Medical apps and insomnia, sometimes just technically wrong

The Web MD and Home Remedies apps both have a variation on the same official formula when it comes to insomnia. WebMD says if you don't fall asleep by 20 minutes get up and perform a quiet task (??) and Home Remedies advises if you don't fall asleep within 30 minutes go in another room and start reading but keep the tv off (maybe the book Stephen King's Insomnia?) Traditionally and down through the ages we've always defined "falling asleep" as that sharp and definitive moment when the curtain magically drops and you lose consciousness and awareness. For practical purposes that definition is fine and works most of the time but many times it doesn't work that way. The best starting point for managing your insomnia is to simply lie in bed the whole night with your eyes closed. It's a scientific fact which the apps somehow neglect to mention that if you do this you will have brief periods of sleep which you're unaware of hence the feeling of being awake all night. You'll make it through the next day adequately as opposed to following their advice and getting up every 20 minutes performing quiet tasks and going in the next room and picking up a copy of William Manchester's The Arms of Krupp. It helps if you have or cultivate good dream recall because during such torturous nights you can often remember brief dreams you've had and you can use this as a kind of yardstick. The other thing which I've never understood is the official medical line mandating that everyone needs 8 HOURS OF SLEEP A NIGHT otherwise bad medical things are gonna happen like maybe five years from now they'll have to remove a couple of diabetic toes. At this point you're working on your sleep and doing the best you can and you don't need this added pressure. Chuck it and while we're on the subject I've been wondering what else the medical apps which are so popular these days are wrong about. TIPS - Next time you have trouble sleeping count all the names of the Republican presidential contenders over and over again in your head. Charlie Rose also works for me or maybe you can DVR a late Sunday afternoon golf game:)

Defunding Planned Parenthood

I have sincerely tried to understand this liberal apoplexy whenever the subject of defunding Planned Parenthood is broached but when I've posed the question throughout the years I never get a clear answer or quite often no answer at all.  WHY is Planned Parenthood entitled to or why are we morally obligated to subsidize this organization through millions of dollars in federal taxpayer funds every year???  Even if I were pro-choice I wouldn't automatically come down on the side of the federal subsidy.  There are quite a few organizations in this country who do yeoman's work on the side of good and yet they don't receive such a subsidy and yet it is mostly a Democratic Article of Faith that PP needs to be federally subsidized and if you don't quite morally calculate it this way you're on the side of darkness and devils.  I have to say though I have always found the pro-abortionism of the NY Times editorial board to be quite stunning even with the string of undercover sting videos by the pro-life although I'm supposed to say the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress. So throw your coins in the fountain here or if you prefer just walk by and glance and give the old Sitemeter an uptick.

Thoughts on the Ashley Madison hacking issue

Ashley Madison has 37 million users? Why get married? play the field if that's your thing. I can't believe nobody but nobody saw this coming! OK so the hackers are threatening to release ALL the account information on all the millions of users of this online adultery website. That'd be real interesting when the List finally does come out. I wanna know if anyone I know is on the list. Don't tell me you're not curious. Reminds me of typing your VIN# on the government safer cars website to see if you have an open recall. How many open recalls on marriages are there gonna be in this new and massive adultery database? They can't be fixed either by ordering an airbag inflator or ignition part. Notice your spouse suddenly having more bouts of diarrhea? skid marks in the drawers? anxiety/stress, poor sleep? kinda quiet lately? goes for that extra tumbler of Scotch and made stronger than usual without the ice cubes and the ginger ale? Wanna see the doctor honey? Yup it should be interesting.

Auto recalls - the new normal

Car recalls are not unheard of but there's been too many of them in the news of late.  A good chunk of them have to do with airbag defects like the notice I got in the mail just yesterday for my 2005 Honda Civic.  Now let the year sink in for a minute, roll it around  as my notice also said the recall covers the years 2001-2005!!!  I've had my car for a decade now and I've driven it practically everywhere.  Danbury Mall, Poughkeepsie Galleria, Middletown New York among other daytripping destinations  and Honda Corporation tells me now?!?  Now picture the poor mechanics who work for Honda.  IN ADDITION to their normal regular daily work schedule they now have to do the recalls.  Parts may run out and then Honda offers to reimburse you for any alternative transportation you may have to take.  Total clusterf*×k.  Thanks guys.  May my next car not be a Honda.

Planned Parenthood, fetal harvesting and a roomful of beagles

Liberals have always acted like you're emotionally, morally and spiritually obligated to support Planned Parenthood. Actually that's not true, it's up to you. I'm not against birth control but I am personally against abortion so for me to support Planned Parenthood is a logical impossibility and the extended topic of fetal harvesting is definitely out of the question.  Doesn't make me a bad person. It's a larger issue for me than the latest undercover viral video made by the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress showing PP not in the best light. We can discuss that and folks are sure to bring up PP health clinics are big on breast cancer screenings, STD prevention and whatnot but now we got a little beagle problem on our hands. Let's say your local animal shelter does exemplary work for the most part, placing adoptions of pets, spaying and neutering and shots but in the room in the back they gas beagles maybe once a week. Some will support the shelter 100%, some will support part of the shelter and pretend the other room doesn't even exist and some may not go there at all because they're morally opposed to cat/dog euthanasia on principle. The grisly room in the back overrides everything else for some people. In my view that's perfectly valid and needs to be respected. Ditto those who withhold their moral support for PP because an integral part of their daily work is they do provide abortions. Again I'm not getting why I'm a bad person if I don't support the organization.

Greek Mythology

...that you can get endless freebies from the government and not have to pay the price in the end.  Now where can I get myself a gyro?

The Dukes of Hazzard problem

To start off I don't think this old show was particularly great but it anchored my Friday night tv schedule when I was growing up.  I remember it well, Dad and Mom would come home from food shopping and Dad would give us a box of Devil Dogs but Mom would say go eat an orange.  So TV Land is yanking the show because of the whole Confederate flag controversy which wouldn't be that much of a controversy had that young Aryan racist not shot up that black prayer meeting.  Wondering does Katy Perry now have to tweak her hit song "California Gurls" because it includes a line about Daisy Duke bikinis?

Take me to your 9 Leaders

Thoughts on the SCOTUS' latest rulings on ObamaCare and gay marriage...

More from the Opining Pope

Maybe after he's done with the environment and maybe the $15 minimum wage he can promulgate an encyclical on Donald Trump after he excommunicates Hannity.

Obama, man in search of a legacy

In a way you can't blame him, every president wants a legacy and not a Carter legacy.  In the twilight of his second term his motivation is obvious from his opening up relations with Cuba to his attempted but failed for now trans-Pacific trade agreement.  It's not that these things make the most sense necessarily but in terms of legacy he needs stuff.  Probably as his last term comes closer to winding down he'll come up with even more things from his grab bag of Ideas one of the latest being he's somehow trying to tie in climate change with national security.  Not sure how this works, should ISIS go green?  Can he do something on race and the police? doubt it.  Your ponderings......

Why throw rocks at a junkyard dog?

The Garland TX Mohammed cartoon shootings, our little version of Charlie Hebdo - ISIS is now claiming responsibility which even if true you'd think they'd be a bit hesitant as it hardly came off in their favor, not their best work you could say. Pamela Geller of her American Freedom Defense Initiative coordinated this event in TX and from what I understand it was some sort of cartoon contest for who could come up with the best sketch of the Prophet Mohammed I guess. I might be in the minority but her subway ads in NYC which the MTA had a huge problem with I don't find them the least bit offensive. I'm sure you've heard of them and they always have the angle of radical Islamists are anti-Semitic which they are so it's kind of hard for me to unravel just why the MTA has their collective knickers in a twist. However having said that what was the point of this little sketchathon in Garland TX? Are they suddenly interested in this particular faith system? Are they contributing to global culture? Was the whole affair designed to be provocative? (x) I'm thinking we have enough to worry about. Thanks guys and gals and all you Bob Ross wannabes.

What's up with the cops in this country?

If Eric Garner were a coyote roaming around one of the five boroughs of NYC he'd be alive today but professionally and humanely relocated - I wanted to work this thought into some kind of workable blogpost-title but it's somewhat unwieldy. Watching the coverage of the Baltimore protests/riots on the Today show this morning and a very conservative person said to me "you can understand their frustration" to which I nodded and said they (black folk/African-Americans) hardly ever get justice. These controversial cop cases involving unarmed black man who later die are mounting in this country and while I like to take them individually and analyze them at my own pace and I do have a fairly strong law-and-order bias cumulatively I find myself asking what's up with the cops in this country? Now practically everybody and their grandmother has a built-in video camera in their cell phones these days but the cops don't seem to care, they keep doing what they're doing whatever they're doing and it usually doesn't wind up good for the unarmed black man. WHY should 25-year old Freddie Gray have a broken spine while in police custody??? Now your typical conservative response will be but we don't know all the facts yet (tin ear on Race those conservatives) but ya wanna know something? What's up with the cops in this country?

Battle of the Dynasties

Now that Hillary has made it official let's just say it's Jeb Bush finally on the Republican side. Yeah the normal one in a field of Huckabees, Walkers and maybe Trumps Bush coming across by default like the blonde woman on The Munsters and so is dynastic politics ultimately good for the country? Already the GOPers who are officially in the ring are salivating to talk about Hill's character and baggage but the usual Samsonite way when dealing with the Clintons ain't gonna wash imo. Folks who vote straight Democrat always vote straight Democrat and so it'd be much better for Rand and Cruz and co. to put some Ideas on the table, visions, foreign policy conceptions. Yeah yeah I know Hillary is from leafy Chappaqua and not Getty Square in Yonkers and she's gonna make it a cornerstone of her campaign to talk about economic fairness and the average American. Hypocrisy thy name is Clinton but get over that and tell the country where YOU stand. Hillary bores me I can't tell you and she looks like she's doing it because she has to. BTW has Obama tried a Cuban cigar yet?

A guy flies a plane into the Alps and now this

The al-Shabab attack on Garissa University in northeastern Kenya - Should we start studying verses from the Koran at night before we go to bed just in case someone knocks on our door, points a gun in our face and starts doing a terrorist version of "Jeopardy"? Will a Koranic app on our smartphone suffice for the al-Shababster? How long will Obama go on pretending there's no religious dimension to this conflict?

Tragedy in the French Alps

The horrible news today, that Germanwings Airbus that crashed into a remote region of the French Alps was brought down deliberately by a kamikaze co-pilot killing all 150 passengers on board. He locked the other pilot out of the cockpit so that he couldn't even use the code to get back in and then pressed a button for a swift descent into the Alps. Of course the vast majority of suicides are just that, suicides and he could've simply downed some sleep aids with a bottle of Scotch so why this mad exit? Was he a lone wolf or part of a larger ISIS plot? Was he none of this but simply wanted to take others with him? The news gets stranger by the day.

It's not that I don't care about the Hillary e-mail scandal, it's that I don't care

Conservative commentators are sure riled up about this one and it doesn't even involve Sex. I have the barest skeleton knowledge of the scandal and that's because, well the title says it. For me it's like a scandal totally revolving around some technical violation like a worker not washing his hands after he comes out of the stall. Now there are still people who won't vote for Hillary Clinton because they feel the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered but at least this is more interesting subject matter. Look I watch quite a few of them true-crime shows like Snapped on the Escape channel and cops today are pretty sophisticated in these matters. A few of them are quite good at sniffing out the vaguest, the most subtle wisp of a major crime what with advanced forensics and all and believe me if there was really something there we'd hear about it. A couple conservative commentators are focused on Russell Brand's porn addiction and his new anti-porn stance (now there's an old subject I thought was kinda settled) but conservative commentary in general has been well-dispersed in its topics over the years. Instead of focusing on the things that really matter you'll get one that really goes off on a tangent, say Maggie Gallagher who starts ruminating about all things marriage and why this demographic group that never married is gonna be more unhappy and...it's just gets tiresome and all like this is gonna defeat ISIS. OK so about the scandal tell me why I should care.

Winnowing down the Republican field

The ones I would vote for: Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney (not running as of now). The one I would NOT vote for: Jeb Bush as I simply don't like the notion of dynastic politics. Christie seems hopelessly tarnished by Bridgegate even though final reports have come out exonerating him of any knowledge of the scandal. Rand Paul? gosh I gotta think about that one. I suppose push comes to shove and on the other side why it is mandatory and in the stars that Hillary HAS TO be the Democratic nominee positively escapes me. She seems dull and tired even though she's trying to jazz up her image of late by being more peppy or something. Perhaps Bruce Jenner can be in charge of LGBT outreach in a Clinton Administration. Our old friend George Zimmerman has been totally cleared by the DOJ so he can continue going on messing up his life in private. Wondering how a President McCain would have dealt with the problem of ISIS. He'd probably just nuke the whole of Iraq and Syria and start over. "Jihadi John" has finally been positively identified according to all the newswires today, an educated man in his mid-20's from West London with a computer degree who went radical somewhere along the line. I fail to see the attraction of a 7th century-style caliphate and why some bored teen girls wanna join up so this is well over my head. Take it from there......

Radical Islam explained (sort of)

The best analysis I ever came across is from Pat Buchanan's book Where the Right Went Wrong (Thomas Dunne 2004) in the chapter "Is Islam the Enemy?" This short and very readable chapter (without footnotes thank God) gives a quick history of Islam from the Prophet Muhammed to the various caliphs which followed his death, the Crusades and the Ottoman Empire. Minority view on the Crusades here: they were originally the Catholic Church's response to the original aggressive and conquering behaviour of Islamic warriors (e.g. retaking Jerusalem from them). That's the history here's the theology. Islam along with Judaism and Christianity is a monotheistic and Abrahamanic faith system. Muhammed greatly revered Jesus as a great prophet and held in high regard His mother Mary but Islam fundamentally rejects Trinitarianism (big deal you say) so at first glance this presents a major puzzlement as to the radical Islamists' hostility to Christians in general as shown in that recent mass beheading of those 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. Buchanan sheds light on this. Early in their history both Islam and Christianity were gaining millions of followers and so it wasn't the minor religions that presented the greatest threat to Islam's hopefully worldwide influence and dominance but Christianity. This is like a theological business model if you will where one major brand hates the competition and attempts to drive it out and would certainly explain why they focus on the Pope and Rome so much. Lest this become too long a dissertation we'll save everything else for the Comments section.

The conservatives' wet dream - Brian Williams suspended for six months

God they go on and on about it! Then the other thing you hear about ALOT is what is Obama doing exactly about ISIS and terrorism in general? Obama is the DroneMaster (sounds like a good name for an app) and has more hits of top terror leaders under his belt than Bush ever had and is leading that international coalition against ISIS in Iraq and northern Syria so I don't understand the nature of the question, in fact it verges on stupid. Bruce Jenner - I honestly think the man/woman has too much time and money on his hands. Maybe Kanye West can make a song about it. I've been doing alot of walking in the snow lately and people don't hike in the snow as much as they used to seems to me. They leave half-hearted footpaths in the snow and don't maintain them by walking everyday or maybe it's the coyote snowtracks I've been seeing lately so they turn around and go home and play with their smartphones and pack on a few more pounds that they could've lost by following the coyote tracks. Let's see what's going on in Space? For you eggheads out there they found these twin stars in some nebula out there that are gonna merge soon and die or explode or something. God a six-month suspension and he didn't even use steroids!! maybe he was just trying to get women with his barroom tales:)

Return to the Dark Ages in the age of the Twitterverse

Here's my rough and very imperfect knowledge of the history of terror. Not that long ago, in recent memory in fact most terror was politically motivated (the Red Brigades, Carlos the Jackal, the IRA, Munich) and much, sometimes most of it had to do with the eternal and never-ending Israeli/Palestinian conflict. FF to the present with Al-Shabab, Boko Haram and Islamic State and it's pretty much do you read the Quran? no? you have to die infidel! With the latest outrage, the burning in a cage of that Jordanian pilot I don't see how you can't have boots on the ground at this point. Airstrikes alone brings to mind using a can of Raid and you're shooting at the cockroaches scurrying around in your kitchen. Sure you'll get a few, perhaps many but the rest go in the cracks and crevices of your floorboards so basically you have to find a way to get in there, get to the root of the problem. So basically and this is what I don't get unless it has to do with protecting hostages ISIS has this safe and fairly large staging area in some desert somewhere in which they continue to produce a series of highly polished but gruesome videos along the line of Faces of Death. Apparently they feel safe doing this, some kind of drone-free airspace I guess which is only another reason we really need an international coalition of boots on the ground and I don't care if King Abdullah II quotes Clint Eastwood. Lastly many conservatives are blaming Obama himself for the rise of ISIS by not continuing Bush's adventures in Iraq indefinitely when truth be told Bush's original actions led to the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi which later metamorphosed into ISIS and it bears repeating while Saddam Hussein was a very bad man he had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. Meanwhile Americans are continuing to flock to see that sniper film while Boko Haram just took almost 100 civilian lives in northern Cameroon.

Why I won't be seeing "American Sniper"

It's not that I think it's an immoral movie or the late US sniper Chris Kyle didn't do what was necessary during time of war but philosophically I'm not really into violence so I don't feel the compulsion to go out and see it. What he did in Iraq, his job if you will I can't really quibble with but should it be celebrated? Personally speaking I never held up the pilot of the Enola Gay as a hero of mine, I prefer to think of MLK, Ghandi or the police officers who are killed yearly in the line of duty. I very rarely actually go out to the movies anymore, maybe once or twice a year at best. Last one I saw was the Mockingjay movie only because I read the Hunger Games trilogy and I want to be consistent. Drone strikes against terrorists, sniping and all that - BB's more of a fan but the problem is more Hydra-like. You drone one or two terrorists and ten or twenty more are ready to take their place. I'm reminded of cockroaches and the problem is it's never really solved. In fact it's easier to get rid of cockroaches. OK so I'm not on this movie bandwagon to go out and see it at least not right now:)

I Am Charlie

No you're not. Most people don't like free speech. BTW is it still not about religion?

Maybe now he can have that philosophical discussion with God about abortion

No judgementalism towards pro-choice politicians intended in the heading here, just thought it would be a good working title. Mario Cuomo, former three-term Democratic Governor of the Empire State - I never liked him politically. I will have to say though he was intelligent, articulate and thoughtful and learned too even if he did pepperize his continuing pro-choice argumentation with bits and pieces of sophistry just for flavor. This came out or evolved out of his thing with the then Archbishop then Cardinal John O'Connor of NY, also the late O'Connor so maybe he can join in the divine discussion too. Cuomo did however impose his personal morality re the death penalty on the state of NY which probably went a long way towards Republican George Pataki taking over the state-helm. At least Cuomo took pains to say he was personally opposed to abortion unlike the son who's like full-bore ahead oil up the abortion machinery. Am I talking about ABORTION too much? Well yeah but my sitemeter's been kinda frozen of late but when I discuss the A-subject every once in a while the commenters who come out of the woodwork who I never heard of before scold me for always talking about The Topic but when I do post on other matters which is most of the time they're nowhere to be found. BB sticks around though. He did do other things as governor besides issue dissertations/philosophical treatises on abortion so gladly discuss. Mario Cuomo 1932-2015 RIP.

'Tis the season of politicizing tragedy

I'm speaking of course of the assassination of two NYPD officers in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn last Saturday afternoon. Consensus analysis is the psycho did what he did in revenge for the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the police. Pat Lynch head of the NY PBA has said Mayor de Blasio has blood on his hands. What in hell is that supposed to mean??? Lately Pat Lynch is always angry about something and he's coming across as a tad irrational. Then there's the coverage of all things cop in the NY Post the only right-wing paper in town. They seem to be saying the tragedy was caused by the last few weeks' nationwide protests over the deaths of Michael Brown and Garner. Um, protesting is a part of our very democracy, a democratic lynchpin or pillar and nobody has to agree with everybody but it's there your right to express yourself and be heard sans violence of course. It seems to me if more in the NYPD and the right-wing paper of record at least conceded that look excessive force was used in the Garner case it would go a LONG way towards easing national tensions across-the-board. There are those who are anti-cop and they're very anti-cop and those who are pro-police are pro-police no matter what the case or situation. Opposite hardcores imo never make for a better society, no room for compromise or even listening for cryin' out loud. Newtown happened in 2012 just about two weeks before Christmas and now this happened even closer to Xmas. Don't know what to make of that it's just an observation:)

It really shouldn't be pitch black at 5PM

This is anything you want to discuss. It really is time for the Congress to address whether these yearly time changes serve a purpose anymore. I can imagine someone who recently lost a loved one, is just managing their grief and the sun starts going down around 4:30 in the afternoon. It's weird and not good for your head, it's depressing and ominous and is likely to remind my example here of death itself. On the health front it's now practically a maxim by the medical community that everyone needs 8 hours of sleep per night for maximum health. I've actually read better, more insightful and certainly more realistic articles on the subject of sleep all written in the 1950's (e.g. Dr. Abraham Low). I liked The Hunger Games - Mockingjay Part I better than some of the ornery critics who panned it. That's not to say it deserves five stars or even four but a respectable three at the least. As the penultimate part of the last book of the trilogy it's naturally not going to have the most action (DUH). The ruble is in trouble, there seems to be more lone wolf ISers out there looking to make some action like in the Land Down Under and I still can't get over the sheer weirdness of the Cosby Matter. Anti-cop protests, Joan Rivers, really anything you want:)

The mistake of conflating Ferguson and Eric Garner

Everybody seems to do this, it's become generic trademark commentary on race. Civil rights activists act like a white cop in Missouri decided one day to shoot an unarmed black teen with his hands up and some (but not all) right-wingers see Eric Garner the same way they see Michael Brown (my God the guy was a criminal selling those loosies). My view: the grand jurors in Ferguson did not come up with an unreasonable decision though I might disagree with it whereas in Staten Island the grand jurors did come up with a perfectly unreasonable decision. I take these cases one by one as they come up which is the best way. In the case of Eric Garner it would be far easier and more productive for conservatives to simply admit this cop did wrong, admit it, learn from it and move on instead of hunkering down as they always do in defense of the cops and smearing those who disagree as somehow being anti-cop. It seems grand juries these days are reluctant to indict the men and women in blue. Righties will point out that they hear reams of more evidence than we ever get to hear but I think it goes deeper than this. It's a cozy-and-toasty emotionalism on the part of those hand-picked from society to become jurors that ultimately gives the police officer the bennie of the doubt. So far the NYC protests are far more civilized than what went down in St. Louis, a social model for proper but passionate protest. The ME in NYC says Garner died from a police chokehold, Det. Daniel Pantaleo said to the jurors he was using a technique he learned at the police academy. All I can say is God help us!

The fog of race

I have to say it was dramatic and intense coverage over on the CW Channel 11 News here, while the prosecuting attorney over there in Ferguson Missoui was droning on and on about the finer points of the grand jury verdict on the bigger split screen they were showing live and growing reaction among the large crowd gathered to hear the no indictment verdict against Ferguson PO Darren Wilson in the tragic Michael Brown case. It didn't take long for the first police cruiser to be set on fire and for the tear gas canisters to be shot in the air. I've noticed more and more in these type racially-oriented protests the increasing number of white protesters joining the African-Americans so it might sound contradictory to say we've made some racial progress but sometimes you have to look for it. There's no way in hell PO Wilson can go back on the streets in Ferguson or any predominantly black community across the country. He'll just have to make some sort of drastic career change so that's a kind of social price against him despite the verdict that was rendered by the jury.

Hiking your troubles away

On the Purple (History) Trail at the Cranberry Lake Preserve in N. White Plains NY. I really think for a greater challenge they should make a hiking trail modeled on Kim Kardashian's rump.

Electile Dysfunction

The NY Times gives the Repubs a 70% chance of retaking the Senate by a slim margin, Wash. Post gives them 90% odds. Practically ALL the Democratic ads in my neck of the woods touted the candidate's strong pro-choicism but the Times recently had an article about the Dems highlighting birth control issues front and center while putting jobs and the economy on the backburner. Dunno, seems like they have some type of prurient interest. Cuomo will most likely get reelected Governor of the Empire State but Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino seems fairly popular just judging from all the lawn and road signs I've seen. I still kinda prefer the old-time voting booth with the curtain and the levers. You no longer have 100% privacy since if you're a little rusty you'll probably ask the election clerk for help with the ballot sheet going in the scanner. I'm actually surprised at this point you can't just vote from your smartphone. Sure there are issues to work out but everybody's confidently doing their banking on them. I was an election worker once in Dobbs Ferry. Had to be there like 5AM and stayed 'til 9PM. Never again. It'll be nice though when all the political ads are over and we can get back to those Cialis commercials where the husband gives his wife that goofy look in the kitchen.

In other Pope Francis news

Ebola and ISIS have kind of consumed the news of late but there's also the gay synod, I mean the synod that addresses gays and the Church. The draft of the draft is widely seen as being pro-gay, the only thing missing are the sex ads and Pope Francis always seems to be flirting with changing church teachings but then denies having led you on. He's a bit of a theological coquette but he still gives you that tingle. So the pre-draft/working paper talks about the gifts gays bring to the Church and society. Nobody's denying this (interior decorating, the arts, Chaz Dean's WEN Shampoo) but the more traditional wing of the Church wants to crack down harder on the sodomites and those couples in general who are living in sin. Now Francis always noted for saying Trendy Things has also said you can believe in evolution and God at the same time, there's no contradiction. I've no problem but do the evolutionists think that? Does Stephen Hawking agree with Francis? doubt it. OK so the church cafeteria is open and I'm gonna go grab me a bottle of abbey ale:)

Are you ready for Ebola?

It must have something to do with gay marriage. I'm not a medical authority but I do support a travel ban until it's contained. CDC Director Frieden is way over his head since the most serious thing he had to do as NYC Health Commissioner under Bloomberg was to try to ban big sugary drinks. The Drudge Report lately could be more accurately titled the Ebola Report and on the flipside the other school of thought that's been developing is that the media is talking about this way too much, a journalistic preoccupation or obsession or overkill. Then again I can understand it too since we have a decent chance at a real medieval plague here especially since nobody's on the same page. I myself get instinctively cranky whenever a subject is ground into a fine dust. As Saty once said everyone knows about the tits and I feel the same way about Ebola at least for now or I was but the CDC doesn't inspire me with confidence so I'm beginning to worry. FDNY now can't say "Ebola" over the dispatch for fear some nerd might be listening in on some scanner. OK so BB, Saty and maybe Dave can respond:)

Voluntarily signing over your privacy

Yesterday I got in the mail a questionnaire from my doctor's hospital group. I knew beforehand I wasn't gonna send it in, just a vibe you get but I read it anyway. First few questions the gist was how are your doctor's visits, did you call him up within the past 3 months with a medical concern, did he discuss your blood results in a prompt fashion and overall how is he doing on a scale of 1 to 10. I fairly like my doctor who's a young guy, a budding professional and I didn't want to get him in trouble. I WISH there was a section on colonoscopies though and I would editorialize when you wiki it there are at least 3 or 4 other major and valid screening tests for colorectal and yet when you go to the doctor they act like there's only one procedure (the worst one). Anyway towards the end another question asked how would you rate your overall physical health? That's hard to say, I engage in the proper John Tesh-recommended behaviors and habits during the first half of the day and in the latter half I tend to have a cigar and later on some brandy, half ascetic and half hedonist I guess you could say. The question after that how would you rate your mental and emotional health? Dunno, why don't you leave me alone? I've had alot of philosophical and spiritual suffering in my life but I never thought of it in terms of mental health just the human condition. I mean what a useless question anyway, most folks are gonna go with the correct answer of at least good and nobody's gonna admit they're nuts at least on paper. The whole thing smacked of bureaucratic Big Brotherism, overly prying like a mental colonoscopy. Then I pretty much tore it up and chucked it in the garbage. Nosy nosy nosy:)

The international coalition of the unwilling

My position which has evolved is that there needs to be an international coalition of boots on the ground in both Iraq and northern Syria to combat the psychopathic evil of ISIS. Also this constant conservative sniping at how Obama is handling this international crisis/tragedy is not part of the solution and usually at such times with such a real foreign threat out there their usual counsel is to get behind the president. Even Canada has gotten involved but whenever a new coalition partner makes an announcement it's usually along the lines of we're willing to do airstrikes in Iraq but not Syria. Well ISIS has adapted to airstrikes since they pretty much knew they were coming and Obama should never have ruled out boots on the ground so categorically when his own generals are saying otherwise. Lastly the FBI says they know the identity of "John the Beatle" or that masked hostage-beheader seen in those infamous ISIS videos but are withholding this information and not making it public for strategic reasons it is to be presumed. I don't know why since not making the name a matter of the international record has not stopped the latest hostage Brit Alan Henning from meeting the same fate. So those are my thoughts and I would say the matter is urgent.

You may not be able to call 911 but at least you can browse

I kinda like it when Technology fails. First off I'm sick of all the technology commercials on tv by which I mean mainly smartphones and tablets. You need Siri in your life I don't know what to tell you. The debut of the new iPhone6 and 6+, people waited in line for blocks and now they're grumbling on social media. Seems the 6+ bends when you have it in your pocket all day but people c'mon you're not supposed to sit on it! Then there's the issue of dropping calls but at least you can check your Twitter feed in the meantime. Others are complaining the phablet version is too big to stick in your pocket and yet the coming screen sizes were the big draw in the first place. More hacked nude celebrity photos have been posted recently, makes ya think the only thing young Hollywood A-listers and B-listers do with their phones is take nude selfies. Social Observation: is it possible for a woman to walk around Target or Bed Bath & Beyond without looking at her smartphone half or most of the time? Tech-commercials and pill commercials that's like all you see on tv:)

Axis of Isil

I thought President Obama's speech last night detailing his global strategy for dealing with IS was rather brief and subdued. I thought it would be longer and more impassioned but I'm not against it and generally agree with the tenor. Obama has quite obviously chosen to use the label "ISIL" or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant instead of the more popular "ISIS" and there are reasons for this. Using ISIS constantly the way most in the media now do makes it sound like we're in a war with the ancient Egyptian goddess and also using this term all the time has that "Get Smart"/comic book feel to it (remember Don Adams and his nemesis KAOS?). Another reason Obama prefers the term ISIL is it definitely refers to the threat IS poses to the nation of Israel since Israel falls under the definition of the Levant along with other countries like Jordan. I haven't really read the reviews yet in particular those of the always nitpicking right-wingers but the war and it is a war will eventually include airstrikes in northern Syria and it is the pundit's view that just like Bush left the Iraq war with Obama Obama will leave the Syrian mess to the next president. Syria has already bombed certain IS targets in the north and I couldn't help thinking if they could have they would have used chlorine gas again. The Sotloff family spokesperson has alleged the so-called moderate forces fighting Assad, the Free Syrian Army, sold Steven Sotloff for a price to IS but the State Dept. denies this. OK thoughts:)

Mad dot in the universe

The God Problem - You finally meet God someday and go to him "how come you didn't do anything about ISIS?" God: "Who?" then you see Him quickly searching wikipedia. God truly has swarms of galaxies solar systems and other planets to worry about but then there's the guardian angels. As a Catholic we're taught they exist but I see no evidence. Where were James Foley and Steven Sotloff's guardian angels? (angel walks in on the imminent beheading: "what's going on here?" bullets passing harmlessly through his Michael Landon-type body to the utter amazement of the crazed jihadists). Are our guardian angels too busy on their smartphones? Foley even prayed the rosary during his captivity in Libya, did it help? A priest or theologian might say it helped his soul but did it help his situation? Personally speaking my faith crisis really started after Newtown which imo is the most shocking news event to happen in my lifetime after 9-11. We still don't know why the bug-eyed psycho did it and it didn't change Wayne LaPierre one iota so there goes your great Saul-like conversion on the road to the gun show. My Mom just had a dear friend die of cancer, why doesn't al-Baghdadi get cancer or at least a damn bug egg-sac in his brain to say nothing of Kim Jong-un? Why doesn't the executioner/beheader the day before suddenly get a heart attack instead of your brother-in-law or dearly beloved aunt? Ray Rice was done in by TMZ not God but maybe God works through TMZ? Look it's fairly obvious to me God the Creator or an architect of the Universe or a central planner exists but does He care? Big Speech tonight, no not God although He should be giving one too:)

iCloud Storage for Life's most intimate moments

Re that celebrity nude photo hacking scandal personally speaking I don't use my smartphone for those purposes. I'd be slightly trepidatious and I don't care if it's on your device, in the Cloud, on the moon whatever. Maybe it's trendy right now among the Hollywood set, take a picture of your twat and put it in the Cloud but even if you delete it from your device it's still right up there floating around in the atmosphere somewhere along with Anthony Weiner's pecker. BTW what's Ariana Grande doing on the list? Now the time and effort by these pervo-nerds to actually pull this off by one hacker's admission it took literally months of time and hard effort. Two things do they work and think of the energy that could have been committed to a cancer cure instead or even a successful weight loss program! Apple and iOS are supposed to be impervious to these types of things not like the ever dangerous Android operating system but I've always said that's only a matter of time. The new iPhone 6 is supposed to have a bigger screen something like 5+" and I'm thinking a phone should be rather fairly small to begin with. Ya got a phone now with the screen the same size as a small tv set - "Excuse me I have to make a phone call" - and there's an old guy at church I know has a big one by the size of his black case prominently strapped to his belt for all the parishioners to see. Probably an LG, showoff. So what kind of gallery do you have? BB's smart, he doesn't have a phone.

The rise of the appy savage

Their mentality and overall religious outlook is straight out of the 1400's yet they know how to upload videos to YouTube, cave-dwelling techno-savages who even make trendy and newsy references to events in Ferguson, MO. Next thing you know they'll be blogging. I thought YouTube like all mainstream websites of this nature have a TOS, you know you can't just submit a video say of how much you hate N-words or harass your ex-girlfriend so why is it technically ok for ISIS to upload a video showing the beheading of freelance US reporter James Foley? Various Islamic terror elements also take to Twitter, Twitter feeds, Twitter accounts - they've finally joined the Twitterverse those religious troglodytes! Now libs spend a good part of every waking day concerned about the threat posed by the Religious Right (oooooohhh!) but when was the last time Pat Robertson beheaded an American professor who passionately teaches evolution and then put it on YouTube? ISIS has said the beheading was in retaliation for US airstrikes, they just lost control of the Mosul Dam and the peshmerga are on the move so this is their way of making a Statement. Obama needs to keep pounding away however and I don't see how after such an atrocity you can rule out boots on the ground which should give McCain's heart a flutter or two. So stop worrying about Pat Robertson and Gary Bauer and start worrying about ISIS coming to a mall near you:)

What's up with the Ferguson PD?

If you were a troglodyte the past week and just popped on the tube you'd swear there was a major terrorist attack in the community of Ferguson MO. OK so let's rap about race and the police again. Despite my recent post re the NYPD for me Eric Garner is not Sean Bell is not Michael Brown is not Amadou Diallo and why don't we throw in Tawana Brawley while we're at it. I approach these cases on a purely individual basis and you can make the case that maybe Sean Bell or his friend was driving his SUV towards the cops OR that yes maybe teen Michael Brown was tussling with a police officer in his squad car and went for his gun after strong-arming a convenience store. Look I get it but put these other cases together and start comparing and they all highlight even more at least for me that the Eric Garner case is the weakest in terms of the NYPD POV & PR. He wasn't running down the street half-naked waving a machete, he didn't have a gun or a device that resembled a gun or even took out a black wallet the way Amadou Diallo did in the Soundview section of the Bronx when four officers shot him to death. So for parts of the right-wing like the New York Post to unreservedly support the cops as a general rule is a huge socio/political mistake imo if the GOP wants to get serious about attracting the Black Vote and no Bo Dietl doesn't know more than the NYC ME. Missouri - well at least conservatives are starting to wake the hell up by criticizing the increasing militarization of our nation's police forces what with all that surplus army stuff the federal gov't doled out to them in years past. Actually you know something? conservatives all conservatives should start reading Twelve Years a Slave if they haven't already and watch the movie as it's obvious they have no interest in or never got the whole Black Experience. Lastly conservatives waste far too much time talking about Al Sharpton:)

The latest celebrity tragedy

While not an epidemic exactly more and more Hollywood stars have gone off the deep end of late as in over the cliff - Heath Ledger, Philip Seymour Hoffman and now Robin Williams (1951-2014 RIP). Of course the truism holds "money can't buy you happiness" but there are deeper forces at work as there always are - drugs and/or alcohol abuse, depression etc. I kinda think the Bieber and Charlie Sheen antics are all for show, they're actually the least likely to off themselves in some fashion. There was a period of time when almost every movie I watched it seemed had Robin Williams in some kind of starring role. With him what comes to mind is not just a great actor but versatile. To go from comedy to high drama ain't easy, can't imagine Will Ferrell doing that. The last one I watched I think was Insomnia with him and Al Pacino. Suicide imo is the most undignified way to go but ok so we have something to talk about besides Ebola and those immigrant kids. Thoughts? You can even blame Obama if you like:)

I never thought I'd agree with Sharpton

but...I don't think I'll be installing the NYPD app anytime soon. NYPD has a force of about 35,000, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says they'll have to retrained all of them. I was never big on this broken windows theory of policing or go after the squeegee men and the homeless basically and the Chinese guy with his left nut hanging out. When I used to drive the van for the wholesale flower company I had to go down the city really early one morning, got off the West Side Highway somewhere and there was one of them guys with the bucket and the squeegee and my windshield was dirty anyway so I gave him a buck. Polite, didn't bother me, didn't feel threatened, didn't feel gangsterized. By some convoluted logic of modern policing go after the graffiti artist and the serial killer won't take the girl into the woods, dunno. PBA issued a statement saying that while their thoughts and prayers go out to the Garner family this tragedy wouldn't have occured if Mr. Garner didn't resist arrest. Vile. Disgusting. Offensive. That's a union for you and if Giuliani or even Bloomberg were still mayor they'd be chiming in too on the side of the cops of course. All conservatives can ever talk about is Sharpton's rhetorical style but imo he's being mighty civil in this case. Broken Windows - Broken Lives.

Why not just have a coyote app?

Actually it'd be far cheaper than subscribing to Sarah Palin's new Web TV Channel.

On the South County Trail in Westchester County

No Sasquatch pics yet.

Maybe it's not so much the NSA, maybe it's Google

Slow day at work so we got to discussing Google. A woman thinks Google+ is a good idea but I said I wasn't comfortable. That's a public profile so if you're not big on privacy folks can get to see that you downloaded The Advanced Guide to Rimjobs let's say or a self-help book regarding substance abuse. I was reading an app review for Yonkers PD Tips and there's an actual guy's name who commented and I clicked something and got to see his literal movie, book and music library on whatever devices Mike has. Now they make conservatives out to be nosy people poking around in folks' business but I really don't care to know all this. Google Maps and the Street View, guy at work told me how they get those images. They have a team who drive these white cars around with yellow things on top that take the pictures and they do this every six months. Hey BB there's a job for ya. Of course out in CA Google is test-driving driverless cars and then there's all the Glassholes out there. It's ALL OUT THERE but it ain't all good imo. Dunno, maybe the Snowden rage is misplaced or could be divvied up more. Mommy there's a Google monster under my bed.

OK so maybe now we can all hate the SCOTUS

For decades now conservatives have hated the Supreme Court because of the Roe vs. Wade decision among other things. There are other things of course but that was/is primary. NOW liberals including feminists and the New York Times hate the SCOTUS because of its recent Hobby Lobby decision even though for the longest time liberals have counseled accepting Roe as the Law of the Land mainly because the SCOTUS said so. Here's a thought though, maybe the Supreme Court shouldn't be the most powerful branch of government in the Land. If it takes the various cycles of the political pendulum to see that so be it.

I'm not an appy camper today

I lost my techno-virginity a few years back, I know a few moves. Now I don't have the same knowledge as one of those e-dorks you see hanging out at the public library all day with their devices but I do feel I'm fairly literate in the area now. We can talk about the pros and cons of sideloading .apk files and I'm comfortable. So lately I installed on my tablet one of those much-ballyhooed cleaner/sweeper apps to improve memory and storage and so there's an option for cleaning your media files so I read the prompts and messages very carefully and took my time mulling it over. Now nowhere does the app say this will delete your media files, the very word "delete" is not even used but the operative word is clean so eventually I went ahead. Lo and behold my entire music library was deleted as well as a few videos I downloaded. Not the end of the world, there were no important docs but I just sat there on my bed and it was a warm and muggy night and I was just stunned just the same. Mind you this was an app update so I went to read the app reviews and the vast majority were negative. Now instead of actually addressing the complaints of the app-users the Mobile Support Team kept repeating one or two stock answers over and over again. Very annoying. So I HAD to uninstall the little monster yesterday else it might one day actually eat up, inhale my tablet. I've kind of come to the conclusion over time that while Apple is vastly more expensive than anything Android the iOS is not as annoying and frustrating as the Android OS and they say malware is not really a problem. Read any tech support forum devoted to Android users and you get the drift. WHY all the suffering, is it necessary? I mean folks are busy, they don't have time for this. So yesterday I did my first Google Maps street views and while it's creepy it's also fascinating. Is that BB there trimming his hedges? All these techno-issues though, no wonder everyone's walking around so irritable. Maybe this is what happened to Shia LaBeouf, dunno:)

Conservatives, Vietnam Syndrome and Obama

In a way Bush's foreign policy has become Obama's foreign policy, try as he may Obama cannot fully extricate himself from the situation. We're probably gonna see some big-time action in Baghdad starting with air strikes and as much as Obama distanced himself from Bush and the Bush Doctrine during the campaigning inevitably he's become Bush 2. Now I read a fair amount of conservative commentary, have a few issues of National Review and The Weekly Standard on my tablet and in my view there are many, maybe even most conservatives who when push comes to shove feel we should have stuck it out in Vietnam so the same thinking of course applies to the Middle East. Obama has the perfectly reasonable position that we can't stay there forever but for your average conservative and that's a neo-type no matter how many body bags let's get the job done. Radical Islam, a couple people here don't get it but easily it poses a far greater threat than the Christian Right. I mean c'mon purity balls vs. massacres at shopping malls. In coastal Africa the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group al-Shabab has been going door to door in villages during the night while people have been tuned into the World Cup and asking the men basic questions about Islam and if they fail to answer correctly they get shot, a kind of terrorist version of Jeopardy (Moustafa: "what was the name of Mohammed's wife?"). Imagine the Jehovahs doing this going door to door with their Watchtowers and if you brush 'em off they open fire. Of course over at the Hannity Forums you can't really talk like this because you're questioning a faith system. Look I'm no fan of Obama but on Iraq the bulk of the blame goes to Bush.

App Permissions - for the NSA to collect your data

How many saw Brian Williams special interview with Edward Snowden last night? Probably didn't make much of an impression on ole BB though we learned for instance that the NSA can turn on your smartphone even when it's off and take pictures. Don't know what they'd do with my cat though or me watching Home Shopping Network. Brian Williams called this chilling and then we also learned that Mr. Snowden was not just a low-level "hacker" or NSA contractor but had worked for the CIA as a spy overseas, had training in this area and so knows what he's talking about. Also he had a nice haircut and for the ladies out there a couple of moles here and there. NSA's main concern is preventing the next big terrorist attack or even small ones leading up to that but with all these lone fuseboxes out there getting ready to blow who populate the social media and leave copious e-trails with not infrequent weird rantings you'd think there'd be an algorithm for that. I mean if we're gonna give up our privacy en masse in these massive data-mining sweeps it's not too much to ask to go to the mall or get a bite to eat in relative safety. He also said ask the US Government why he wound up in Russia. Then I went to bed.

Other thoughts on the Santa Barbara shootings

I was watching the PBS Newshour last night and Judy Woodruff was interviewing reporter Adam Nagourney of The New York Times. I didn't know this but Mr. Nagourney stated quite clearly that the guns 22-yr. old shooter Elliot Rodger used in the seaside massacre in Isla Vista were all legally purchased and CA has some of the nation's strictest gun control laws on the books. I've long felt while I'm fairly in support of gun control in many cases and welcome some legislation to that effect I'm also realistic enough to know it's not the magic bullet if you'll pardon the pun. It was truly a bizarre manifesto Rodger left behind and my first thought was angel dust or bath salts but you know what's scary? if you're this Nutz and you're NOT on drugs, I mean at least ex-rapper Big Lurch can fall back on that. My other thought was let's say Rodger in his YouTube videos and other postings steered clear of the more violent and weirder elements it would have come across as angry and whiny but truth be told many men would have agreed with him. So instead of discussing maybe a valid social issue or two once the person behind the "cause" resorts to violence that invalidates the cause right off the bat so then the trending topic turns to potential armies of psycho virgins training in the caves somewhere instead of maybe what alot of men can relate to. I honestly think if he was this far gone take away ALL his guns he would have easily found another way to commit mayhem perhaps with a samurai sword say. This is one of the very rare times when I actually agree with the Scientologists as I don't put much stock in psychiatry as a whole as the guy had his therapists and counselors and look what happened. The debate needs to go beyond gun control and the latest theories of the shrinks but that's where it seems to be stuck:)

Radical Islam still happens

It's nice to see Hollywood celebrities and liberals in general finally addressing the real war on women. One yearns for a Jack Bauer-type to take on Boko Haram and rescue those 276 Nigerian schoolgirls being held hostage probably in some primeval jungle but what we got instead is Obama's Hamlet tendencies in the foreign policy arena, hashtags, Anne Hathaway and hey can you believe they're STILL talking about Donald Sterling? At this point I DON'T CARE, don't care if he has the N-word tattooed on his ass cheek. I think the latest version of 24 rocks but if there's one thing Chloe constantly looking like Ozzy Osbourne fighting terrorism is massively distracting. 24 too is getting back to having radical Islamist elements in their plotline and all this just might take the spotlight off the far lesser threat if you can call it that of the Christian Right and Gary Bauer (BB & Saty opening). Some Techno Thoughts (Again) The other day at work everyone was walking around looking at their smartphones and the thumb was constantly scrolling. You know one day homo sapiens is gonna evolve to the point where we all have thumbs like the great apes and we'll be walking hunched over into traffic. They say technology has an asocial effect, don't wanna say anti-social but there are times to be perfectly honest when I'd rather be with my tablet than my friend no offense. Downloaded a great app the other day, not just a file manager but a real file explorer so you can actually see what's taking up all that storage space and why. Root capabilities is even on the menu but that's soapie territory and I don't intend to go there. OK so to tie it all together do you think Boko Haram really cares about the First Lady's hashtag?

The contradictory world of technology

This happened to me once, you'll be on your tablet and a startling message comes up - "You're running out of storage space." Once you calm down you realize it's not all that tragic as you have many files that aren't that mandatory for you but you were in a downloading mood. Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" video never made sense anyway but all the same you were encouraged to put all that content in in the first place. So this important notification suggests deleting media content, unpinning stuff, uninstalling apps so you get yourself a cache cleaner and you feel like you're cleaning house. Google Play boasts they have over 700,000 apps in their appstore and not that long ago you were actually encouraged, nay pushed to get all the apps you could muster but now a very important app comes along, actually it's an App Uninstaller because you may have installed too many apps that you don't really use that much. I was looking over my download history this morning and this mobogenie apk file must've automatically downloaded like over 10X. I don't know whether to say thanks for the pup, I actually like mobogenie but I feel like BB sometimes that maybe it's a good idea to take a break from the technological scene once in a while. You're pushed to download as part of this digital consumerism then you're told you should clean house. It's like taking up smoking just so you can quit.

The Donald Sterling Matter

A thumbnail summary for the few troglodytes out there - LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life by the NBA Commissioner for making racist comments in a private conversation with his ex-girlfriend. She kinda looks like a model and he looks like a sagging bag of flesh so the word golddigger comes to mind but I digress. What if you went to your uncle's place of employment and said to his boss "you know what Joe said when he came over on Thanksgiving?" Many people have conservative Dads, do you want EVERYTHING leaking out about what was said in the living room especially after the goblet's been sipped a few times? OK you say the uncle is not a millionaire who owns a sports team so episodes like this is gonna churn out the usual pc self-righteous commentary. I already know you never said anything stupid in your life, hell you could smoke ten joints in a row and nothing stupid's gonna come out 'cause your software programming is so right on. Maybe it's because Al Sharpton has predictably involved himself in this case so I reflexively go the other way, dunno. OK throw your coins into the fountain:)

Thoughts on the double canonization

Yesterday's double canonization in Rome of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II -- I think most of the three million pilgrims were there for the latter to be honest. I hate to be a balloon-popper but I still don't get why the "good pope" of Vatican II was even elevated to sainthood. If it was simply that he changed the Latin Mass into the vernacular and did some other hip things that's not too high a bar imo. Even in death he could only muster one miracle not the two usually required for the Catholic Hall of Fame so they simply waived that standard and included him yesterday. I don't think most folks have the slightest issue whatsoever with canonizing John Paul and there were so many saintly pointers during his life and papacy but I think it was his divinely patient endurance of his acute suffering near the end that easily pushed him over the line. So WHY was John XXIII elevated? Here's my theory -- not that long ago there was serious talk of elevating to sainthood none other than Pope Pius XII, he was on the edge but it soon became apparent that that wasn't in the cards, ain't gonna happen and if you have to ask me why you haven't studied your history. So my astute theological hunch is that Roncalli was a substitute for Pius yesterday, they wanted to do a double coronation anyway but didn't want to burn the bridge to Judaism in the process. At any rate I know who I'm praying to during tough times and it ain't the Vatican II guy.

Is a Sebelius book in the works?

She's now being kinda more blunt and candid on the talk show circuit about the whole health care debacle. Yeah yeah I know she voluntarily resigned but in my book the president still threw her under the bus. Makes ya wonder why Jay Carney is still sticking it through when it would probably be better for the both of them to work on the same book and rake in the dough. Smaller networks of doctors and higher premiums, the federal government deciding what treatments you get - what's not to like? They say in particular cancer patients are gonna be screwed bigtime under ObamaCare. I don't think though the Sebelius resignation is gonna swing the midterms in a more positive direction for the Democrats if that's the strategy here, I mean it's not like she's the Frankenstein who created the thing in the first place.

The liberal obsession with the Koch Brothers

Sounds like a brand of soda pop. I never really heard about the Koch Brothers until liberals started talking about them so much. Conservatives also seem to like to comment on the liberal obsession with the Koch Bros so conservatives have an obsession with their obsession just like they have an obsession with reading NY Times editorials (hey guys they're just editorials, don't let them ruin your day). Charles and David Koch of the Koch Industries have been responsible for much charitable giving to various cultural and medical institutions but Harry Reid and Chuckie Schumer say they're unAmerican for funding anti-ObamaCare ads and for calling for smaller government. BB has a bit of a Koch fetish too so maybe he can explain. The pro-Obama Hollywood tripe that spews out daily is ok though.

Further thoughts on Pope Francis

Haven't been selling as much seafood at work as we thought we would despite a fairly strong demographic showing of Catholics in the area then I thought maybe I missed the memo, maybe this theological modster changed the rules again and we can now eat meat on Fridays during Lent. He has so many things in his head that are spilling out right now (e.g. civil unions) that the Vatican is scrambling to spin things along the lines of don't read too much into his words he's still upholding Church teaching but I'm wondering how long they can do this before they say Houston we have a problem. He was recently voted Man of the Year by BOTH Time magazine and the gay-rights magazine The Advocate so unless he's down with that I would have expected a polite but clarifying letter-to-the-editor to the gay review. The phrase I'm hearing most lately is he's some sort of rock star. That's kind of an interesting analogy considering the personal history of most rock stars and it kinda puts faith on a cheap pop culture level (Justin Biebs in charge of interfaith/ecumenical affairs?). If I may borrow a line from the classic Sidney Poitier movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Francis seems to be saying to all the mostly dead popes except one who have gone before him "it's time we got the dead weight of your generation off our backs" (Spencer Tracy was a great actor btw). Things are murky right now but Francis' foglight seems to be beckoning in the opposite direction so try not to hit all those traditionalists bobbing in the water as you steer towards some progressive's promised land. Does he have a Facebook page yet?

Mitt Romney had a better grasp of foreign policy

Just sayin'. Most countries these days are responsible for at least one or two positive contributions to the civilization-at-large. Of course everything is Made in China today but Japan has given us superior cars and cameras for example and even South Korea has Samsung headquartered there. Has Russia ever given us a digital camera, a computer chip, a smartphone or a new tablet? Russia is known for two things only - vodka and its military buildup. I remember learning in high school that a large % of the Russian economy, maybe it's even the majority is devoted to its keeping up its military might. Putin is an anachronistic leader and seems to have a very bad case of those cold war blues. Putin doesn't like Pussy Riot, he doesn't like the gays and he's not into going forward. Of course Obama's red lines mean nothing, it'd be like Gilbert Gottfried being a bar bouncer. A former director in the KGB vs. a former Chicago community organizer and I'm thinking my Dad is right Hillary would have been a better president at least on the world stage. So what's gonna happen now if Crimea becomes officially annexed to Russia again? is Obama gonna issue one of them executive orders he likes so much say banning the import of their famous drink? It's like as soon as the Sochi Olympics were over Putin couldn't wait to get back to the action. So has anyone apologized to Mitt Romney yet?

& oh btw Happy Birthday

I'm just a few days shy of my 50th B'day and already I got a one-year membership offer from the AARP in the mail yesterday (didn't know they did this that early)and if I join now I get a free tote bag. Then for practically the whole past year my doctor has been peppering our discussions with the subject of colonoscopies. I feel like a vampire, I've been alive for half a century already. There's something gauche and vaguely offensive imo about all of this as I feel you should enjoy your birthday without incident instead of others overlaying it with dreadful reminders. It should be a light and happy time no matter what your age but in this case instead of thinking about a birthday cake with candles they got me thinking about the ass then the AARP got me thinking about my mortality (how much more time do I have?). Hell instead of downloading the latest issue of the Nat'l Review why don't I just subscribe to Arthritis Today? So is a colonoscopy indicated at the exact stroke of midnight as soon as you turn the big 5-0? I think it has more to do with our cultural OCD obsession with round numbers that end in zero. Remember all the media coverage of the 47th anniversary of JFK? didn't think so. Maybe in a few years time, hell maybe in a few months I'll get a brochure from Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. I've pretty much decided after much thought and Internet sleuthing the full hardcore 4' colonoscopy is off the table for me and I've said as much. As well I don't need a handy travel bag with the AARP logo just yet but thanks just the same. I pretty much just want to enjoy my birthday so leave me alone. You turn the 1/2 century mark and they got one foot in the grave for you already. Lastly conservatives have spent a lifetime talking about the importance of the rich and powerful that they can make you feel pretty insecure about yourself. Of course the sex-drenched men's magazines don't help matters and don't take into account all your romantic failures so when you put the two together you're supposed to be a Trump or a Koch Bros. who gets laid all the time. Better yet after you're done with me you can put a birthday candle in there and leave the tote bag on the side:)

Cyber-nosy management (or watch what you tweet)

Not a week goes by when I don't read about the issue of watch what you post on social media it may affect your future job prospects or job you already have. Tesh is big on this but he's big on all the latest trends anyway and he just goes with the latest mainstream thinking as it evolves. My feeling - a boss who snoops in your cyberspace is not worth working for plain and simple. The ONLY matter at hand is are you qualified to get done the job at hand done? Look you get a busted pipe in the middle of winter I don't care that the local plumber may post socialist ravings on his blogsite nor should the plumber's boss care if he's a good one. I'm truly not getting this issue and why it's so much discussed and why some bosses feel the need to delve into your online personas. Of course if you're posting a personal scat video online then ok but by and large Free Speech is like a reservoir, row around and dip in and troll what you like it's all good and it's no concern of anyone else's much less a potential employer. Then again I don't put much stock in your basic job interview, I mean you could suck at them and still be a kickass worker but the smooth talkers and bs-artists always skate through. "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" dunno, my hands shake when I have too much coffee? Discuss:)

Yonkers snow removal (not)

The other morning I called up early to find if street cleaning was suspended as there was still a ton of snow and ice from a previous storm in the spaces. Street cleaning was still in effect despite the fact they didn't remove the snow. Just sayin':)

When dorks become dangerous

Bored with masturbation and stalking the girl next door they've turned to malicious code. Turns out my techno-problem is fairly common and yahoo'ed it yesterday. Others say too they can't sign into their blogs from their smartphone apps even though they're using such premium browsers like Google Chrome and Opera. Last night I had a fairly long web session on my phone, wasted more than a few minutes but judging from the various sites I visited I came to the fairly strong conclusion we're in the middle of a kind of minor cyberattack. I mean you're trying to download a Kasperskey antivirus scanner but what gets downloaded instead is Spicy Games, c'mon. Tech support forums, imo most don't help the user to resolve his or her particular problem. It's usually the same old pat techno-answers probably by some guy in Rangoon (clear cookies, cache or go to Settings and get a signed browser, works better) and in the end the gadget-user still has the problem. It's like with tinnitus, most mainstream doctors will tell you there's about four or five main things that cause it only it doesn't explain your tinnitus. So whether it's the doctor who can't just admit ignorance and bafflement or one of them techno-advisors it's always our analysis of the problem HAS TO be right, try it again. So the moral of the story is there are alot of sucky sites out there only Healthcare.gov is the most prominent and gets the most press. Blame those Chechen contractors if you like.

Wintertime ramblings

I wonder if the mayor of Atlanta believes in global climate change. I've lived through bigger snowstorms in the past but this winter has been very disruptive. Yonkers hasn't been preparing the roads this winter, what's up with that? Couldn't get out on some days so couldn't blog and comment. Well I could but my browser app on my smartphone that I've been using just fine all this time has become erratic and I've had trouble logging in lately and here I thought I was cool with the technology. Maybe it's this vast NSA info-vacuum/umbrella they have covering the world right now that have been giving people's devices problems. Guys just what is it that you're looking for? A bad winter for me, not only the app but the roving dog that killed a neighborhood cat, a mysterious pain that comes and goes in my hip area (bursitis?), Dad tripped inside and pulled a muscle but is doing better and work is weird. Philip Seymour Hoffman -- you know I think the Charlie Sheen/Justin Bieber stuff is all made up hype and PR, make 'em into bad boys but the ones we never suspect are really doing stuff. I never got the whole heroin thing, first off I hate needles and what happens when you run out of places to shoot up? I'm just getting back on track here. Guys can I have my app back?

Grammys

Now I know why I never really watch any of those major award show extravaganzas on Sunday nights at least not in their entirety. I skim and surf them at best but when it comes to the music awards shows like the Grammys it always inevitably devolves somehow into black/urban music aka rap/hip-hop which isn't really my thing and from what I saw somehow combining that with Imagine Dragons didn't work imo. Beyonce & Jay-Z, you know if we stopped helping celebrities trend on Yahoo everyday they might not be the massive ego-trippers they've turned into. Help them out will ya, google a major disease instead. Lots of parents and others are up in arms over Jay-Z and his wife's raunchy routine last night, what is it somehow classier when Beyonce twerks instead of Miley? and oh yeah there was some type of gay mass weddings going on although I must've missed that part. I've never liked the mixing of politics and any type of major awards show from LA but they all do it and that's usually when I change the channel to a NutriBullet infomercial or a Sanford and Son rerun. I honestly don't even know who won I was so turned off.

I don't know why we expect like we still have privacy

Maybe BB can explain why the Government needs to collect 200 million text messages a day. What a banal undertaking! The operative principle is despite ethics or legality Government does what it wants. This aside what is the practical value of this NSA program called "Dishfire"? none that I can see. Obama as usual fails to inspire or lead.

Send your laundry bill to the Port Authority

Imagine being stuck in traffic on the GW Bridge for four hours! I wonder how many car seats were ruined. If I ever have to commute this way I'm gonna head out with some Depends first. You know if you're gonna deliberately close four lanes on the GW at least have the human decency to spread out a few Port-o-Sans here and there. I agree with NJ Assembly Deputy Speaker John Wisniewski who said Christie is simply "not believable" and how could his deputy chief of staff have planned and done this all on her own? They say an email is forever and my mother always said don't put down certain things in writing. I guess that Port Authority executive David Wildstein is discovering that. Look I never liked Christie as much as some folks here, was never taken in by his NJ bluster and always thought he was somewhat overrated. He said a curious thing during his press conference yesterday that Ft. Lee NJ Mayor Mark Sokolich was never even on his radar. What is that supposed to mean? it kinda implies something else, that if he was on his radar the whole thing may have been plausible. I don't see how in hell Christie becomes the GOP standard-bearer in 2016. In retrospect maybe the whole lapband thing was a waste of time.

Cheech & Chong MD

As you know NY is only the latest state in the union that wants to jump on the medical pot bandwagon. Well actually it's Gov. Andrew Cuomo who wants to by reactivating some kind of dormant pro-medpot law that's been on the NY books for some time now so it's more of a fiat thing but there's something unintentionally funny about a bunch of 60-70 year-old patients on the cancer ward toking together in the midafternoon in the sunroom overlooking the river. It is in my view a very paradoxical and contradictory public health message to be drumming into our skulls on practically a daily basis the unmitigated evils of tobacco use and yet somehow pot under certain circumstances may even benefit you healthwise. Even if it does help some folks manage certain types of chronic pain better risk/benefits ratios should be better explained by the health establishment which they don't seem to be doing imo e.g. maybe you'll live with your glaucoma better but you might do some damage to your brain. Over on the free speech front I was reading over on Drudge today how Fox News' Megyn Kelly got in some hot water for saying Santa was white. I'm always of the view that you should be able to say what you wanna say and anyway since we wanna do the right thing we can make Ole St. Nick black if you want, have him divorce Mrs. Claus because he's been a closet gay all his life and also put a roach in his hands.

A status check on feminism

Last night I was watching an always interesting local program here called Chasing NJ and there was a segment on the increasing number of women who are getting breast augmentation surgery without the benefit of general anaesthesia. The host had asked one woman what was her motivation, after all we're not talking a critical and life-saving operation and she said so she can feel more "confident." So I got to thinking about the apparent increasing cultural irrelevancy of modern feminism, the guys want a nice ripe soft breast to handle so wouldn't want to disappoint the boys would we? So who's more sociologically relevant here Hef or Gloria Steinem? Now before you get on my case I actually agree with a few points of feminism our society's overemphasis on beauty and physical perfection being one of them but you have to ask yourself whether feminism as an overall life philosophy has ever really caught on. I mean are women demanding larger and thicker penises? It would seem for all the talk of women's empowerment these days we're still at heart a bit of a patriarchal society. Thanks gals.

Liberals' Palin Erotomania

They still talk about her even though she's in a kind of semi-retired mode and not running for anything. Liberals get all stalkery about her when her biggest political aspiration these days is to take to Twitter. The Obsession even led Martin Bashir off the deep end who wanted to go all Gothic on her. It's a political psycho/sexual mystery far surpassing their Bachmann fetish.

& then there's this

The lust is clearly off the apple. A notable quotable from Barbara Walters on the Piers Morgan show. Even our Earth Goddess Oprah has cooled towards Obama who's lately been reduced to becoming a running infomercial for the ACA and taking selfies at important occasions like Nelson Mandela's memorial service. Oh well he still has BB, Saty and Chris Matthews but as for me with every passing day he's going more and more into the Jimmy Carter category. Maybe he can pick up a hammer and bucket of nails with Bob Vila and do some Habitat for Humanity after his second term runs out.

How reliable a source of knowledge is Wikipedia?

What's missing in this picture is the laptopper on the park bench, they're all at the public library. Do a typical google search on any subject under the sun, say twerking or the Skunkape, and wiki is ALWAYS the first or second entry. Is this scholastically justified though? It's like the Amazon.com of Knowledge, links leading to hyperlinks, a veritable feast for the mind but is the whole enterprise shaky?

The 50th Anniversary of the JFK Assassination

While I wasn't even born during this tragic and historic event I was born on 3/14/64 which would make me well along in my mother's womb on that fateful day of 11/22/63. The specials are starting to churn out with PBS leading the way. Watched NOVA's "Cold Case JFK" episode last night and just as I suspected all the more mainstream and respected programs are gonna go all establishmentarian on us, not really gonna give serious fodder to any conspiracy theories. On the show after that narrator George Clooney intoned "when Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository" and I got to thinking but that was never exactly proven in a court of law now was it because nightclub owner Jack Ruby wasted no time in gunning him down. While growing up I had a slim purple bound volume of the famous Warren Commission Report on my bookshelf and was weeding out books one day and it was such an easy decision to just chuck the thing out. The House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 went with it was probably a conspiracy and I'll go along with that but I haven't decided on which theory yet. I'm kind of guessing BB's establishmentarian POV here but let's open it up for debate anyway.

Turns out all that Rt-Wing Propaganda was right

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have now gotten cancellation notices from their health insurance companies in the mail. The Obama M.O. - get people off insurance to get them back on again, the running carousel. Presidential flackey Jay Carney has said they were substandard policies anyway. The NYT has opined in one of their trademark by now way out there editorials that Obama didn't outright lie when he said oh about a hundred times you'll be able to keep your doctor and your health-care policy, he simply misspoke. The happy and breezy young girl of the government website is no longer there either. Maybe that's because she too has recognized that ObamaCare is going down as one of the biggert clusterfucks in American history. When Biebs finally comes down with the Brazilian clap he doesn't have to worry but the rest of us as the song says don't come from money, we're not royals. Dems are stuck with this and it'll be real interesting how all this plays out in the 014 midterms.

Obama's continuing war on Privacy

The NSA, the Atlas Shrugged of spying - bulk is better. There's intelligent spying and then there's the indiscriminate, haphazard, random and promiscuous spying as practiced by the NSA...now it's tapping into Yahoo and Google links overseas. Just what in hell were we supposed to learn from Angela Merkel and the Pope anyway? Welcome to President Obama's dystopia.

ObamaPetCare

I don't think people should talk about pet health insurance yet when we can't even get human insurance off the ground. 5 million lines of code......

I need another TMI closet

Robin Thicke told Howard Stern he and his wife Paula Patton have done nearly everything. I know all about Sandra Fluke's monthly birth control expenses and how Michael Douglas got his cancer. Katie Couric once had her colonoscopy filmed and John Mayer has had coitus with Jennifer Aniston. There's older stuff like Bob Dole's erections, Bill Clinton's crooked member. Some quite dated Johnny Carson stuff and Frank Gifford has a thing for smelly women. I don't know where to keep all this stuff. Maybe I'll go to Home Depot and get one of them sheds.

Have YouTube and Twitter gotten out of control?

Al-Shabab the Somali offshoot of al-Qaeda has or had an actual, authentic and official Twitter feed and boasted online of the horrific massacre they pulled off at the upscale Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Now one of the most viral videos out there is the one on YouTube involving the hordes of psycho motorcyclists on the West Side Highway in NYC and the only way it got on YouTube was one of the moto-psychos was wearing a helmet cam at the time and recorded the whole thing from before up to and including the motorist who ran over one of his fellow bikers and then the biker gang chasing him down for miles and beating him up in front of his wife and young daughter. Facebook isn't much better with gangbangers having profiles and regularly boasting of their day-to-day and I got to thinking these three major and popular sites have TOS sections that you have to agree to when you first sign up right? A key section usually involves not breaking the laws and not inciting to violence and threatening and harassing people and similar caveats no? From terrorists to common thugs and garden-variety criminals it seems everyone has a site or linkup or feed these days and they're so teched up to the gills that even during the commission of their diverse crimes and atrocities and general social mayhem one of the things foremost on their minds seems to be going online later. Is the omnipresence of Technology doing something to the Brain? or to put it another way does the mixture of criminals and technology make things worse? call it Techno-Porn:)

A part-time nation with health insurance

This is pretty much what the social/economic landscape is gonna look like when ObamaCare gets fully rolled out. Gold, silver or bronze plan your choice. On the plus side you'll be covered you just might not be able to afford the latest smartphone or HDTV. Look full-time work can exacerbate your illnesses and ailments, better to Kindle with a mug of hot cocoa and rest your back. I've been wondering of late though if HillaryCare would've been any better or maybe they're the same thing. Happy exchange shopping - is there an app for that?

The liberal(?) Pope Francis

He gets around town in an older Renault with 190,000 miles on it. Asked on a plane about gay priests and he says "who am I to judge?" Now he says clerical celibacy is not a dogma of the Church and says it can be discussed. Unlike the more foreboding and stern ex-Benedict he's the softie in the Entenmann's box, friendlier and more personal around the edges. I got no problem but if the liberal media starts to like you then there is a problem. I think you have to balance your softness though so as to appear you stand for something, you're not throwing out doctrines and morals. Coolness though cool is not a teaching. My view on priestly celibacy is it may be a blessing in disguise, you never experience having your heart broken but I also think it should be an option. All things considered though I'm getting the faintest whiff, just the wisp of a curl of a liberal pope with more liberal things to say in the near future, dribs and drabs stuff on planes in cars on sidewalks and in interviews. Is he down with Pro-Choice? he might vague the issue. On the Syrian question he's not even discussing the Church's time-honored since Aquinas just-war doctrine he's just tweeting the typical pacifist platitudes. The point's been made the Church needs to eventually move with the times, the Zeitgeist but is the times always worth moving towards? I don't have a firm impression of this pope yet and some feel Jesuits are a problem. I'm trepidatious and hopeful at the same time. As an interesting aside what's in some of those Vatican archives? Keep the theological sleuths busy.

Bush put boots on the ground in two wars...

...and conservatives by and large eagerly supported him. Obama wants a limited strike on Syria and he's a weak and confusing leader. Is there a Tea Party Spark Notes to explain all this?

Ronald McDonald vs. Cheech & Chong

Some issues have come up in a couple of recent posts namely that eating at McDonald's is extremely bad for your health but pot is somehow ok. In the following 3 month experiment which group do you think will come out on top in terms of general overall health? The first group will eat what they consider to be a healthy diet, work out at the gym and all that good stuff but they'll smoke a couple of joints a day 'cause that's what they do. The second group will eat at McDonald's everyday, just once daily is enough and it doesn't have to be a hamburger and a soda. They can go for the healthier options on the menu like the salads, the wraps, the yogurt parfaits and a bottle of spring. I believe they even have some apple thing. So this group does that but they're not into pot and won't smoke it and they can jog too just like the first group. OK so at the end of the 3 month period who has damaged their health more and who will be happier? I once knew a guy who was really into his health, kept detailed charts of his cholesterol levels, plotted this and plotted that on graphs and reports but was a real pothead and was always devising new ways of toking like making a funnel out of Reynold's aluminum foil which I would think your fingers would get hot. He also unplugged all his appliances like the tv before leaving home for the day because he explained there's the trickle-suck effect of the plug simply being in the outlet and even that uses juice. What I want to know is at what point in time do you turn into Howard Hughes?

The very liberal NYC Mayoral race

The very not-afraid-to-say-it liberal Bill de Blasio is leading the Democratic pack to replace Bloomberg. You'd think Stop 'n' Frisk were the most important issue facing NYers as they're all running ads against the practice but de Blasio is also touting in commercials he's gonna tax the rich more in order to pay for after-school programs. The thought occured though doesn't he need the rich vote too as there's quite a few of them on the upper sides of the Island? Christine Quinn the Speaker of the NYC Council is second or third in the polling I've seen and Bill Thompson is right there with her and because he's black he's gotten certain major endorsements from other key blacks like the Rev. Calvin Butts. Anthony Weiner is one of them lower-tier candidates always around 8% although he has interesting positions like stop the ban on gay men donating blood at the same time touting the conservative position of more discipline in the public schools. I really don't think NYers are all that jazzed up about the Republican side with Catsimitidis of Gristedes fame and former MTA Chairman Joe Lhota who said he wouldn't hold up the subway lines for a couple of damn kittens. For Comptroller all Scott Stringer has to do is put ads against Spitzer saying "I'm the normal guy." Oh God though am I glad to see Bloomberg go! can't you just picture him on one of them court shows?

Today's fast food protests and why I plan to eat at all three

Growing up I never went to work at a McDonald's, it just wasn't for me and I knew going in the pay was low. The pay is still rather low because Mickie D's is basically an entry-level job for teens and other young people first entering the job market. Other people however don't see it that way. The federal minimum wage is now at $7.25/hour and I've never made the case you could survive on the minimum but if you're 42 years old with or without kids why are you even working at a Wendy's or Burger King? Of course many people who have started at a McDonald's are now managing at a McDonald's but all this socialist unrest is not gonna cause me to eat less at any of the Big Three, in fact I think I'll go out later. Everybody has a political statement to make these days it seems and personally I much prefer to work it out through blogging rather than hitting the pavement and causing social disruptions. I'm not the bumper sticker type but I do break for animals.

Here's what I don't get about ObamaCare

I'm on record as being against it but having said that it seems to me ObamaCare has no teeth, no nails and so companies are being allowed to evade the Law. More and more businesses have decided to cut back on part-timers' hours to under 30/wk. so as to avoid the delayed but inevitable employer mandate. The year 2013 is a kind of lookback period after the mandate finally becomes fully implemented. Now it's obvious why these companies are doing this and the reason solely has to do with evading the employer mandate of ObamaCare. I haven't read the whole thing but seems to me this shouldn't be allowed, it should be illegal. Gov't auditors should then be able to look back at the corporate history of those companies now only recently cutting part-timers' hours to under 30/wk. and so there should be another penalty, a kind of backup penalty that kicks in if it is determined after a gov't investigation that the corporate motive at play here is to avoid having to provide health insurance to their employees working over 30 hours/wk. A Law has to be serious, just sayin'

Eclectic News of the Day

Culled from different sources I thought these two items were interesting. Are you a sleep texter and in cryptozoological news there's this.

Chris Christie, gay politics and 016

I've heard of gay conversion therapy and feel folks should be legally able to freely choose it as their therapy of choice.  In NJ Gov. Chris Christie just signed a law banning the practice and the focus seemed to be parents choosing it for their children.  By my math Christie doesn't go very far in the Republican primaries in 016.  We already know he's not appealing to the more socially conservative base but he's also gonna turn off the more libertarian element in the party who'll see his actions as increasing the power of the State to direct parents re the moral and social upbringing of their children.  As usual Saty and BB will completely miss the point on this one and my smartphone should be burning up later.  Oh btw I had to abort Publius last night.

Obama, Egypt and what's a coup?

I'm confused about Egypt, they protested en masse against Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and got rid of him, now that they got rid of him with the help of the Egyptian military others are now protesting en masse in support of Morsi. Of course before that everyone protested against Mubarak but seems they can't settle on a permanent leader over there. As everyone knows the Obama Administration esp. Sec'y of State John Kerry won't label it a coup as that would automatically cut off about $1.3B in foreign aid we give Egypt every year. As an aside where in hell does that money come from since we're in perpetual debt and deficit mode these days? Anyway the death toll continues to rise in the Arab Spring turned Red Summer with 275 dead a few days ago although the Brotherhood wrongly claims around 2,000. Mohammad Morsi was destroying basic freedoms like freedom of the press and dealt harshly with political protestors and yet a good slice of the right-wing commentariat seemed to want him to stay even though it was obvious he was turning this North African nation and pivot in the Middle East into an Islamist state. Well if you go back to the days of right-wing Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet many on the Right sometimes have a habit of turning the other way, he was a right-wing kind of dictator so I really don't take right-wing commentary on foreign policy all that seriously to begin with. Remember back in the day when Egypt was a fun topic and gave rise to a song by The Bangles and a skit by Steve Martin?

Stop 'n' Frisk put on hold in NYC

My liberal gut instinct tells me Stop 'n' Frisk is wrong but my practical side sees it's also a highly effective police tool for reducing crime rates and getting guns off the streets. As you know Manhattan federal judge Shira Sheindlin has basically invalidated the NYPD's well-known and highly practiced stop and frisk program which has led to at least twenty years of markedly lower crime rates than under the David Dinkins administration. Judge Sheindlin also ordered a court-appointed monitor or overseer of the NYPD program and there's also to be a pilot program involving copcams worn on cops in one precinct in areas in every borough with the highest stop rates is my understanding although the PBA is gonna fight this rightfully saying imo that cops already have alot of gear on like mace and flashlights and this is only an extra and unnecessary encumbrance. Here's a complaint I hear alot about gangbangers in general, what's the deal with them and why do they have such notoriously bad aim? it'd be like the Mob going after Castellano outside the steakhouse but instead shooting an innocent grandmother in her rocking chair across the street. Anyway here's my overall view of these matters, when liberalism holds sway the crime rate goes up, way up. In short PC kills, think ChicagoLand.

The Big Business Blog

Soapie has a problem with Big Government or maybe it's just government. BB has a problem with Big Business. I have a problem with Both. Where to begin?

Our technologically disoriented society

ABC News had an interesting segment a few nights back about the recent spike in pedestrians being killed by drivers. We usually blame the motorist but according to the report there are two primary reasons for more pedestrians getting killed. One is many of them the walkers that is are drunk and these fatalities often occur at night (Lindsay Lohan is ambidextrous in this regard, she's driven drunk and walked drunk). The other main reason is folks are walking while texting and not watching where they're going. I see this on a daily basis and not only that you're more likely to become a victim of crime imo while doing this. You're far less aware of your surroundings, your environment which is the first thing they teach you in self-defense courses. Say two black guys are following you, say two guys are following you they may want your wallet or they may even be after your smartphone. Anthony Weiner, alot of people miss the point here. It's not so much that he'd have sex with these women he's just addicted to the tweeting, the texting, the technology of it all. You know when you take a picture of something, say your cat or a birthday cake and you send it off into the wireless ether to wind up on Facebook or Twitter or even your blog? You're amazed at the technology of it all (I did that?) and you feel like you have some magical powers that folks 30 years ago didn't even have and so in some cases images of peckers are happily bouncing around between the cell phone towers. I also think people are paying far too much for their technological needs and not only that all this technology is making them exercise less, I mean how many things can you watch on your tablet? So that's it we're a nation of zombies:)