Faith & Politics

OR leave your Bible at home.  Been wondering though are liberal politicians ever motivated by their faith? and if so is this invalid too as when us Christian fundiecons do it and why is it never pointed out?  Gay marriage, equal pay for equal work, social justice, reproductive rights, low-income housing (desegregation), immigration reform, health care and the liberal list goes on but can laws or legislation to pass these things have a religious underpinning and do liberal politicians ever get motivated by their very own personal liberal understanding of faith to take action politically on these and other important matters?  So far nobody's sayin'  Sure there's politics in the Catholic Church but is Nancy Pelosi ever inspired in her House actions by her Catholic faith?  Certainly Martin Luther King Jr. was openly motivated by his faith and talked about it in marching for civil rights so that was a good thing but if a pro-lifer......well you get the picture.  Bibles, Korans, Torahs I don't care put it on the table and while we're on the subject does that old fragment of a papyrus paper show Jesus had a wife perhaps Mary Magdalene? and oh btw why do atheists use God's name in vain from time to time say when they're stuck in traffic?  Some new pro-Islam ads just went up in the NYC subways in some cases right next to the controversial ones about Support Israel and be against the savage.  This is the RIGHT way to handle speech you don't like - GET IN THERE!  I'm kinda tired of Tim Tebow wearing his celibacy on his sleeve, you can brag about your sluttery or your chastity and it's all the same to me and some woman's gonna seduce him and my other thing is if he's only the backup QB for the Jets why is he getting far more presstime than Mark Sanchez?  These and other matters feel free, coffee's perkin':) 

Maybe he had a fight with his wife

Cramps? or maybe Obama's strategy last night at the First Debate in Colorado was to keep his head down to make Romney look like he's picking on the black guy.  By universal acclamation Romney won the debate and even Chris Matthews said he was excellent.  Jeff Greenfield said Obama seemed clueless about the most basic political points and many feel Obama should have went after Romney on his 47% comments and Bain Capital.  Oh I know what it was he was depressed about that Samuel Jackson video.  The economy, taxes, job creation and education and Jim Lehrer as moderator, get the nachos out.  I don't get why Savage keeps calling Lehrer a baggy-eyed Bolshevik and other conservatives like Michelle Malkin hate the guy but at any rate Rom was up-tempo, controlled the direction of the debate and was aggressive this according to the Today Show which I popped on this morning because truth be told I deliberately surfed right past the debate on most channels but even here some new Chinese digital station was covering it from Beijing so I got some snippets in English.  OK so Romney didn't exactly speak as an arch-conservative and won't exactly win the hearts of the Ron Paulians, not even sure who they're voting for.  He denied Obama's $5 trillion in tax cuts assertion and said there's a place for government in health care, that's not exactly hardcore libertarianism.  Axelrod said Romney's was a strong performance but still a performance so that's one of them half-compliments.  Look Obama has very strong base support whereas Rom is going for the 7% swing, he's a swinger and Obama's a baseman.  O's weak performance won't affect his base of course, it was more embarrassment than abandonment.  Clearly though when Chris Matthews no longer gets The Tingle in his left nut something's wrong:)

Samuel Jackson should just STFU!

Rumor has it that if Obama loses he'll become the head of the European Union and when you stop to think about it it makes sense although Bill Clinton at one point was supposed to become the head of the UN.  Slash 'n' burn capitalism, Romneyism vs. Obamanomics.  All things considered I kinda prefer the free markets although not in a total Randian sense.  Hey did you hear about the October Surprise?  According to Alex Jones there's military intel out there that something is gonna happen next month to help Obama win the election.  I was talking to my friend about this yesterday and said I doubt this as things are not going well for him in the Middle East right now and I doubt Jones ever wakes up in the morning and has a normal day of thinking.  Don't believe the media and all the polls out there, alot of folks are saying don't be swayed and just Vote for Romney.  I'm wondering if soapie is a prepper for when the World Economy totally collapses like in the not too distant future.  I don't know if you've ever talked to a prepper or those who at least are considering prepping but they're pretty annoying.  You know folks who stock up on the canned goods and jugs of Poland Spring and go to Eastern Mountain Sports for those wonderful packages of freeze-dried beef stroganoff and lasagna.  Gotta build a cabin in the woods right now and take the family there even if they don't wanna go and think I'm nutz and while we're at it let's get some of those water purification tablets too.  Anyone watch The Hunger Games yet? didn't think so but if I could articulate a principle here it is that the more a government grows the less benevolent it becomes, think about that Mr. Miller, BB.  I think the nub of Liberalism can be defined as you can kill a fetus but can't have a Big Gulp, pro-choice in one narrow sexual zone or band and fascism spraying off in all the other directions.  There are 50 States in the Union so why does every election apparently hinge on what Ohioans want?  Look the rest of us won't vote we'll just let the State of Ohio decide things.  Obama as head of the EU, you heard it here first:) 

The Hunger Games

I bought the DVD at a FYE store yesterday and wasn't sure I'd even like the movie due to its overly dark and disturbing material, kind of reminds me of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and then there was the matter of protagonist Katniss Everdeen, how can you make a heroine out of someone who participates in the madness and kills other people?  Once I started watching The Hunger Games though my views slowly changed.  It became obvious that those teens Katniss killed were at the root evil to begin with and she had to defend herself.  The Hunger Games based on the first book in a trilogy by American YA writer Suzanne Collins is a kind of prophetic hybrid of Lord of the Flies and 1984 with a healthy dose of Serling.  I've often thought of why don't we have literary classics anymore but with the themes here that hearken back to elements in those earlier works I can see the potential for a classic itself here, a future item on a high-schooler's reading list.  So what is the interpretation?  First off I agree with Beth who blogged about this once and I hope she takes time out to join the discussion here and so I do see it as a kind of cautionary tale against Big Government and in the comments section I'll delve more into that.  Yes of course it's a kind of satire of the reality TV craze and all.  When things in the 74th annual Hunger Games get a little boring for the viewers at home the staff at the central control panels first add a blazing forest fire to get Katniss closer to her adversaries and later on noontime eerily turns into nightfall and three large black and frightening attack dogs that look like a cross between a pitbull and a panther are added to the mix, so much for playing fair.  The president of Panem played by Donald Sutherland says to one of the younger bosses, not sure what his role is exactly and they all look weird but he says to him early on to watch this Katniss character as she represents hope and hope is stronger than fear and it may be a spark now but to contain it.  The Hunger Games as well can be Glenn Beck's worst nightmares come to fruition.  There is also the theme of the star-crossed lovers Katniss and Peeta the other teen chosen from her District 12 and the two are willing to die at the end by eating the poisonous nightberries until a Voice comes from the sky telling them to stop the Games are over and they're the victors.  Then there's the central enigma of the movie, WHY do the 24 teens chosen HAVE TO kill each other?  Did the Powers-That-Be mandate this?  I didn't catch that.  Of course they could have all just teemed together to survive so there's some powerful philosophical and theological observations going on here about human nature itself, about the nature of Good and Evil and you could say maybe it was all just one big vast social experiment besides being a form of perverse entertainment.  I have to say this is really a great and thought-provoking movie well-suited for the action/adventure format and there's so many political angles to this thing so let's get started...... 

Will Obama release the Blind Sheik?

This is really a question to all the Daves and BBs out there, the Satys and Shaws, those 47%ers who are never gonna vote for Romney but is there at least a tipping point where you'll no longer be in Obama's corner? where he crossed the Rubicon, went too far, where a defense is no longer tenable or even logical?  Does the President write our material for us and does he even masturbate from time to time the various anti-Obama conspiracy theorists out there ("let's see if I release the Blind Sheik I'll solidify my rep as a closet Muslim who won the Oval Office").  Have to say this though, that guy the other night on Univision the Spanish station saying to Obama "with all due respect you didn't keep your promise" that there Latin guy should be hosting the NBC Nightly News and not Brian Williams:)

The Conservative Establishment & Mr. Romney

By which I mean Peggy Noonan and David Brooks and Bill Kristol and the usual bunch.  What I don't get is this, conservatives critiqueing and in many cases negatively a fellow conservative while his campaign is still in progress, a kind of daily review.  That's just dumb and you don't see liberals doing this and that's why we have this term "conservative elite" (oh and you thought only liberals could be elites).  Yeah after the dust has cleared you can say your piece but with friends like these...I'm talking of course about the Mother Jones video and do I base my vote on off-the-cuff remarks? not really, I mean we're all human and what would be the point without living room chatter but if you feel they're that important then let's have The Collected Off-The-Cuff Remarks of Barack Obama.  Need I reprise the quote about the hardcore 47% who will vote for Obama no matter what? you can google it.  Now while it's an oversimplification and not in keeping with Emily Post I do believe Romney hit on a core of truth here and that's why everyone is so upset.  Sandra Fluke's biggest turn-on is government and I'd say she is emblematic of what Romney was referring to.  I've said myself that with the economy the way it is I'm amazed the race is still this close and how else do you explain it and keep staying politically correct? but again I'm not getting why certain conservatives are so upset with Romney's race, after all he is starting to say some very conservative things, things they've been saying for years now.  Well if they know how to do it why don't Peggy Noonan or David Brooks or Bill Kristol run some day?  but it's like those movie critics, they know all the finer points except to show us how it's really done:)

Liberals and the religion of peace

US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff were killed in an attack on the Benghazi Consulate in Libya by Islamist gunmen and a safe house was also attacked.  There was another attack on our embassy in Cairo and the Muslim mobs were outraged by some amateurish movie they feel insulted the Prophet Mohammed.  They're blaming America for the film which makes Mohammed into a philandering fool and religious phony not apparently understanding or caring to understand that our free speech system comes with the disclaimer these are the views of others but that's over the heads of these Fred Flintstone religionists.  We now have Islamists in power in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia the fruits of the so-called Arab Spring.  So what happened when Christians had their beliefs and Savior insulted when artist Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" came out and when another artiste Chris Ofili disparaged the Blessed Virgin Mary by putting elephant dung on her?  Well...NOTHING but who do liberals see as the bigger threat to freedom though? not the Islamists of course, the Christians.  Romney is blaming Obama's mixed signals in the Middle East for the latest tragic events and that's valid and is this the way they repay Obama's past outreach to the Muslim world?  Seems too Obama's little post-convention bounce is gone, the sugar-high, the little orgasm and now it's back to business.  Our domestic economy to put the most positive spin on it is making a glacial recovery and the world is getting more dangerous by the day, can Obama ride the tide? 

Hope and change has turned into King Lear

He wanted the job.  Well the new numbers are out: 96,000 new jobs for August which is less than expected and a jobless rate at 8.1%.  Some economists think 2% growth is on trend for a very slow recovery but for all their festivities at their abortion and car show the Democrats must have known this was just around the corner.  Folks' income is not going up either and well if I were running the Romney campaign I'd strongly advise against getting personal and attacking the President.  The economic situation is Romney's best hope, going full-bore negative might turn off those crucial independent swing voters who as some pundit on Gwen Ifill's show last night said hate the neverending conflict and incivility in Washington.  Put in the more street vernacular a guy's down you don't kick him in the nuts.  Obama's latest campaign slogan seems to be patience which as George Will noted ain't a strong suit of the American people.  The Messiah has turned into Job with a hairshirt, the Speech was probably the weakest of his career.  The shelf life of It's Bush's Fault, they keep redating that thing.   He needs to get down on his knees and supplicate the Earth Goddess (Oprah) but enough, I've probably overdone it myself.  The #'s speak for themselves.  Going forward:)

When socialists can't find true love they fall for Obama

This is what I find fascinating.  Saty a self-avowed and proud socialist prefers the Dems and Obama over Romney and the Repubs.  That's to each his or her own individual choice of course but you would think a socialist would only prefer other socialists.  Socialist-minded folks in general seem to vastly prefer the Dems and Obama however over Romney and the Republicans.  Now if Obama is not a socialist and for the purposes of this piece let's say that he's not AND if the Democrats are not socialist as a party either then why do they the socialists actually prefer them?  It would seem to me the Dems and Obama are actually closer to socialism even if they're not actual socialists themselves else why would socialists like them so much?  Moving on......

Fire up the abortion machinery

So far for my money David Brooks of PBS' Newshour is giving the best commentary.  Cecile Richards daughter of the late TX Governor Ann Richards is now the president of Planned Parenthood and gave a brief speech and there was alot of talk all night about reproductive rights and gay marriage and Brooks asked San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro whether something weird was going on after all this was supposed to be economy night in an economy election and later said the Dems seem weirdly abstracted from the historical moment which is to say we're still in some kind of economic morass and they were quite deliberately focusing on those reproductive rights and gay marriage all evening.  Sandra Fluke of course spoke after 10 and hers was brief too, I'll at least give them credit for getting to the point and they seem to be more aware than the Republicans that the attention span of the average American is rather short.  Obama seems to have a strong socioeconomic message for the country-at-large and it is this: you may not have a job or a home but at least you can still get an abortion and get hitched to whomever.  Must be some weird vibe in the ether, first Clint Eastwood and now this.  The barn is burning and Farmer Joe is having sex with the cow.

So getting back to my original question if Obama is so not a socialist why would......

All things DNC - a running blog

I have to say I very lightly sampled the first night of the whole affair.  Honestly I hit the hay before Michelle Obama's big speech not because I hate her but I had to be at work by 7 to set up by myself and if they really wanted folks to watch it she would have been on at the top of the hour.  Look things aren't going well for them but the DNC is like a defense attorney, you have to say something.  I get that, it doesn't bother me and you can't expect them to be all walking around dispiritedly with placards saying WE SUCK.  Actually they did seem rather dispirited the whole night.  One guy was particularly pathetic and got into the whole class warfare thing (is that a winning formula?) and strongly implied Romney didn't pay all his taxes.  Nita Lowey is actually one of the richest members of Congress, did you know that?  There was alot of talk about women and heavy on the Goya.  Masturbating the base, dead fetuses and gay marriage but no real talk of the public debt which David Brooks of the Newshour said is what those independent swing voters care so much about that and economic growth.  Caught Harry Reid early on and in his speech I heard the phrase "some Tea Party ideologue" or was that my imagination? ho-hum and changed the station.  Kathleen Sebelius and health care, I think I switched over to Globetrekker.  Actually the whole night seemed rather boring and I was heavy on the channel-surfing.  I could have gotten more out of my evening by meditating on the grease spot on the ceiling, I mean Clint Eastwood may have been weird but he got people talking.  I was wrong though, I thought the Dems would hold more of a moderate convention but it doesn't appear to be so far.

Wage discrimination addressed

A conservative POV to explain the so-called pay gap between men and women:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/don-t-blame-discrimination-for-gender-wage-gap.html

You don't even have to agree, in fact you're not expected to but we've been accused lately of not addressing certain things around here.  So grab a cup of java sit down and let's hash 'er out.

Thoughts on the RNC Convention so far

I'm a heavy channel-surfer not one of those political nerds like Hannity who can name all the various Congresspeople on Jeopardy so what you're gonna get is my take on various snippets more to my liking like KY Senator Rand Paul's speech which was a good one even if he did milk Obama's "you didn't build that" remarks a little too much.  Condi Rice I thought was excellent, superb even especially in her comments on our entitlement and grievance culture and I saw John McCain on the floor telling the PBS interviewer that yeah there needs to be more of a discussion on Obama's foreign policy here.  I'm mainly sampling PBS' Newshour coverage beginning around 7 with Mark Shields and David Brooks and their generic political commentary and various guests like Newt and Rick Santorum and pollster Andy Kohut who said in his research some of the negative words folks used to describe Paul Ryan were "extremist" and "scary."  Funny but I tend to agree with soapster here, Ryan ain't no real constitutionalist radical he merely wants to give the federal budget a haircut, wants to streamline Medicare and Medicaid not get rid of them entirely.  He's not exactly gonna slay Leviathan but I like him more than soapster does what can I say?  Let's see what else?  Santorum talked movingly about his disabled daughter Bella probably offensive only to a pro-choicer and yeah the RNC paid homage to none other than Ron Paul but once they started showing that film about Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. I reflexively changed the remote to Sanford and Son.  I don't know how you can watch this stuff gavel-to-gavel, I guess you have to if you wanna churn out some nerdy blog.  They keep saying Romney has to open up to the country more as a person, discuss his Mormonism a little and Ann has already laid the groundwork with her charm offensive but that's the wisdom anyway.  The upcoming DNC Convention in September? that's gonna take a cast-iron stomach to sit through but if I'm to be taken seriously as a blogger than I have to sample at least.  My guess is that Obama is not gonna be talking alot about Bashar al-Assad even though his militias are killing women and children on an almost daily basis now.  That's not what they mean by a War on Women and it's gonna be kinda weird to see Dolan give the blessing at that thing:)

Speaking of vice presidents

Seems to me Romney is beginning to conduct a serious, professional and highly polished campaign in his choosing Wisconsin Congressman and budget hawk Paul Ryan.  On the other side we have the walking gaffathon Joe Biden and Obama happily defended his latest put y'all back in chains remark what was that last week? not getting the whole Wall Street/Racism angle but I was thinking if I were a high-ranking key advisor to the President first thing I'd do is say you gotta dump the guy.  It's like getting a fresh pair of sneakers or a spanking new car with that new car smell or even when you clean your room and buy new clothes, you just feel different.  Biden is like the friend who's always a snot's throw away from embarrassing you but you hang with him anyway.  Obama is clean and articulate (where did I hear that before?), Biden is like your uncle on Scotch and for the life of me I don't get why Obama sticks with him unless he wants to lose.  Biden is Yogi Berra without the charm and, OMG they have vice-presidential debates don't they!! 

The Closing Ceremonies were a little weird

Maybe it was the influence of the Christian Bros. but the whole thing reminded me of a cross between Madonna's Bedtime Story music video and Shock the Monkey.  Even Duran Duran wore long pointy hats, whirling dervishes to West End Girls and then there were peformers dancing around with garbage pails on their feet and then giant supermodel posters came by paraded by dark figures and then Annie Lennox without Dave Stewart sang out something on a float and there was some kind of tribute to David Bowie thrown in the middle but again I was over the hump at that point.  Ah the Brits, just a sliver of acid, get those dark Gothic creative juices flowing.  I only watched the Games sporadically heavy channel-surfer that I am.  There was the inspirational Oscar Pistorius story of course with its sci-fi edge, Gaby Douglas the first black American gymnast to get the gold and Phelps who's retiring.  Now he can go home and smoke his bong.  There was the high-diver Tom Daley from Great Britain who splashed too much during one critical dive and didn't go in at the right angle only to make beautiful comebacks right after that.  I was always afraid of them hitting their heads on the board.  There was the Mo guy who won the 1000M and 500M races and speaking of which I think I only saw one white runner.  I remember many years ago some really fast black runner I forget the name and one interviewer asked him how come he's so fast and he said when he was growing up he was used to running away from the cops.  Actually I don't think you can say that today, Bob Costas would be fired.  American swimmers Missy Franklin, Ryan Lochte...tried the butterfly as a kid in Tibbetts Pool in the big YO and that there's a stroke that completely goes against the grain and human nature, dunno the purpose.  Not into the beach volleyball at all, that's when I channel-surf.  Likewise women boxing each other's brains out and don't care to watch cycling indoors around some track, more into the diving/swimming and track & field events as I said.  Of course they never had that Munich moment-of-silence marking in 1972 when terrorism and international sports mixed but what did you expect exactly?  It's like the Olympics is being run by the UN.  Kudos to Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman for even bringing up the topic. Next stop in cuatro anos Rio de Janeiro, expect a decadent undervibe.  Mark my words someday chicken-spitting will become an Olympic event.  Why the hell not? everything else is:)

50 Shades of Crap

It's kind of a slow blogging cycle at least for me, nothing I could latch onto of late.  I mean yeah Sandra Fluke introduced Obama at some political function, he still seems to be milking that one and I was reading in my Catholic New York that he and Romney are gonna speak at the annual Al Smith Dinner in NY and...but hey wait a minute didn't his HHS Dept. and Sebelius just cause endless grief for the RC Church and other religious institutions? yeah a few lame jokes will smooth that over.  Maybe he'll even tell a birth-control joke or two, who knows?  Then I see the guy I'm actually gonna vote for, Romney, is actually a murderer according to some Super-PAC and this is just the longest hottest most horrible miserable summer for me in a while.  Getting attacked by mosquitoes practically on a daily basis even in my sleep and then there's the Fishbowl of Work to deal with.  Look folks are bored at work, I get it and maybe you have a temporary health issue or whatever and it makes for fodder and no it's not your paranoid vibe at work again, they really are talking about you and everybody else for that matter.  If I were in charge I'd make sure everybody has enough work to do.  New manager has a habit of sometimes leaving old food in the showcase like pulled pork so I talked about it with a co-worker and his attitude was give the guy a chance (the fruit of liberalism?), didn't seem to get my point like I was being a meanie.  Now I'm all for giving people chances, God knows I wouldn't be perfect in that role either and I'm not a prick but at what point is giving somebody a chance a lowering of standards, defining deviancy down?  I see Costco won't carry Joan Rivers' new book so she chained herself to a shopping cart and bellowed into a bullhorn.  Kristen Stewart/Rob Pattinson...you see the material I got to work with? but I'll be honest I kinda follow this stuff and I'm definitely on his side.  There was a new massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, they're not Muslims but they look like them and their faith system is very googleable.  I checked my e-mail just now and see I got like a hundred fresh comments, dunno what everyone is talkin' about I gotta go see.  Time for a fresh post, carry it on over here if you like.  I'll put the coffee on and get the crullers rockin'.  Had a couple of Jamaican beef patties last night, they're good and all but left a kind of slight aftereffect.  It's definitely time to plan the next vacation:)

Another drummed up controversy - Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A, maybe I need to get out more and stop reading my field guides but I never heard of the place.  Don't recall them around these parts and sorry I spent so long on the gun post 'cause I didn't have anything else but this is kinda right up the alley.  Chick-fil-A, 1,608 chicken restaurants across the country whose president is Dan Cathy some Christian guy opposed to gay marriage.  All told his chain rakes in more than $4 billion a year and they say they run their business on Christian principles and teach their employees to do the same.  Not sure what this means exactly, are their workers forbidden to gossip and use cuss words but to each his own.  So a new report from the LGBT group Equality Matters says Chick-fil-A gave more than $3 million to Christian groups opposing the gay agenda and the timeframe here is from 2003-09.  In 2010 according to the report the company gave about a cool $2 mil to such causes.

SO??????

Did Dan come in with his boyfriend and did they refuse to serve them?  You know the thought occured that indeed Dan can come in with his boyfriend and they could order a nice chicken-lickin' sandwich or two and take it home later and incorporate it into a sex act.  UMMM the boycott thing is cool and if it bothers you that much SO DON'T EAT THERE!  Kraft not that long ago posted a photo of a new Oreo cookie with a nice rainbow filling inside, didn't know that, I looked it up.  JC Penney recently hired Ellen DeGeneris as its spokesperson before dehiring her so it cuts both ways and I'm like I don't care if DeGeneris is JC's spokeswoman and it's fine that the chicken company supports the traditional family but the Oreo thing I don't think is good for your diet.  Look no laws were broken in any of these cases and I'm labeling this under the gay agenda, yes the gay agenda.  As far as I'm concerned everyone can have a POV on the ole Hershey Highway, you can't force me to drive on it just like I can't tell you not to take that route.  Seems the LGBTers want you right there in the room with Ranger Rick getting right on up in there and anything short of clapping and applause will get you in trouble with the Nanny State.  That last point is a metaphorical one of course but look folks are entitled to each their own ickiness.  All I knows is that when you're driving along and you pass a Kennedy Fried Chicken you're in the ghetto:)

The Politics of Tragedy

I hadn't actually planned on blogging about it today.  I had woken up early, got the percolator going, fed the cats and about 10 after 7 turned on the Today Show and Matt Lauer and saw the Breaking News.  We now know about the suspect, 24-year old James Holmes allegedly shot and killed 12 theatergoers and injured more than 50 others at the midnight showing in the town of Aurora, Colorado of the new Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises.  Holmes had no criminal history up to that point.  OK stunning and sad and tragic news to be sure but my blogpost could wait awhile, there'll be the usual suspects calling for more gun control about which more in a minute but that gestational post could give birth tomorrow or the day after at the latest.  So I'm googling this and I'm googling that so I finally say let me go to Drudge to catch the latest and see what we learned, any link to terrorism? and after a few seconds I find this:

ABCNews Already Linking 'Tea Party'? Backtracks...
Breitbart: Shooter May Be Registered Democrat

and I'm thinking what in hell does Politics have to do with any of this???  Now I realize Breitbart (not the ghost of Breitbart but now the generic Breitbart Spirit I guess) was trying to counter the Brian Ross/George Stephanopoulos thesis but C'mon!!!  Interesting though that ABC went with this so early, it's like a kind of Rohrshach or Word Association Test - Charlie Sheen/drugs, Mayor Bloomberg/soda, latest tragic shooting massacre somewhere in the country/Tea Party but it's all very disgusting.

Now gun control:  I'm not against all gun-control measures, pass them if you like but criminals are not apt to obey them in the first place since criminals by nature don't obey the law.  It'd be like saying because money-laundering and extortion are against the law the Mob won't launder money and extort it.  I never got this.  Gun control at most is only moderately positive, a modest step in the right direction but the way the libs get all worked up over it.  Yeah and banning the Big Gulp will makes us a nation of the svelte. 

Turns out this James Holmes character was enrolled in the University of Colorado-Denver and just dropped out of some PhD neuroscience program.  What's with these eggheads gone psycho? think Ted Kaczynski.  These tragedies seem sadly cyclic nowadays, also cyclic is the expected labeling system: Tea Party/gun control/fell through the cracks of the mental health-care system, the usual.  I had to use my own label "journalism" to categorize parts of my post here but I use the term loosely, looser than what my cat did on my cedar chest the other night:)

With Obama's reelection looming is this the best time to have a conservative crackup?

Re conservatives, conservative bloggers who won't vote for Romney, not getting the overall theory here.  Liberals must love our little internal debates it can only help their guy time and again.  I say pragmatism before idealism -- defeat Obama first then talk about purifying the Party.  Now the case is being made that we should reelect a president with unemployment still over 8%, it's a weak case to be sure, it's unusual in terms of how Americans typically vote on the overall economy in presidential elections but it is being made nonetheless by BB, Dave Miller and liberals in general.  The difference between us and them, deep down they must know that Obama leaves much to be desired, his first term has to be disappointing for them but in general you don't hear this being expressed by most liberals (I know you're gonna highlight and link to some of the dissidents, go right on ahead).  What are they gonna say the first African-American president kinda sucks?  In short they're all on the same page and have to make the most of it, the Mission is more important.  I'm sure they think the same way about us, it's far more important to get Obama reelected and work out the kinks later than to let a Republican win.  There's always a conservative crackup perking underneath the surface but never a liberal crackup it seems and I don't really count the liberal idiosyncratics club with members like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.  A wise for his years young manager of mine a few years back once said you have to choose your battles by which he means you can't go with everything that agitates you, there be some things that are more important at least for the time being.  What I see some conservatives doing here is a kind of messy multitasking and they're doing it out loud.  They're all over the map, they want Obama the Marxist defeated of course but they also hate their own party and are complaining about it and that doesn't help the first cause...it's just such a muddled approach.  There are those for example who want Obama defeated and at the same time want to end the Federal Reserve today, one is definitely doable the other is a pipe dream for now.  I think though y'all should be invited to Obama's second Inaugural Ball, Michael Fumento will drive:)  

I kinda admire Romney at the NAACP convention in Houston

I didn't think he had it in him but he took it up the ass, ripped into ObamaCare and said how his policies are especially bad for African-Americans.  Of course everyone hooted and hollered like he just insulted Mother Teresa.  President Obama is so taking the black vote for granted and why shouldn't he that he sent Biden down there instead.  That'd be funny though if he said something stupid.  So when is it acceptable to criticize a black president?  I say when the jobless rate is still over 8% it's fair game and when a president is this weak liberals using the Race Card just looks plain stupid.  I'm not quite sure how Conservatism got linked up with the whole racism charge in the first place, didn't Charlton Heston once march with the Rev. Martin Luther King?  I read somewhere recently that Bill Maher has accused Matt Drudge of racism for constantly going after Obama.  I think with Maher it's not so much humor anymore, he's way past the Mort Sahl stage.  It's not funny or entertaining and now he's just venting a distorted anger, some chronic mental masturbator.  Put another way I'll take a Seinfeld or even a Jon Stewart.  Chris Brown and Drake fighting over a girl, I'm no fan of Chris Brown but it wasn't right what Drake did.  Now it comes out that Rihanna is into S&M and so maybe Chris Brown was confused when he hit her.  Fat uninsured folk, I think liberals are guilty of hate here.  Again kudos to Romney and he kept on rappin' too, I love it.  IF Romney does make Condi Rice the VP that's a heavy 2-fer, she's black and she's a woman.  Look sometimes you gotta counteract these things, it's not like somebody's gonna call her a house nigger -

right?

The real problem with Higher Education

Sometimes conservatives overly misdiagnose the Problem.  For instance you'd think there was a veritable epidemic of bad teachers in the NYC public schools system and for this reason teacher ratings and evaluations need to be made public not tomorrow but NOW.  Conservatives love this particular bandwagon but I say it's the kids, home-training.  With Higher Education, colleges and universities conservatives say the problem is liberal bias.  Well yeah there's some of that, having two years of college under my belt you could sense it from time to time but I really don't care, whatever floats your boat.  You have a political leaning well if the students know where you're coming from I don't see the problem but the real problem in a nutshell is that colleges and universities make you take courses you're never gonna use in Life.  Went to that Catholic institution for two years and they made us take an advanced math class so this older white-haired priest is writing calculus equations on the board, really breezing along with his chalk and I'm like what in hell? I'm never gonna use this in my day-to-day.  Then we had to go to the college bookstore on the corner of course and buy our own textbooks which cost a small fortune and I remember thinking back then in high school the class that just made it to the next grade just passed their books down to the next generation of students gratis.  What a racket!  One of my younger male managers going back a few years said after high school he just wanted to dive right into the workforce, make money and so he went with chefing and avoided the whole higher education experience.  Practical skills you learn by actually doing, how to make money, interacting with people and customers and learning new trades on the spot.  Better for the economy.  I'm glad to see a few conservatives like Maggie Gallagher more or less put down the whole college experience as a serious waste of time, you're gonna spend years paying back that student loan and what exactly are you gonna do with that advanced art or history degree anyway?  Education is one of the most controversial issues in this country, everyone has an opinion.  I say kids don't need to be taught how to masturbate just how to make the dinars:)

I think the election of the first African-American president was a great historical moment

Too bad he sucks.  Is this a racist statement? I don't think so because I honestly think the election of the first black president was a great historical moment but it's like Tiger Woods the first in his game too, he let us down and deep down it always pains us.  IMO liberals' great great unabated love for Obama goes beyond simply that he's a good liberal Democrat in the best progressive mold, they're still nostalgic for the sheer historicity of that moment so I get it, like Tiger they want to see him make that comeback.  The historical importance of that moment, put it this way unemployment could jump to 20 or even 30% and he could pardon Sandusky and you'd still have the same folks defending him (be honest).  Jimmy Carter isn't black so it's easy for everyone across-the-political-board to render the historical verdict that he sucked whereas in Obama's case I sense some reluctance to do so.  Political Psychoanalysis, I think in this case most of it hinges on Race which is why Cindy Sheehan could protest the Obama White House and the msm won't cover it which is why I learned it from BB in a reply to the Dude, it sure as hell wasn't Brian Williams.  Frank Robinson became the first black Major League Baseball manager, not that long after he was fired.  So yes it's important to make History, I'm kind of a progressive conservative in this regard but it's also important just as or more so to make an objecive analysis, an impartial and fair evaluation after a time and in this regard he suffers.  FDR was handicapped although at the time it was kinda downplayed, been there done that so now I say let's elect the first woman president, then the first gay president (they can be one and the same) but here's a minor sticking point for me, can they at least be good?  Don't just make History, give us a good historical product.   

Thuganomics and the psychology of organized crime

With the passing at 69 of mob turncoat Henry Hill there have been some positive things to say about the fellow from people who should know better.  His main claim to fame/celebrityhood is that he was the main inspiration for the mob classic Goodfellas and the Ray Liotta character yada yada and the eulogies go on.  Hill was a drug trafficker among other things and was involved in the infamous Lufthansa heist at JFK.  You know the rest and I think it's a fair social comment to make that we've romanticized, glorified the life of the gangster and this probably goes back to Mario Puzo and The Godfather book and movie.  By all accounts The Godfather (Parts I and II, forget the 3rd) is a superb film from a cinematic standpoint but my friend had a rather oblique take when he said how many lives taken is the movie responsible for? by which he meant how many joined the Club because the life portrayed in the movie inspired them to?  Actually this may not be that far off the mark as a key member of the now defunct young gangsters known as the Tanglewood Boys in Yonkers admitted to the late NY Daily News columnist Mike McAlary that they watched Goodfellas a number of times and it was sort of their inspiration.  Here's the deal for me though, take any level gangster or thug and let's say he led an independent life of crime, killings, robberies, general mayhem Society would level at him that he's a bad dude, a psycho, a criminal, a mutant, a deviant and needs to be taken off the streets pronto and go to the Big House for a long long time BUT take the same psycho and have him working as part of a GROUP operating in concert for some unified ends, a hierarchy, a criminal bureaucracy so to speak and it's somehow respectable, even glamorous.  Read two cases in the paper recently of a Mafia member putting out a hit on an average non-criminal man for the sole reason of going out with or marrying the mobster's ex-wife, this was two separate situations and let's say he wasn't a member of Cosa Nostra and did the same thing he'd be universally condemned as an obsessed psycho, a stalker yada yada but because he's a member of organized crime there really isn't the usual social and reportorial commentary you'd expect in such a case because hey that's what gangsters do.  Organized psychos is another way of putting it and the usual psycho/anti-social labels are dropped because it's an organization, a group, a conspiracy, a secret society and so it's somehow rational, none of the member's self-esteem will suffer because we're in this thing together and hey we're selective, we ain't bumping off old ladies crossing the street.  Serial killers and rapists bad, gangsters good, that's our social mindset/collective moral philosophy and we simply don't know Right from Wrong anymore, never really did.  The media wants to keep the theme going though with more books from former mob wives down the pike and some new tv shows with mob themes even though it's a passe genre by now, bloodsuckers is where it's at.  We love the desperado but hate the psycho even though they may be one and the same:)

While Obama can certainly win there are Problems

Not the least of which are Syria and those nat'l security leaks.  There's a reason many are accusing the White House itself of taking a leak, all the leaks are positive in Obama's favor and help burnish his image.  Who knew he was engaging in cyberattacks against Iran and every Tuesday shuffles a deck of terrorist playing cards and decides who's gonna get droned that day? but I don't hear the liberals complaining because hey it was quick and they weren't waterboarded like under Bush.  The atrocities continue in Syria on an almost daily basis.  Bashar al-Assad needs to go, everyone on the Planet except Russia and China seem to agree but Syria is fast becoming Obama's Rwanda.  Then there's Barbara Walters who helped get Assad's former press aide and political adviser/spinmeister into Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs because young 22-year old and Playboy material Sheherazad Jaafari helped land her the big interview with Assad, that's not Obama's fault of course but Walters has always annoyed me.  I thought she had a View to do but whatever.  Apparently Putin's Russia is sending the former ophthalmologist and current psycho leader of Syria attack helicopters and we're learning all about Assad's militia the Shabiha, a pack of low-IQ killers on steroids doing his really dirty work like massacreing women and children in the villages.  So who's supplying the 'roids?  The leaks, Assad and the Economy not necessarily in that order but ya just know some highbrow moderator at one of the first prestigious presidential debates is gonna ask him about fat kids and soda:)

Last Tuesday's recall vote in Wisconsin

I didn't blog about it at the time the goings on in Wisconsin when Republican Governor Scott Walker was ripping public-sector unions a new one, I like to go my own way when I blog but as you all know by now Walker won last Tuesday's recall vote 53% to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's 46% this despite practically every major union in the country making an all-out effort there to mete out justice and if you read the fine print about 1/3 of Walker's support came from union households.  His sins? he pretty much put the kabosh on collective-bargaining and public-employee workers now have to chip in more towards their pensions and health care and no more automatic deductions for union dues.  Before all this the recall of the GOP-controlled Senate also failed as did the effort to get rid of a conservative State Supreme Court justice and that was just a warmup for the Walker treatment.  So does this spell the death knell for unions? if there's enough Governors out there like Walker probably but I don't think the country is in as much of a union state of mind as back in the day.  For some reason when I think of unions I think of Jimmy Hoffa.

Over the past several years I worked with at least two young managers both men and it was quite obvious from their remarks they hated unions this despite our jobs in the food industry being heavily unionized.  So what was their #1 complaint?  I know when you talk about labor and politics the subject gets complicated but it was no more complex than when you have a union you can't FIRE somebody and let's face it in most workplaces there are definitely at least a couple of people who need to be shown the door at least this is the way the free market is supposed to work, better for everyone.  I can come up with at least two names myself right off the bat and so this is the #1 complaint even over and above fiscal concerns.  Good God have you been reading about the sexual goings-on between some HS teachers and their students in NYC? that's not even the point, sexuality has always been somewhat warped to begin with but it's existentially difficult to fire the tenured ones because...it gets complicated here.  There's a section on it in Glenn Beck's book Arguing with Idiots and ya gotta collect and collate your evidence first, get your witnesses and present your charges of course to this board or body or that and then all that has to finally go to an arbitrator at least some point down the road into the not-so-foreseeable future and even then the arbitrator for some strange reason often has a soft spot for the more pervy ones.  NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott would like the sole power to fire the truly bad ones but he has to lobby Albany first, that takes time and you know how that goes and the United Federation of Teachers likes the system the way it is after all they fought for it.  I don't recall this going on when I went to school as a young'en but then again we had nuns who'd crack a ruler over a student's knuckles so unless you were seriously into some S&M or a little clothespin action......

Pretty much in my place the only straight up reason you can fire somebody is if they steal something:)

The little irony of Obama's birth control mandate

Birth control or the oral contraceptive is not without its complications:

Does ObamaCare cover this?  Something tells me no and if not why not but if it did how is this saving $$$$$$?  A little feminist conundrum if you will, enjoy.

What this election is NOT about

- Osama bin Laden
- Women's lack of access to birth control
- Mormonism
- gay marriage
- Romney giving a gay kid a haircut
- Trayvon Martin/hoodies
- Stop 'n' Frisk
- Bain Capital

"Throw another log on the fire Cory"

What does OWS & ice-fishing have in common?

Not much.  I lost alot of respect for them when they stopped protesting throughout the winter months.  Sure some judge told them they can't camp out in Zuccotti Park anymore but what was it? by late December or early January they weren't even in the news anymore probably replaced by some Kardashian crap and the latest political scandal.  Lost alot of steam imo by hibernating like this, even the 'possum risks ice-frost every now and then to get a bite to eat.  The brave May Day protests to shut down work, schools and banks, expect more brave protests throughout the summer months, probably into the fall as well.  This blogpost is not about whether you agree or disagree with them, you probably don't and will comment as you see fit but real protesters protest in whatever kind of weather.  12 degress in the middle of January, you're out there with your frozen snot and a chapped ass, a rumbling belly because you're body expelled all that fine OWS cuisine and you have to use the Port-o-San at least 10X because you had a couple cups 'o' joe when you woke up in the morning, now that's Democracy in action and I can respect that politics be damned!  They really need to watch reels of those old-time black civil-rights protesters from the 60's getting pushed back by fire hoses and bitten by German Sheperds these hippy/yuppie hybrid malcontents.  Bunch 'o' pussies, meteorological cowards.  They don't make protesters like they used to:)

Obama's OBL playing card

I didn't think he'd do it, I mean even though I'm not surprised.  I'm talking of course about the ad on the one-year anniversary of whatever happened to Osama bin Laden and would Mitt Romney have done the same thing when he's on the record as saying we shouldn't spend billions of dollars and move heaven and earth to find one man.  Yeah that ad touting the fact that President Obama gave the go-ahead to take bin Laden out.  For me that'd be on a par with (dated allusion follows) "I did Marilyn Monroe."*  Sure you're proud of it but true class dictates you don't talk about it, no need to it's on the record and folks can weigh it accordingly and the second thing is for Obama to even play the OBL card means to me his accomplishments during his first term are so weak and/or controversial that he has to fall back on this but again I would have thought ultimately he'd listen to conventional political wisdom which simply dictates Don't Go There.  You know I still have people come up to me saying they don't think bin Laden's really dead and my Dad who served in the Navy during WWII says you don't give the world's most wanted terrorist who was responsible for the loss of almost 3,000 American lives a dignified and solemn burial-at-sea so even his greatest historical accomplishment somehow didn't follow the correct script.

* I wanted to update my point with a more modern celebrity but it's tough, Lindsay Lohan or Lady Gaga?  MM is legendary so the writer has to go with this.  Kardashian?

Beavers making a comeback in Westchester County NY

As I blogged about in the past there used to be a healthy beaver population behind the old UPS plant in Elmsford NY, that'd be part of the Saw Mill River but don't really know their current status since it's been awhile since my Dad took us as kids to see them busy at work.  Googling the subject recently there was one spotted a few years back in the Bronx River downaways possibly looking for a mate, got a writeup in the Times and I did watch a YouTube video of one in one of the lakes in the Blue Mountain Reservation in Peekskill which I hike alot.  Anyway today is my day off and it's a beautiful one, sunshiny and cool and nippy with a good breeze so parked along a stretch of the North County Trail in Yorktown Heights in upper Westchester County, it's right there on 35 just past the Amawalk Reservoir before you enter town.  I was walking in aways and noticed part of the paved bike path quite flooded in spots and there were about five sandbags down.  I noticed this about a week ago too and it was unusual in that we've been having a drought of late, reservoirs at no more than 90% capacity but today I saw that someone, probably the DEP put up a sign saying "Caution - Do Not Walk on Beaver Dam" and there it was in all its glory, at least two beaver dams made of various size twigs and branches and mud and that's what's been causing the stream to flood and slowly turn into a small pond.  The users of the trail which is quite popular here don't seem to mind and everyone seems to be accomodating to the beavers though I've yet to see one here.  It's a slice of heaven in these parts, a real tonic for your nerves and every now and then you need a magical moment like this.  BTW went home yesterday early afternoon and just got out of my car when a fancy maroon sedan with a chauffeur pulled up, the back door opened and a fine British gentleman in a suit asked me a set of three questions - "where is (a certain local address nearby)?", "where is the nearest cemetery?" (I gave him an answer but kinda muffed it, there was a closer one nearby but I'm lousy with spontaneous directions) and finally "where do you go to register a birth?"  I can understand the first question but the three in toto were oddballs especially going from birth to death and if anything it stimulates the mind on an otherwise boring day when you're getting ready to go in late for work.  Should I get all conspiratorial about it?

Ted Nugent is like your brother-in-law from hell

You may have to interact with him from time to time but he'll drag you down.  He causes the big family blowup and then sits in his darkened little bedroom with the hockey game on all Charles Manson-like, you don't know how exactly but he caused the whole thing.  He's the guy you take fishing with the idiot mouth like the time I was fishing in the Kensico/Rye Lake Reservoir in a rowboat one day and we passed these two nice girls sunbathing on a rock and yeah it would've been nice to stay in the area and angle a bit, maybe strike up a conversation but I just kept rowing and rowing away from the area and normally I wouldn't do that but I knew what could come out of the guy's mouth, some nice stream of pottyisms and you'd be like I just picked him up he's just some homeless guy I'm taking to the highway on the other side.  I don't understand these efforts at minor endorsements, I mean why not Romney going after Danny Bonaduce's support as well? get Kardashian's endorsement too in your back pocket I mean who the hell is Henry Kissinger anyway?  Nugent which sounds like a candy bar, no he doesn't threaten the President he'll just say things like he'd like to sautee his testicles and when the Social Service finally comes around when they're not whoring that is it was all meant figuratively speaking of course and crack open his skull come November in a figurative political sense and......The Fringe, it's time to lop 'em off, send 'em off into Space and orbit the Earth which reminds me I just saw the most interesting NOVA program on the Sun's corona last night:)

Will the Hilary Rosen remarks rise to the occasion?

By which I mean will she get the Rush treatment? I never really heard of this chick before as I usually don't watch CNN except when they have it on it seems all the time on the big Akai screen when I'm in the waiting room at the doctor's office and even then I'm not really paying attention ("just tell me when I'm gonna die doc!") but CNN commentator Hilary Rosen said about Ann Romney the wife of Mitt Romney: "Ann Romney has never actually worked a day in her whole life" this despite Ann Romney having raised five kids. Echoes of the other Hillary and chocolate-chip cookies and it seems to be a deeply-rooted feminist theme firmly stuck in their subconscious this business of the Stay At Home Moms (how dare they!). When Rush called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute it was The Most Evil Thing Ever Said (well the I-man once said nappy-headed 'hos so it's a tossup here) and libs are still talking about it or let me put it this way they haven't forgotten it and payback is a bitch. I actually find the Rosen comments somewhat more offensive but that's just me. Now President Obama and many assorted Democratic figures have rightly denounced and distanced themselves from the Rosen remarks and good for them, I've no complaint but that's not what I'm talking about here but rather will it have staying power? will it become a kind of weekslong obsession with calls for boycotts and other delectable punishments? In short will she get Rushed?

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.