have Khadafy's body whereas bin Laden if it was him was thrown overboard practically 12 hours later. Yeah we're all happy about the latest developments but on the flipside Bibi has just released about 1,000 Palestinian terrorists in exchange for one young Israeli soldier held by Hamas for five years. A word about NATO, ostensibly when the Libyan rebels began to gather steam in the latest chapter of the Arab Spring NATO was simply supposed to enforce something called a No Fly Zone, that's it, now they're kinda in the assassination racket sort of. Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, Khadafy all on Obama's watch and I heard the faintest stirrings in the msm this morning that he's somehow being credited with the death of the mad Colonel as well. Ah well Happy You Tubing!!!

McDonaldizing the gangster

It's soon to be in production but John Travolta is gonna star in a new biopic about the late John Gotti. I'm kind of past this stage in my life, for me the genre of the mobster peaked with The Godfather trilogy. I'm so into other stuff and on a really slow Friday nite (showing my age since I'm not clubbing) I'll dig Sam and Dean on Supernatural even though I have no idea what the hell is going on. Heh, Simon showing his human side on The X Factor last night by apologizing to a contestant he just booted and bringing her back into the fold. He's losing his edge, he's been McDonaldized too. Flicks glamorize a life of crime, Burger King could have soda cups with Gotti et al on 'em and Moms would buy 'em for their kids. We've lost our moral compass. Few months back there was a major and I mean major federal roundup of some major mobsters and folks were writing letters to the New York Post all angry at the feds, leave the guys alone! I really don't do gangster blogs since, who knows a gangster might be reading this right now but it's how I feel. Been rereading parts of Maury Terry's Ultimate Evil since updated and some weird shit went down in Yonkers in the '70s and '80s. Seems some Satanic cult had regular meetings in Untermyer Park on North Broadway and killed some German Sheperds and left 'em on the Aqueduct, Berkowitz may have been involved. Personally know of stories of hospital workers at St. John's seeing the torches and hearing the chanting on some evenings, 'magine you're a patient who just had some major work done and you're recuperating and you lurch towards the window by the River and see some stuff. Been kinda sporadically blogging of late more like a hobby, the old work schedule again. Went to the biggest bookstore I've ever been in my life yesterday, the two-decker job with escalators Barnes & Noble in Poughkeepsie on Rte. 9, didn't buy anything but it was an experience. Is it just my imagination but are stores getting bigger? maybe I can do my walk there. Going home now to enjoy some fine African Rooibos Red Tea, good for the allergies:)

Well hell it's a job but still

Pureeing the topics here but let's get back to retail for a minute. One of my friends who works at the supermarket end of things is a kind of source for scuttlebutt that's happening in that sector of the economy. You remember KRONOS don't you? (and btw don't tell me that's just a phonetic version of "chronology" or something), now add to this the growing field of mystery shoppers. Now I don't know what the going rate for them is but basically they pretend to be your average casual shopper, they come in and then after they leave the store or place of business they grade how well each department did in terms of whatever the Company deems important (e.g. suggestive selling, "how are you today?" etc.). Now I realize the economy is bad but would you do this for even a temporary living? get other workers in trouble really who are just trying to get by? Word on the street is some major supermarket chains will even go to the lengths of finding out which employee was lacking and maybe even write him/her up. This kind of gangsterism is not good for morale imo and stuff like this tends to happen when a company is not doing well, they're looking for answers and don't know what to do so they come up with crap like this. Truthfully I'd rather be unemployed than rat people out to pay my rent and once they make use of mystery shoppers the company seems to become practically obsessed with the topic like nothing else matters (e.g. low prices, a safe work environment). BTW checked out the new Gordon Ramsay culinary collection yesterday at K-Mart, not bad especially the digital 12-Cup coffeemaker:)

The priest shortage

While we're on the subject of faith this topic came up recently in our parish because our parochial vicar was just reassigned upstate and now our pastor is running the parish all by himself basically and saying most of the Masses with only an occasional helping hand and btw the priest who was just sent upstate will be running that parish by himself too which seems to be the trend these days. In the latest bulletin our lone priest/pastor now gave statistics on the priest shortage, only one new priest ordained in the whole Archdiocese of New York in the month of May and he further gave the numbers on how many parishes in Westchester and surrounding counties are now being run by one priest. Suffice to say quite a few in fact but this begs the question as unfair as it may seem to him and others and make no mistake saying that many Masses is hard work but isn't this the marketplace in operation? The vast majority of men do not opt for the celibate lifestyle which is still a requirement for the Catholic priesthood so you can pray for vocations all you want and petition God on a weekly basis but that still won't change the marketplace or the reality. Of course for too many men these days who aren't even priests there is the depressing matter of involuntary celibacy, those existential drought periods of poor gas station porn and carpel-tunnel syndrome but even for these poor souls caught in the orbit of Outer Darkness sex or meeting someone or eventually falling in love is still a goal if not reached in this life then the next. Deliberate celibacy has always struck me as somehow going against Nature but be that as it may my pastor acts like a bunch of us men are supposed to just stop what we're doing after maybe a lengthy period of reflection and spiritual introspection and sign up to be priests. Ain't gonna work that way, there's too strong a pull in the opposite direction. Change the rules and you'll get more priests:)

Steve Jobs and a philosophical question that pops up

Would you rather be astoundingly wealthy, a gazillion or have your health? You can live in a mansion and die fairly young or you can sit on your patio in all your middle-class stature on a fine autumn afternoon and enjoy feeding your cats or your dogs or if you don't have them just reading a book. Though I'm a strong capitalist by nature I don't envy the superrich, that societal trend has always irritated me. While I don't want to punish them like Obama I am philosophically balanced, they don't bother me but I don't want to be one of them. Personally I'd rather have my health.

Steve Jobs, Apple Founder and Tech Genius -- 1955-2011, RIP

Watson is my boss

Have a friend who works in a supermarket and he told me the other day that when the workers punch in now there's a handy device on the wall with a lens that scans their thumbprint. Fred Flintstone with his punchcard is so yesterday. You'd think a deli clerk or a part-time butcher were working for the CIA or the FBI or Interpol and I'm not even sure they do this (side issue -- why do so many women who work in supermarkets have man hands?). What's next, retinal-scans like in Minority Report? So the name of the company the supermarket contracted with is, get this, KRONOS. Why that? sounds too sci-fi to me, a little off I said and my friend gave me the deep background on Kronos. Seems in mythology Kronos was the father of Zeus and there was a prophecy that one of Kronos' sons was gonna do Dad in, kill him and take over so when they were born Kronos ate Poseiden and Hades. Who says ancient Greek/Roman mythology is boring? it's chockful of Sex and Violence. Anyways Zeus' mother knew what was coming so when she was pregnant with Zeus and gave birth she wrapped a big old rock in some swaddling clothes and Kronos ate it. Zeus later cut off Kronos' testicles and penis and threw it in the ocean where it gave rise to Aphrodite. You remember Venus in a pink shell don't ya? Now all that's fine for a college lit class but why would a major technical company choose such a name with such a negative bio behind it and why would a major food chain even do business with them? and how come the Union never got involved and issue a statement or even inform its members? It's because the New World Order'ers are Weird that's why, everyday is a Renaissance Festival inside their heads. BTW the term for scanning your thumbprint to start work and punch in and out for Lunch and go home later is biometric, remember that word and the whole stated rationale is that some workers are using other workers to clock themselves in using their punchcards. Old story new solution. Well that's the cover story anyway but my gut tells me there's more, much more to the story like that cat Willow that wandered all the way from Colorado to New York City and was lost for five years until some shelter ID'ed him 'cause the family had a microchip put in him, that's gonna be YOU in the not too distant future ("Don't worry m'am, Hank's just having an affair"). Now who's behind all this? I'd say our friends the Masons, those who like to worship statues of owls in the Bohemian Grove and stuff like that, a little Osiris action. Basically they're Nutz and now we hear that Watson is gonna look over some folks' medical records and make instant diagnoses, save time and money. The times they're'a gettin' weird:)

Mitt Romney - I can't get all that jazzed up about the guy

First off his health care program in Massachusetts was the model for Obamacare. Judging from his latest debate performance with Rick Perry (oh, are there others?) he doesn't seem to want to touch the third rail of Social Security so that's second. Third off he seems rather bland, very bland in fact like a safe conservative choice in a polyester suit (read: moderate). I believe that as we speak he's pro-life but I don't think he's firmly rooted in any one direction except the zeitgeist or the base or whatever, four. Mormonism, you can take it or leave it but for me it has just the touch of the cult but that's not a five. I'm just not that into him. The GOP Establishment (Nancy Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Bush, the New York Post) pushing Chris Christie on us has the feel of someone trying to fix you up and I always hated that. It's the pushing that I find suspect (what, nobody else out there?) and Ron Paul is McCain's age. It'd take the edge away if Hillary ran against Obama which usually when there's no primary to speak of it means the guy's a champion but c'mon. A champion to whom, Shaw? Personally I prefer to watch X Factor, it takes my mind off things:)

Mr. Port Authority Toll Hikes as the savior of the GOP?

They won't give him up and I'm not getting it. Some influential GOPers, some real Republican movers and shakers, didn't quite get their names but a large swath of them are former Bush donors which should tell you something right there and they're practically stalking NJ Governor Chris Christie to enter the rather disappointing field. Calling his office at all hours of the day, sending love letters, behind his shower curtain, in his closet, behind him in the diner. Saw a few recent pictures of the Governor and is it just me or has he gotten Bigger? He seems positively gargantuan these days and practically dwarfs out everyone else in the picture. Now when I was having a weight problem myself not that long ago I got out of the shower one evening and looked at myself in the mirror and said OK this and no more so at what point do you even stop noticing these things? PUT DOWN THE FUCKING KRISPY KREMES!!!!!! Not exactly a role model for our yoot so what does it cost to cross the GW Bridge these days 12 bucks for cash-paying commuters? going up to 15 I believe in a couple of years and this is the Savior of the GOP party just 'cause Rick Perry had a couple dismal debates??? You know I was never that great at the whole job interview thing but I think I'm a real kickass worker just the same. God help us and already those red-light cams are sprouting up all over Jersey like some vast police state. BTW did you catch NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on 60 Minutes last night? I'd be afraid to scratch my nuts. Oh yeah I knew this was coming but apparently technology is in the works for those traffic cams to be rejiggered somehow to see how fast you're going too, that's being discussed in Albany right now believe it or not. You know when you consider that most towns, villages and city speed limits are artificially low I'd go bankrupt. The topic of Chris Christie causes me to ramble but just 'cause he has a penchant for the blunt talk ("get the hell off the beach!") and can somehow control a budget but not his own food intake doesn't mean you have to get all hot and sweaty, have a man crush on the guy. It's like they want to take him in the woods and Ned Beatty him or something. Palin/Bachmann, now that's your ticket. We can at least see who can out-brainfart each other:)

The Obama Platform is what exactly?

That I'm trying to do the right thing but am constantly prevented? that my heart is in the right place...It's not so much a list of accomplishments to run on so I'm not really getting why he wants us to vote for him again. He reminds me of a whiny contestant on X Factor, someone who wasn't that great to begin with but who won't get off the stage and feels the judges' decision is some kind of cosmic injustice speaking of which I think the best contestant so far was that Diana Ross lookalike on the first night forget the name. Absolutely phenomenal but she needs to reduce the waterworks. Simon seems somehow nicer this time 'round with L.A. Reid kinda towing the line here. New Girl, mildly funny but felt it didn't live up to its advance hype all through the summer although I really really like the name Zooey Deschanel. The new 5-0, my brother feels it's bad writing. On the Season Premiere a secret cam hidden in an old clock in the late Governor's residence that could exonerate McGarrett of her murder and Danno busts it with his foot 'cause he doesn't have a screwdriver handy and there he is on the tape Wo Fat killing the guv and framing Steve but his head is somehow cut off, well he is the Archvillain after all who gets away all the time. I'll give it a chance and at least they cover other ground besides serial killers but if they're to be really faithful to the original Chin Ho has to get shot and thrown from a car. Somebody at work has the Irritable Bowel Syndrome and one of the stalls is for all practical purposes unuseable. How can we turn a profit if people don't even know basic potty training? I feel I'm right about all things but do I expect people to agree with me all the time? No, it's ain't realistic and that's the trouble with alot of blogging these days. My God so you don't agree with Ron Paul you're not a true conservative, when did this happen? This is supposed to be fun, kind of coffee klatchy and I see our friend Tony Bennett has made some controversial comments about 9/11. Doesn't he look like some friendly uncle you had when you were a kid and you just got ripped a new one by Mom and Dad and he talks to you in the alley and asks you what's wrong and says but they really love you and gives you a 5-dollar bill to go get an ice cream cone? Looks real good for his age. OK what'cha got?

Social insecurity

Is Rick Perry right, is Social Security a Ponzi scheme?

Once you go black sometimes you go back - Sarah Palin's jungle fever

Joe McGuiness has written a new one, The Rogue, a kind of unauthorized bio of Sarah Palin. Now every book has to have what they call a hook these days to sell, in Barbara Walters' case it was her affair not that I care and so in this case we learn of Sarah Palin's past coke use (presumably we're not talking about the classic American carbonated beverage here) but even bigger is (brace yourself all you racist teabaggers out there, got a chair? sit down)......seems when she was a junior in her college days she had a one-night stand with some 6'10" black basketball player by the name of Glen Rice (he's trending right now as we speak). Now as a husband you don't want to hear this stuff, your spouse's past episodes of high sluttery when they do come out are bad enough but Sarah back then was 5'4" or 5'5" or something and the African-American gentlemen was 6'10" so you know some really freaky stuff went down. Sure that was back in the day but that toxic crap really gets in your psyche I don't care what you say, it's lurking in your mental attic somewhere in some cobwebbed corner with the baseball mitts and the Flexible Flyer (permanently emblazoned images of your beloved churchgoing wife guzzling it down like a milk shake, getting bopped in the head with IT). The other thing is some of today's biggest conservative women moralizers have been yesterday's biggest cat-bitches in heat (e.g. Dr. Laura) so maybe they should be the first to get this stuff out, just sayin' but what I think Mr. McGuiness is doing here and he's known to not like Republicans but he's masturbating the Tea Partier's mind which he sees as most liberals do as lurking in the racist fever swamps, some gap-toothed old red-headed farmer who sneaks into his daughter's room at night telling his wife hey get a load of this, Sarah Palin once fucked some big black buck. He's niggerizing the debate, agitating the political discourse never that high to begin with and maybe somebody should start writing unauthorized biographies of all the unauthorized biographers out there. Start with him, Kitty Kelley......but damn I just thought of something, what if there's a Sex Tape out there? Michele Bachmann dear, I hoped you lived a fairly clean life:)

9/11 - the most historic event in recent history

I had thought when I went to work Monday morning some folks would have a different perspective in light of the preceding day's solemn and extremely moving events, don't worry about stupid stuff......uhm, no. We don't discuss current events much, I'm always the one to bring up the topic but then again I never married my job. It's been years since I read the late Claire Sterling's seminal work The Terror Network published in 1981 and what's changed is that then terrorism was mainly political whereas today's it's largely inspired by a warped vision of God. Sure Hamas and Hezbollah are still political but it's a weird development, after the Cold War never dreamed we'd be at war with radical Islam. You don't believe in Allah and we'll kill you, when did that happen? Saw Frontline's "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" the other night which while superbly produced and asked legitimate questions somehow left me uninspired and empty. Doesn't anyone ponder this puzzle that God chose to give us the gift of free will and that means the freedom to choose evil in many cases, to make bad decisions and that all too often those bad choices negatively, even tragically impact and impose themselves on others, the good, the innocent, the virtuous? Put another way if God forced you to be faithful to your spouse it wouldn't mean anything so I'm a little more on God's side here and also if you never had Evil could you really appreciate the Good? If the world was always and forever a perpetual Eden with no tears and sorrow, no suffering and no death would we even know what the Good is? How horrible those people died on that day and your immediate thought is there but for the grace of God. To make that terrible terrible decision to die in overwhelming fire or to jump 80 or even 100 stories hand in hand with a complete stranger in some cases. My own mother many months before this even happened was sitting on the couch one day and said she had a very bad feeling. She felt cold she said and then said she felt something very terrible was gonna happen to the World Trade Center and it's always struck me to this day. I've heard others say similar things so I do believe in a kind of psychic reality. 9/11 unified us as never before and how could it not? I'm sure those people who chose to jump sometimes again with that complete stranger were not contemplating their political differences or the stupid stuff that went on at work last week and that's one of the great lessons here. The other is this tragic event so mind-boggling in the magnitude of its sheer evil, this existentially surreal Happening brought out the worst but more importantly the best in Humanity. We also went from the sublime to Rachel Uchitel becoming one of Tiger Woods' bevy of mistresses so the poetic always somehow becomes mixed with the tabloid culture but that's to be expected. Then there was my lady boss who yesterday was doing her work as usual and asked me what date it is and I'm thinking but didn't say it just how uninformed are you? I mean I'm not a nerd or anything but when you go home what do you do? Do you at least pop on the News for 10 or 15 minutes before going to bed? Again an extremely moving and poignant day and make no mistake, we live in a post 9/11-centric world. It imbues all our thoughts, our very psyche and it did affect my sleep that night. Though it was an adequate sleep it was a kind of somber and fitful slumber and my dreams and thoughts drifted back to this tragic framework brought on by the day's events. What are your thoughts?

The Post Office

I say let 'em go broke.

Advertising you'll never see

Everybody has to be the best and they resent it when somebody questions their #1 status, challenges the orthodoxy. Take the new Weight Watchers commercial with Jennifer Hudson which says rated best by US News and World Report. Now that's mainly a geopolitical mag so WW may as well have been endorsed by Popular Mechanics and you know it just got under their skin that Consumer Reports recently rated Jenny Craig the best weight-loss program out there. So why can't WW simply say we're a good approach among many, it's an option and the same thing goes for Boar's Head. They just have to be the world's #1 cold cut, can't say look we're a damn good slice but hey if you like the Black Bear or Thumann's that's up to you. Advertising is all bullshit, it's childish but it is what it is. Now everyone can't be #1, why can't you just say you have a good product and leave it at that? Trojans......

So what's the karmic deal yo?

Just how does a particular religious system influence people's behavior? Are Christians better than others? more moral, more ethical, somehow more virtuous? Are they the salt of the earth? You'd think so but to give a perfectly honest answer in my long experience......NO, uh-uh. For example to put it in the work context again I've had my share of Christian bosses, some Catholic bosses. Many were underhanded, screwed the worker, weren't fair and as for other Christians they gossip, backstab, throw others under the bus with the best of them. Not an indictment of Christianity btw since I'm a Christian myself but why this contradiction? I'm going to heavily paraphrase from a point made over at Lista's, gonna do some major-league spinning myself here but the idea of you can keep on sinning and just keep going to Christ who will forgive you over and over and over again...I think the average Christian feeling liberated from the whole karmic cycle feels he or she can do what they want and get forgiven later. OK maybe that's an oversimplication but to paraphrase from St. Augustine "make me not gossip Lord or throw other people under the bus but not yet." Many Christians behave like the rest of the lot and then take their Souls to the cleaners on Sunday as my brother likes to say. The Christian/Catholic running the department now, doesn't strike me as being overly ethical, maybe the Church is more a social watering-hole......Perhaps the karmic believers are better people, live better lives because karma is so much more demanding and unforgiving and yes fear-inspiring. Pope Benedict would do well to address the issue again as he's addressed karma in the past and is well familiar with the topic. I believe it was when he was Cardinal he made the point that the beauty of Christianity is that Christ enables you to break free from the harsh and never-ending cycle of karma, that's the positive aspect but on the downside imo is the general character of today's Christian. The Pope would do well to talk up the issue again this time in the context of you people are misapplying Christ's Message and the Gospel if you think you can just go on sinning and......but is karma real? does it actually operate in this life in the here and now and not just in lives to come? A stronger variation of the biblical you reap what you sow I've seen some evidence. I'd love to hear examples here from the resident bloggers who are big on karma. As a rule I generally don't blog about presidential vacations, God knows they all take them so I just wanted to go with a karmic thrust today:)

Are most people selfish?

There are some very interesting discussions going on at Lista's about karma and I will be expanding on some of the points like, oh I don't know tomorrow or beginning of next week but the topic of selfishness is too broad here. Are most people selfish? Since we spend so much time at work I'll put it in my usual context of the workplace (after 1,000 posts it's still a tick on my ass). Dunno if my place is a microcosm, God I hope not! but I've come to the conclusion that most folks are selfish. Now they're not viciously selfish, they come across as quite nice. They don't have fangs and will buy you a cup of coffee but when push comes to shove their interests come first. Take vacation time. We have a problem going on right now where everybody wants to take their vacations at the same time and we're not talking a week off here and there but like a month devoted to European travel alone. Now back in the day I still remember a system, a kind of unwritten code that you took turns, you went and then he went and then she went when Bob got back and if you had to sacrifice for the good of the Company by pushing up your much-looked-forward-to vacation by a week or two well that just showed what kind of a sterling guy or gal you were. Now it's like this isn't even an afterthought and I've spotted another trendoid and it has to do with new hires. Now many of these monstrous jaunts, random globetrekking are being taken by the fairly new employee, the recently hired and it's not that they're getting paid for all this free time but that's not the point. It's still leisure time and the department runs less effectively due to their prolonged absences, the burden then being shifted onto the few who remain like moi. I asked a co-worker about this, new workers pushing for and getting massive time off when they haven't even put in a year yet. I queried him well is it a part of some contract, some kind of secret handshake, an overly generous boss, some spit the love juice out from under the table kind of a deal but he said no, that they just have their minds set on going is all, doesn't matter if they started a new job. Of course back in the day when you were lucky enough to get hired for a spanking new job you would happily wait and chug along until you qualified for at least one full week of paid vacation time and then it would properly accrue over time but this selfishness thing is cutting across all age and ethnic groups, spilling over all kinds of boundaries and it's not just the young, an easy enough group to pick on although I don't like working with them either. Calling Out Sick, that's another one. Now I don't do it anymore but the few times I did in the past I at least chose a day when it would have the least impact, made sure there were enough people on staff. Not anymore, I've seen people simply call out sick even if the whole day depended on their presence and not a twinge of guilt upon their return. The selfishness thing is kind of disturbing, the blitheness with which it's practiced and goes straight to our character deficit in this country. Since this ultimately ties into the whole karma thing I'll be working on that one next. As I said to my friend once I think we were born in the wrong era:)