The age-old question

Why do African-Americans vote so overwhelmingly Democratic? Used to think the answer was traditional Democrat support for such things as affirmative action programs and welfare but this seems simplistic. I've come across many blacks who have conservative values and yet they don't vote that way in the end. It's a bit of a headscratcher and are there any polls out there that ask the question point blank? Every now and then black leaders make noises to the Democrat Party don't take us and our vote for granted but when push comes to shove...'tis a waste of time imo to woo their vote, they don't like you get in through your head and it becomes a bit stalkerish but I'm just curious about theories is all.

Which conservatives DON'T you like?

This is a spinoff from my most recent threads and deserves a special section of its own. David Frum doesn't like Rush Limbaugh, soapie doesn't like Ann Coulter, personally I never cared for Bob Grant. BB has finally come clean as having liberal tendencies but in my view judging from the bulk of his posts he doesn't read from the liberal playbook either, he's a fair guy. If I may toot my own horn here too I don't read from the conservative playbook but on balance I'm a conservative. It seems to me the real team players don't really have a problem with any of the prominent conservatives out there, throw out a name and they'll be cool with it. Just wondering though and this is just among friends are there any conservatives out there whom you don't like?

Personally I find her a little too bony

Meghan McCain, daughter of the Senator, in her blog on Ann Coulter:

"I find her offensive, radical, insulting and confusing all at the same time."

I normally would say something when somebody in the news criticizes a prominent conservative especially coming from outspoken liberal offspring but Coulter is a rather strong brew. I don't like it 140 proof either, Jack Bauer as politician, her scorched-earth policy of verbally obliterating the opposition, C-Block. I want to say something Meghan but I can't, it is what it is, you're entitled.

Mythologizing Limbaugh

I was in the A&P just now and noticed the spanking new issue of Newsweek with Rush's face on the cover with some kind of duct tape over his mouth it seemed to me. The big bold headline: ENOUGH! A Conservative's Case Against Limbaugh by David "Axis of Evil" Frum. Now if you turn this around and let's say it said instead "A Conservative's Case Against the Z-Man" I'd be tickled pink, I'm on the MAP and I must have some real pull, they must fear me for a reason if I'm on the cover of a national newsweekly but I would also feel I'm somehow being mythologized, a victim of apotheosis or being turned into a god but I'm only a blogger and he's only a radio guy but I suppose you're not supposed to diss the nation's first African-American president, for God's sake show some respect! but imho Frum is a dick. It's the BOX again that bothers me, what we're allowed to say and think is getting smaller by the day and people like Frum seem perfectly content to masturbate to Conformity, to hump the Rules even as they make them up as they go along. People who make it their hobby to attack those who think outside the box, they seem dangerous to me. The BOX now says you have to like the man who Made History even if you disagree with his political philosophy but libs never liked Bush and Rush calling Rahm Emanuel a ballerina is pretty mild stuff if you want to get all Michael Moore about it. There's an old old saying, you scratch my balls I'll scratch yours and neocon Frum making his case against a conservative legend in a major liberal newsweekly, there's some kind of weird footplay going on here even if I can't put my finger on it.

Why we're fat

Blame it on conventional wisdom. Ever since we were growing up we had it drummed into our skulls that you need 3 SQUARE MEALS A DAY, there's even a small diner in Yonkers with the same name. Conservatives who think our prison system is too liberal complain among other things that prison is a place where you're assured your 3 SQUARE MEALS A DAY. Conventional wisdom has it that BREAKFAST is the most important meal of the day, it's fuel for your body and you won't feel right the rest of the day if you skip this critical morning ritual. So here's the deal, it's that third meal that's doing us in. The Z-Man regimen would say you only need one square meal a day at a minimum although this does require some discipline so for the vast majority I would propose either a light meal and then later on the main meal or if you feel this is still too ascetic for your tastes then simply two regular meals a day. BUT 3 meals a day?!? Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner? This is why we're so fat, you don't need three meals in a 24 hour period. Conventional wisdom, it'll get you in trouble every time.

& what if those cures never come?

I hadn't even planned on blogging about this today but Savage was so eloquent and insightful last night it inspired me. Yeah Savage is known for an extreme view every now and then (nobody ever seems to define this term "extreme") but I enjoy the show anyway and the biggie topic yesterday was Obama taking pen in hand (yet again) and signing an executive order lifting the ban on taxpayer funding of human embryonic stem-cell research. OK, so 'twas to be expected and so far Obama's report card has a big fat red L on top saying he's a liberal and so where to begin?

ALL the approaches from the scientific to the philosophical to the mathematical which I recently contributed in a blog point overwhelmingly in the direction that human life begins at conception. Faith talks about ensoulment but I don't think that's relevant here, after all if we hold a newborn may not get a soul until two weeks later we don't normally then sanction infanticide. You did not come from an embryo, you once were that embryo, so says this branch of philosophy concerned primarily with the nature of existence. Mathematically we have what Dr. Bernard Nathanson calls the vector of life at work, cells dividing at a rapid pace and forming organs etc., a velocity and direction at work, a force and magnitude and again the vector obviously begins at conception. It's a canard to say we don't know when life begins and will probably never know, that's not the issue anymore although many pretend it is but that's for psychology. The long and the short of it is as one pro-lifer put it after yesterday's signing "this president places very little value on the life of the unborn." You wonder though, yeah I know Obama's official political position is one of Pro-Choice but when he looks into the eyes of his daughters Sasha and Malia at night how can he not question his own stance or is he that hardboiled on the issue? Anti-socialism unites us conservatives far more than the social issues (ka-ching ka-ching) but for me the larger concern may be how extreme will Obama be on abortion? The media might pretend FOCA doesn't exist but I know an awful lot of folks who are concerned. As Savage said yesterday Obama is beginning to pay back one of his biggest constituencies, the abortion racket in this country. Some people might consider this out-of-the-box talk but I was never a fan of the box anyway.

I don't like being boxed in like this

Danny has a recurring theme over at Right Minds and that is his concern that the conservative movement not become irrational as the liberal movement has been in the past if I can give a capsule review here. He says the growing conservative charge that Obama is a socialist or has socialist leanings is evidence of the movement becoming unhinged. Libs did this with Bush and it became known as BDS or Bush Derangement Syndrome but here's another option: what if the libs were right about Bush and the conservatives are right about Obama? I was thinking about the late William F. Buckley Jr. the other day and one of his legacies was he almost single-handedly purged the John Birchites from the mainstream conservative movement. Now if you ask me if I agree with the Birchers I would say in large part NO but I still want to hear what they have to say just like I want to hear Rosie O'Donnell's theories on why steel can't melt. Throw it ALL into the mix and while Danny is a smart fella, imo he's a rising star but the reality of it is this whole country right now is the top of the blender having come off and the shake going all over the place. You hear this you hear that and pretty much you can't control it anymore, it is what it is and maybe that's a good thing after all. Savage said last night a very profound thing, when the day comes when you can't hear these things, when everyone says the same thing our country is gone, no longer a democracy. Gotta say something about those embryos in the next blog.....

The subject is ghosts

You can consider this a companion piece to my recent Why aren't there more miracles?, in short why aren't there more ghostly encounters? Having gone to a wake recently this thought's been rattling around the ole mental attic for a while but as it stands now the age-old question is there life after death is still quite up in the air. Now it's easy to make Casper jokes when this subject comes up but let's be a little serious here. The purpose of more visitations from our dearly departed would be twofold -- to ease the pain of the survivors and to add the weight of the evidence to that timeless question.

When I was a member in good standing at Hannityland I was mostly political but occasionally poked my nose around into other territory and I brought up the subject one day in the Religion Forum (please no dissing there, either respect any and all beliefs or consider yourself eternally banned). Monsieur Hben, the resident Protestant minister pounced on the topic and said consider any and all ghostly manifestations as the work of Satan but then two longtime and stalwart conservative Catholic posters chimed in too. Socrates and Apatriot agreed with Hben and pretty much said the same thing, that if your dearly departed Uncle Charlie walked through your living room one night to say hello that he's really a demonic imposter. Really?? I wasn't even aware the Church had such voluminous teachings on the matter, has Benedict given a recent statement? I'm aware of a few true-life ghost stories, some in the family and some I heard about involving friends and acquaintances. The tales are benign in nature and quite inspiring so Soc and Patriot's point would be what exactly, that some of these folks are actually in a rather bad place and the Devil is trying to hoodwink us?

I always liked that old TV series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir starring Edward Mulhare as the deceased sea captain and Hope Lange as the tenant of the house he's haunting. The ole Cap'n would appear constantly and converse with her and offer advice, take in and sympathize with her problems, he was a friendly spirit and took all the shock and dread out of death through his regular appearances, just a member of the family you could say. If only Real Life were this way instead of this eternal mystery, this perplexing and to many disturbing enigma that keeps us wondering and guessing right up 'til the bitter end, what's behind the curtain Monty? So anybody out there got any good ghost stories? I promise I won't tell Hben.

The wake scene

Another reason not to be good, you won't get an honest eulogy. Practically everybody gets good eulogies these days, the guy who cheats on his wife every chance he gets, your scumbag of a boss so where's the motivation to do the right thing? "Yeah, Bob was a selfish prick", imagine you're not part of the solution but part of the problem and you're sitting in back of the church and you hear that, might make you think twice. What's this "she lit up a room every time she entered it?" I mean it's nice to be nice after somebody's passing but let's cut the bullshit. I can only think of one person whom I came across in my life who this could possibly, possibly apply to. Had a neighbor once, crusty old woman who lived a hard life and had a bad husband and after he died she said "I don't know why everyone's sending me sympathy cards." I was never into cemeteries but Gate of Heaven in Valhalla is a good one, Babe Ruth and Sal Mineo are buried there.

Adult Hyperactivity Disorder or AHD

Worked in a deli way back and this guy would come in and I mean right after we opened and that was at 7 in the morning, thin and middle-agish, looked like he jogged and he saw me going to my department after I just clocked in and he'd stand right there in front of the counter at exactly two minutes after to order his cuts and I'm like "I have to wash the chicken juice off my hands first, give me a second" and he kind of got offended and stalked off all wired up, bouncing off the different food sections to pick up things and then came back a few later. I hate these early-risers, everyone else is still waking up and they're out there and the sun's not up yet and they're jogging against traffic. Same place, few years ago and I was told to close the deli at 4 since we were in the middle of a big blizzard. Already had over a foot of snow on the ground so I must have had a worried tense expression on my face and this young guy came over. Now I'm worried about how it'll be going home and I'm trying to cover the salads and he just stood there and said I just gave him a, get this, a nonverbal form of communication as in I don't want to help him. Yeah but why is he even out in a blizzard ordering cold cuts? I swear it's like the snow ionizes people. You'll get some frail elderly woman out in this stuff and she wants a 1/4 lb. of cole slaw, stay home and watch a court show. So that's it, I sass people with my eyes.

The incredibly obese

Here's the way I break it down. Now for the vast majority of us we won't go over a certain weight, most of us are probably overweight but within reasonable limits, a sensible paunch but it stops there and WHY you may ask? Has to do with one of the two strongest and most primal urges in human nature

EL SEXO,

the other being food of course. OK so now most of us enjoy both or at least hope to enjoy the fever of which Madonna sings about but the deal is we pretty much know that if it's too much going down the pike foodwise we ain't getting the other thing. Just trying to break things down here to their most elemental, most basic, most simplistic so the ones you occasionally see on Springer and in real life, those who are fat in an awesome way have pretty much made their decision in Life. They're going with the food and I can understand this. God gave you taste buds and as Gwyneth Paltrow said on one installment of Spain - On the Road Again "dieting is a horrible way to live" and I agree BUT...so at what crossroads point in your life's journey do you make the choice for food, that philosophical watershed of never going back to the other thing? Don't tell me it's metabolism because if you step out of the shower one night and you see you're 500 freakin' pounds you know you have to do something about it and do it now if you're ever gonna get that spoonful of lovin' going, the tub with the candles and the Barry White pumping in. It's all good though because it's all about choice, in this case FOOD VS. SEX, I just find it interesting is all.

Just a spritz of paranoia

Woman and I were discussing this. When we grow up we're taught to trust each other, that people are basically good but that paranoia or suspicion or what have you is a bad thing but you may be at a disadvantage later on in life. She brought up crime writer Ann Rule's books and one intro in particular where Rule says the people who are most often prey are the honest as being honest they think everyone else is. People who lie and do so skillfully, the honest never even suspect they're being had. These are very apropos insights especially in light of the Bernard Madoff scandal and now this Stanford guy. IF it doesn't add up it's not always paranoia at work, it could be your sixth sense or what Lista calls that still small inner voice. Shakespeare knew it, in King Lear the virtuous Edgar has no idea his evil brother Edmund is scheming for his land. There's been events in my own life that don't always add up, bad characters who for some strange reason remain popular whom everybody else trusts but you can see right through them. It always amazes me that these Madoff guys can get away with this stuff for years before the truth finally surfaces, maybe it has to do with the way we're brought up? Politicians we know are corrupt but we still elect them. Perhaps we need to apply a bit of the soapster's wisdom here who once said he tends to think the worst of people until they prove themselves otherwise. I might add ESPECIALLY when $$$$$$ is involved.

Rx against Porkulus

I only caught a small part of his don't mess with Joe speech last night. I can only take this stuff in very small doses, I'd rather watch them sell a banjo on Home Shopping Network. It's easy to lose focus and see the problem as OBAMA but it ain't this per se. Eliminate the income tax!!! Yes, when you have people's hard-earned money rolling in the temptation is just too overwhelming to use it for this reason and for that reason and I don't care what party you belong to. Get rid of the income tax and you can use it for no reason.

In one ear and out the other

Pope dresses down Nancy Pelosi on abortion.

Impressions of Obama

He might be a moderate or a pragmatist or a healer or a reconciler or a torchbearer of peace to all mankind, all kinds of yummy ingredients blended together into one heavenly decadent sinful dessert but to me he's a liberal automaton, a kind of political cyborg sent back through Time to sign liberal bill after liberal bill. The order to close Gitmo, the new pretty-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top interrogation rules on terror suspects, that Hummer of a stimulus package barreling down the street and now lifting of the ban on embryonic stem-cell research and let's see, it's only February the 17th. The cyborg always has a mission, never to be troubled by afterthoughts or doubts or followup questions there is a job to be done, undo every thing Bush, reverse conservative gains, have liberal clones in place when any of the Supremes decide to call it quits. Let it not be said that he is the President who does Nothing, don't put that left-handed bill-signing hand on ice quite yet. Just throwing the practice pitches until FOCA, I'm getting depressed but I sure hope helping some guy with genital warts somehow stimulates the economy and as a diversion we get the Octomommy and homicidal chimps and a 24 season that doesn't quite make sense. It is a surreal moment, tell me I'm dreaming.

Moral Instruction

I've read in different Catholic Church bulletins that when a couple want to use the sacrament of marriage they usually have to inform the parish at least one year in advance. Struck me as way too long a wait, what if they want a small affair and not all the hoopla and they want to do it three months from now? What if there's already a bun in the oven? Basically a large part of the wait has to do with the requirement of those Pre-Cana classes, marriage preparation courses designed to strengthen their future conjugal life together. I found myself being alternately annoyed and offended by this, it's my libertarian streak coming through I guess and doesn't the Church already have too many rules and regulations to begin with (be sorry for your sins but don't confess them to a priest and you go to Hell, your basic control issue)? So I came up with the root of my displeasure here and it's this: you either believe in the sanctity of marriage, the seriousness of the marriage covenant or you don't, it's not teachable, it's not trainable. Now moral education makes perfect sense, is even necessary when raising kids. At such an impressionable age they're perfectly amenable to notions of Right and Wrong, well some of them anyway but when dealing with adults...it'd be like if your Dad came over your apartment, you're 37 now and found a porno under your bed and yelled at you about it. Dad might be perfectly right about the bad nature of the stuff but...regarding morality you either have it or you don't, it is what it is. Now to tie together two of my recurring themes here, abortion and drugs - since the fetus is human it should be protected by law, since drugs pose a public-safety issue that's the primary reason they should be illegal. Going over some of my most recent blogs on these two matters it's become obvious moral instruction doesn't work, moral education is a waste of time. I've articulated the old tried-and-true reasons for being against abortion and threw in some new and original points I hope on the matter. Same deal with drugs especially as relates to the psychedelics but it's almost as if people don't read the stuff or read it but don't absorb it. They're passionately for abortion or at least pro-choice as they say and the folks who are for narcotics seem to be really for them, the scare tactics only make them more curious and aggresive in their defense of them. So perhaps the pedagogic (or teaching) aspect of my blogging is coming to an end now, gave it my best shot and the thought occured to me if I feel this way about Pre-Cana why not the rest? In a morally relative universe to say you have all the answers or at least some of them, we prefer to revel in our ambiguity, our ambivalence and we've made the quest of not knowing or not striving to know a gospel. In the olde days Truth was our beacon, today truth is controversial. I still hold the same positions I've always did, I'm simply giving the chalk and the eraser and the pointer a rest for now.

Kind of an apocalyptic assessment from the msm

Patiently waiting my turn to use the computer at my local library after work the other day and browsed the magazine rack to kill time. First Newsweek caught my interest with its cover of 2/16 - We Are All Socialists Now - The Perils and Promise of the New Era of Big Government, I didn't know I was a socialist but thanx for enlightening me boys and then my eye caught The New Republic of 2/18 with its breathless Conservatism is Dead - An Intellectual Autopsy of the Movement by Sam Tanenhaus. I always knew TNR was liberal in political orientation but somehow I thought they had shaded themselves towards moderation over the years, wasn't quite The Nation know what I'm saying? Now all this because Bam was elected? A movement that's been around since like forever and is simply the collective mass reaction to the dominant liberalism of the day is no more? In this sense conservatism is largely reactionary by definition since as a movement it never really gets to call the shots at least in academia, the mainstream media (ok there's FOX), the judiciary and you name it. Liberalism is pretty much public policy these days, there's still a good chance you can get a welfare check but I didn't know Obama had such power that he wiped conservatism off the face of the map. The msm inhabits a rather weird universe, it's almost, oh I don't know, psychedelic?

If it's not the social issues what unites us as conservatives?

Is it the theme of less government? The fiscal conservatives (FC's) would say no, if anything they're the true conservatives. With my heavy abortion blogging a few months ago to my more recent drug tangent it's become apparent we're not all on the same page. Throw in gay marriage and I would hazard a guess too that they don't get all that bent out of shape if a sex shop opens next door to a church and a playground which segues nicely into

economic policy? Well if this is all there is that's kind of thin gruel. Most conservatives favor lower taxes but what about those of us who favor no income tax at all? I almost said "and less spending" but true to form when they get into office even they throw the money around. OK, so the libertarian position of no income taxation to the more mainstream conservative view of lower taxes, well that's a bit of a ravine but we can still wave comfortably to each other from each side of the bridge. So does it all revolve around the dinars? Then there's

military excursions. Surprisingly I would've expected more diversity here, when those phantom WMD's in Iraq failed to materialize I would've expected conservatives to debate more the loss of life there, we're not pacifists by any stretch but remaking the Middle East? OK, Pat Buchanan had a problem with this but he's Pat Buchanan, the rest of us referred to it as Bush-bashing.

$$$$$$ and War.....hmmmmm.....and oh yes, Alec Baldwin is a dick.

Take social issues off the table and what do we have? Are there still common threads? Do we still have A common thread? I don't quite have the answer anymore but I don't think liberals debate what liberalism means to them, if they're not always on the same page at least they're reading the same book.

Channel-surfing last night

NO I didn't watch the whole thing, merely dipped my finger in that liberal dip from time to time, get that aftertaste going in the mouth. Obama's very first news conference. As expected he pretty much touted the important role of government in Life and lectured us on the conservatives didn't like FDR and the New Deal, "but they're fighting old battles" he said. I didn't know that if a battle is old it's no longer philosophically valid so after that I kind of drifted off into Home Shopping Network land, did a little Globetrekker which was interesting because I learned all about the Yangtze River in China and swung back to catch his thoughts on Iran still being a member of the international community or something, checked out what's on the CW and then caught the very informal and brusque "thank you guys" at the end at exactly 9:02PM as if he had to catch 24.

Credibility issues with 24

Sangala Colonel Ike Dubaku, right-hand man to the Juma Regime responsible for untold genocide against their own people. Our first woman president Allison Taylor has decided to militarily invade this fictitious African country to stop the atrocity but Col. Dubaku has corrupted vast swaths of the U.S. government with diamonds and since Plan A with the now destroyed CIP device has failed he has kidnapped the First Man or Gentleman Henry Taylor who's already been through hell and back, through the mill as they say, and personally calls the White House to tell her to back off and withdraw the U.S. fleet from the coast of Sangala, all this time operating from various safehouses in America. So why exactly did Dubaku under the assumed name Samuel cultivate a persoal relationship with an African-American woman and get himself into all kinds of personal distractions with her mother who rung up his cell on last night's episode to tell him to break up with her? I'm sure someone of his military stature when the need comes to get his rocks off has a 'ho or two in his back pocket and ALSO he roams about freely on subways and sidewalks and but NOBODY seems to recognize him. Now I'm perfectly aware of a good part of the Taylor government has been bought off but you'd think at least some part of the CIA, the still good part would be looking for the man. Maybe he figured it's true what they say, we all look alike but it's still a compelling season on 24, just stretches it a tad you might say.

A new credo?

Had a young manager once and was mulling over in my head while channel-surfing last night what he offered me once as his own personal wisdom for the workplace (I'm sorry Obama but I wasn't paying strict attention). "Don't do for them until they do for you." It might sound cynical and negative but when you think about it it makes sense. How many times at your job have you come in on your day off to help out 'cause somebody else called out sick or else stayed late too many times to count? Did you rack up any brownie points by doing so? Have they kept track of your good deeds and will duly reward you in the end? Not likely so rock on brother!

Are we outnumbered?

This is kind of a spinoff to my most recent blog The hippy lobby never seems to die as I am concerned and I've shared this with Beth. That particular post dealt specifically with studies being done right now purporting to show the health benefits of lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD but I'm broadening the subject here to narcotics in general especially in light of the recent Michael Phelps bong show. Now as I expressed to Beth I had thought there was some kind of societal consensus finally evolving that illegal drugs are bad for you, even that hedonist Hef reportedly doesn't allow them in the Mansion but then reviewing the most recent blogs out there the number of people who see nothing at all wrong with using at least some of these drugs, put it this way, I find this counterconsensus if you will disturbing. To say that there is irresponsible drug use and then responsible drug use is like saying there's also responsible adultery which many people hold to also. Now getting back to my hippy blog even the heavy hardcore hallucinogens, otherwise reasonable people who should know better seem at least curious about them. There's an intellectual curiosity here and they defend it by saying that this normally political desire for moderation be applied here too. Now as positive a thing as moderation can be I say it doesn't always apply across the board this being one of those cases, it's a common error in moral reasoning to say moderation in all things. I find these thoughts mesmerizing in a bad way and so this hippy blog companion piece.

Why conservatives want Obama to fail

Now ask yourself this question: As a conservative you are rightly concerned about some of Obama's policies or stated positions in the past, it could be FOCA or the stimulus package, it could be the closing of Gitmo in one year, whatever but do you want to see a failed presidency over the next four years? I would say that RUSH does in spades and here's why, it would show the world yet again the bankruptcy of liberalism, the damage it causes, a textbook case to be used come '012. That's f****d up, as conservatives we can and should fight Obama whenever the issue is important enough, we have to hold the line on fiscal extravagance for instance when it comes to "stimulating" the economy but as I said in my last blog partisanship has been sharpened since his election, this is not good. Now many of my own views may happen to fall along partisan lines but there's a difference between this and seeing yourself as a member of a Team, Us vs. Them, criticizing Obama's proposed infrastructure program for example as Karl Rove has done early on instead of saying yes, our roads and bridges and tunnels are in great need of upgrading and basic repair. This is tweaking and it is petty, it doesn't rise to the level of a FOCA and it shows the sorry state of conservatism that we'd rather he fail to give us a leg up in the next big one. I hope he doesn't push FOCA, I hope he gets a healthy dose of fiscal sanity, I hope he's good in the War on Terror and keeps us safe, I hope this and I hope that. His very early going out of his way to seek out Republican views and ideas bodes well which brings up the question: IF his turns out to be a good or even fair presidency will we give him due credit? There's a fine line between pushing your views and hoping somebody falls flat on his face to "prove" the correctness of your views which is why I haven't listened at all to conservative talk radio since the election. Savage is still harping on Obama's middle name and my brother says Sean has this high-pitched wail of a voice like we're in the middle of a world war. I don't know what this all means, whether conservative talk radio will see a rejuvenation or its own demise but frankly I'm tired of everyone at this point.