What to do when you have radical friends

Democratic peer pressure

This issue has to make Obama uncomfortable. New York is now the latest state to push for gay marriage. Democratic Governor David Paterson is sending up a bill to the Assembly pronto, Chuck Schumer has only recently converted to the gay marriage cause and Bam must be thinking "you know guys your state has its own economic woes and you're concerned with this right now?" It's like when you have a group of friends and over time you see they're a little bit off, just a wee tad like Bam is in the back seat and Paterson is driving his souped up GTO with the hemi, Chuck is sitting right next to him, they both got little old lady cataract glasses on and Paterson puts the pedal to the medal and Bam is like "SLOW DOWN ALREADY!!" They pick up Bloomberg, for some reason I can't get it out of my head that he's not a Democrat, he's for the gay marriage too and he's enjoying the ride as well. I don't think Obama wants to go down in History as the one-term president who effected radical social change or more likely at least wanted to as I really doubt even if Richard Simmons were president he'd be able to pass gay marriage in all 50 states in just one term. Even if Obama in his heart of hearts were for the thing I think he'd much prefer to be safely ensconced in his second term before upheaving society as we know it. I think he wants to govern moderately for the next four years, he has his nice sweater on with the little alligator but his friends Dave and Chuck are like

"hey Bam come and watch the sheep video with us"

maybe someone passes him a joint. They take him to a club and pay for a free lap dance for him but he's sitting there all stiff,

you know man can't he just break free and hang with his own crowd? those who get it about not rocking the boat too much, these be tough economic times. Can't we be content with making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for now, kicking back with some milk and getting those economic numbers up again ("hey guys it's time for a break") while Dave and Chuck behind his back are calling him a f****n faggot for not getting on board. He's the first African-American president for cryin' out loud, he's Made History, lower the flame and just let it simmer for awhile.

Rush's persecution complex

He has one big-time you know. I haven't listened to him in literally a couple of years now but of the occasional snippets I hear and read about he's STILL complaining of the conspiracy against him. He can't talk about ANY subject without bringing IT up. New York Governor David Paterson has raised taxes through the roof here acting like your typical Democratic executive and Rush was complaining about this recently, says he has no choice but to move out of the state but then had to add he (Paterson) wants that and so good ole Dave started messin' with him and said if he knew his tax policy would have that effect he would have considered it much sooner. Now conservatism is largely reactionary by nature almost by default. Since liberalism pretty much holds sway in all areas of life today so much of conservative energy is spent merely reacting to the dominant philosophy of the day, it's a conservative malaise with a heavy shaving of Zoloft. Let's say it's all true, vast swaths of the msm hate Rush and want to silence him, one 24/7 subproject of the VLWC (or Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy) wants to suppress him through a new Fairness Doctrine, what of it? While if even some of these things are true it doesn't help the Right to have a persecution complex. Rush gives it that conspiratorial and paranoid edge but the time he wastes marinating in his own self-pity instead of just pushing conservative principles, it reminds me of the time you waste in traffic jams. Part of him wants to be an existential hero, some kind of angst-ridden character out of some graphic novel constantly warring with forces larger than himself. It's like working with someone who says all the time "they hate me, they want to get rid of me" instead of just putting in your eight hours, pumping it out and going home. God GOD I miss the days of the caller abortions and the blow monkeys!

Where to begin?

So yeah, unless you've been living in a cave like a blind salamander you're aware that Mel's wife of, what is it? like almost thirty years is divorcing him for his philandering ways. Seven or eight children, staunch and ultra-traditionalist pre-Vatican 2 Catholic who once said his Protestant wife is going to hell, spotted on a tropical beach with some bombshell Russian singer in a bikini so why'd he make The Passion? I've a theory about this and it involves a little Stephen Hawking, wormholes, superstrings applied to psychology, Einsteinian Freudianism......I'm working on it......it's my Loop Theory. Let's say you're not just average conservative, you keep walking along this loop and you enter the woods of SuperConservatism, I mean EVERYTHING bothers you but remember it's still a loop or a giant circle and what's on the other side of the loop? Where your ultraconservatism ends is where liberalism begins, I'm still working on the precise algebraic differential equation...but before you know it your average SuperCon "accidentally" walks into some porn shop, just browsing mind you, keeping tabs on the culture a la Tom Wolfe. When he wakes up the same hand that once condemned his wife to hell is now circle-jerking to some Slovakian fantasy, the same mouth that once lumped all things post-Vatican 2 as Antichrist is now saying "Jose Cuervo I pray for your power!" It also helps explain why former lefties like David Horowitz are now confirmed righties, they traveled the same loop as Mel only from the opposite direction. Fruit loops.

Pro-gay conservatives

Another two-parter, I HAVE TO say something about Mel Gibson but let's get back to Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal for a minute. It works like this, for years we've taken libs to task for being pro-abortion until they have to overexplain themselves, "oh no we're not for THAT, no man, you got us all wrong" and so basically all you have to do from a political angle is to criticize someone and according to this basic law of political psychology the person will start to move in the direction of the critic, nay will almost or just stop short of adopting his position or may even take on a diluted version. OK, so now for the same amount of time the average conservative has been labeled a gay-basher, a homophobe and so now they can't wait to show their new gay colors like Bree on Desperate Housewives doing a complete 180 after she found out her son is gay. So now you have conservatives applauding the State of Vermont for legalizing gay marriage through the legislature, BINGO! pass the lube, we weren't really against gays marrying in the first place just wanted you to respect federalist concerns is all. This is Kyle Smith of the New York Post but for a fair majority of us we still have a residual distaste for gay acts. We don't form an entire movement around it the way the evangelicals have, we don't have the fervor or the time and we're more than tolerant but by the same token don't ask us to celebrate the destruction of your anus. Kyle says it all amounts to this, the buggery bothers us but I'd go further. The larger issue is the loss of masuline culture. Sure a guy wearing a dress won't upset the Order of the Universe but we have a problem with it if it's not part of a comedy sketch, we can't picture him like Dirty Harry jumping from the overpass onto that school bus with the sniper holding the schoolkids hostage and any culture that celebrates the first tranny mayor who's ugly btw is a little off. We actually prefer male culture as we should, those weren't tranny SEALS after all who shot those three Somali pirates to death. In relations between the sexes feminism wants to criminalize the Alpha Male, if I'm meandering it's because it's all part and parcel of the same package, it's all part of the pussification of America but it doesn't mean you have to be like Mel Gibson...(to be continued)

Conservatives out of sorts

First off we have to put a checkmark in Obama's corner. He gave the order for the use of force last Friday to free Captain Richard Phillips from those Somali pirates. He gets a kudo or two in my book but somehow Jimmy Carter would've f****d it up.

The Winter of our Conservative Discontent - Beth has had it with liberals, you can't change their minds she says but before we go there we gotta look at our own camp. IMO the fiscal conservatives (FCs) want to take over the Party and purge us social conservatives (SCs) from the ranks. OK, maybe not soapie and Patrick M but the ones who pull the strings do. The FCs don't just want to stop moralizing about things like abortion, rather they want to moralize or mainstream abortion so as to talk about other more important things. Now as I blogged recently when you take the social issues off the table there is less and less that bonds us FCs and SCs together - economic policy, military campaigns and overall patriotism is basically what you're left with, kind of a thin gruel like eating the same thing everyday. Here's where the FCs are wrong though. I'm an idealist not just about politics but Life in general, even if our politics were correct Life could still suck. Put another way you need spirituality, conservatism has to be about moral values too. One of the SCs' focus is doing the right thing, the FCs would add nothing wrong with that but such right choices need to be freely made in an environment of maximum freedom. Whatever, we could have the right economic policies tomorrow, ultimate victory in Iraq and all the rest and still have the usual laundry list of social ills, divorce, abortion, drug abuse etc. In short how can you be a conservative and not talk about spirituality, about moral values? Social conservatism is about preserving traditions, not about saying psychedelics are good for you, that's libertarianism. So before I can respond to Beth's points we need to define what conservatism means, what does it really stand for? with so many strains of conservatism today it's hard at times to know exactly what it is we're fighting for and conversely before we take on liberalism we have to know what that stands for too, what precisely are they fighting for on their side?

I'm just worried about the next psycho getting ready to rock

WHEW!!! there hasn't been a massacre in a couple of days now. We're living in the age of the radical asshole, the Golden Age of the Psycho but what would Jack Bauer do? He'd shoot the motherfucker dead in the full glory of his lunacy but that's just it, liberals latch ahold of these stories pretty much to push gun control. The experts are saying it's job loss that pushes these idiots over the edge. I'll go along with that and that's the whole point, too many of us have too much of an emotional attachment to our jobs. I know it pays our bills, hell it's our survival but it ain't healthy. In my area many years ago a man who worked for a phone company once killed his whole family and then himself because they took his overtime away, he relied on the OT to send his daughter to school among other things. I don't sympathize with these psychos in the least, may the devils torment them in hell for ages to come. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed, get up in a pissed off mood and shoot a couple dozen or so and then the cowards almost always take their own lives. Ya wanna know something, take your own life!! hell put it on YouTube if you like but leave the rest of us the hell alone. The radical asshole, I'm tired of him like he blowed himself up real good to get 72 virgins feeding him honeycakes but his leader never does the same, he's in some cave watching CNN. My life sucks so I'm gonna make sure you don't even have one, the psycho moral code. I've nothing to add here but anyone thinking of doing the same, form your own little weirdo club and march off the nearest cliff. Rant over.

Isn't that just a pro-forma statement?

I originally was just gonna post this comment in my last thread about liberals but wanted to draw more attention to it. When a reporter put the stem cell question to President Obama in his last press conference he said he has wrestled with stem cells just like he has wrestled with abortion. Is this really true though or how do we know it's true? It's what I call a pro-forma statement or saying what's required as a societal or cultural consensus is forming or has actually coalesced around a controversial issue. Now the abortion debate has been evolving lo these past going on four decades now. Maude's daughter once said it was just like getting a tooth pulled but those were the early years, the consensus now is that the act itself does have a certain gravitas to it thus the pro-forma statement BUT let's say someone has really really wrestled with the issue as Obama has said he's done, on the whole list of sub-issues important to both sides wouldn't the wrestler come down sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other? Put another way you have two columns, the official NARAL positions and the official NRTL positions so wouldn't our wrestling Commander-in-Chief have checkmarks in different columns going all the way down the list? "Should Roe vs. Wade be overturned?" NO "Parental notification" YES "Should we have what are known as informed-consent laws?" YES "Parental consent" NO See what I'm saying? BUT Obama has a 100% approval rating on issues of concern to the abortion lobby. Brilliant? I thought it was.

What is the next big news story?

I was thinking of a transformative and positive event that transcends politics, that when everybody went in to work the next day they'd be a little less consumed by the daily grind and go "how about that?" An end to abortion? doubt it, there's seems to be a kink in our culture right now, seems we have to have a little Hoover action from time to time, we could have a thousand methods of birth control tomorrow, wouldn't matter, I don't get it. The cure for cancer? 'twould be nice, we're about due as I keep saying but somehow it never seems to come. World peace? in what lifetime? The capture of OBL? Bush should've wrapped this up and no Mark Levin Fan, this is not some liberal talking point. Abolishing the IRS? that's self-evident but the continued existence of the IRS is why we only have two major political parties and they both remain in power. Madonna becomes a nun? she's back to swinging from the trees again.

Obama as the nation's first African-American president? Many, even a majority might go with this as being the transformative and positive event I'm talking about. Even many conservatives would go along with this, I call this the Peggy Noonan School of Thought, no matter he's a liberal who's sinking our country deeper into debt the important thing is that it happened, mull this over with your brandy at night and get that happy feeling, that mentally orgasmic reverie but for me and Beth and soapie it doesn't satisfy, it's formula food and doesn't fulfill, it doesn't sit in your gut and give you that contented feeling. As a blogger I need to sink my teeth into something. Porkulus, an important but dry subject and I can't blog about Obama for the next four years, it's too depressing and you get that feeling of putting your heart and soul into a blog but where's the influence? where's that Jon Stewart pull? that "did you hear what Z-man just said?" It has to get worse before it gets better as they say. Beth taking a sabbatical from her blogging and yes it is a sabbatical is perfectly understandable, if Nancy Pelosi doesn't follow her own Pope what does that make us?

The culture's in a rut these days. Movies suck although some people feel they still have to go. Pop music, it ain't exactly the '80s and even a recent "House" had an episode about a guy who grows pot in his apartment and got sick from some rat piss, at least FRINGE knows to take a break every once in a while. You'd be surprised at the number of 40-something men seriously browsing through comic book stores, porn is so yesterday. There's no talent out there, people don't know how to make the workplace jazzy and interesting anymore, we're all into our 9-5 little gulags. Come on guys, give us the Big Story!!

Who's your favorite liberal?

Mr. Idaho of course but it's always been Mark Shields of The Newshour for me, at least until lately when he felt Obama did no wrong with Porkulus. Used to like Michael Kinsley until he started coming across as a snarky nerd so that's it for me, it's a count 'em on one hand kind of deal.

A solution to New York Times editorials

I don't read them.

A funny story

Seems there was some young African-American librarian who used to commute to work everyday by subway. Very clean-cut with glasses, not bad looking and in New York there's a lot of crime so he's sitting there in this very crowded train one day and there's a wanted poster of the latest perp wanted for rape/assault and he's getting a little nervous and concerned because he's thinking "hey, that looks like me!!"

Former Yankees Third Baseman Graig Nettles once wrote a book, "Balls", and when a hot book first comes out there's usually a long list of reserves at the Circulation Desk at your local library and so this woman comes up to get her copy and asks "do you have Balls for my husband?"

Which is most likely to be true?

spontaneous human combustion, haunted houses, UFOs, Elvis is still around, Sasquatch, Loch Ness, Oswald was a patsy, the Bermuda Triangle OR the VRWC really exists?

I'm sorry those are your options and you have to choose one. It's my hunch that BB is going with (none of the above) but I've discussed this with people and my personal favorite is Nessie.

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.