How to put the racism issue to bed once and for all

Elect a black conservative president next time, say Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell. If we still hate the nigger then ok.

What really stands out about Patrick Swayze (1952-2009)

From Wikipedia:

"Personal life

Swayze was married to Lisa Niemi from June 12, 1975 until his death."

Ghost has got to be one of the most romantic movies of all time, a must have in any serious DVD collection. I really was hoping as we all were that he was going to kick this thing but I don't think they know how to treat cancer yet. You don't know which is worse, the cancer or the chemo but this has really turned into the Year of the Famous Dead Person -- Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson (they're STILL talking about it), pitchman Billy Mayes, Walter Cronkite and of course Ted Kennedy (and others I'm leaving out but those are the most prominent, you'd have to google the rest). I sure hope next year is less dark.

To hear liberals tell it

the conservative grassroots is filled with Hate. First the Tea Parties and then the town halls but the way I see it is Democracy in Action,

it's all good

and have liberals forgotten their own maxim that dissent is the highest form of patriotism? So some folks showed a little passion, it's nice to know some Americans still have some spunk left in 'em and I'm trying to diagnose the lib problem here. Is it we're not supposed to critique the nation's First African-American President? Well welcome to the ballgame bro! I think it's healthy that folks are up in arms about the lack of fiscal restraint by Government which among other things is what's animating the conservative grassroots these days. It's OUR money after all. Whether you agree or disagree with the tea partiers and townhallers there's nothing even vaguely unconstitutional about it all but libs are treating it as a hate crime.

I'm lovin' it!

The MSM under the microscope

As my brother is fond of saying take an average group of people and they'll likely tend to be non-ideological, you can have someone who is pro-life but for gay marriage at the same time, you can have a conservative who bashes Big Business (that'd be me) but the whole point is there are so many opinions out there and that's good. It's pretty much an established fact that the vast majority of the msm are liberal in their political orientation, ok sure you have your occasional Brit Humes, ok you have Brit Hume but on balance they always take the non-conservative position on practically any given issue. They won't call themselves liberal of course, we're objective you know (a Marvin Kalb piece of gospel they fall back on when challenged) but they certainly do harbor certain opinions and this seeps out every now and then in their coverage of the Whatever and the seepage is known as bias. I like to think of it as cat spray, marking their territory or a little septic action in the backyard but ok, so now here's the question before the Board today (or judging by my sitemeter of late is that the Bored?) -- do these budding journalists, aspiring reporters enter college, journalism school, the institutions of Higher Learning without much in the way of a strong political package to begin with either way and then something happens within the school itself that churns out a bunch of cookie-cutter liberals OR are they liberals to begin with who are merely honing their journalistic skills to better practice their non-bias bias? Again on ANY GIVEN ISSUE, Ted Kennedy - be respectful, talk radio - Bad, health-care reform - obvious, Van Jones - Glenn Beck racist......I MEAN WTF IS GOING ON HERE???

Introspection on abortion

Usually when I'm debating with a pro-choicer at some forum or blog, when things get to the boiling point and I'm driving my point home, when things get a tad too personal the opposition will throw the pejorative "self-righteous" in my face which they like to say characterizes the social right. OK I'm speaking only for myself here, can't speak for Sarah Palin, for the Rev. James Dobson, Randall Terry, Jeb Bush, just little old me. In my day to day I consider myself so far from the holy, for the bulk of my life I've never even remotely felt myself approaching sainthood and yet at the same time I've reached the conclusion that many pro-abortion folks are utterly heartless but it's not self-righteousness that spawns this evaluation as I've none of it to begin with. I think many pro-choicers are dark people and while I consider myself to be your rank-and-file sinner, I fully expect a lengthy stay in Purgatory at the least I don't want to take that final step over to the dark side (I hear BB cogitating a response) and the reader will note I was careful to use the word "many" here, didn't say "majority", "most" or "all" but candor compels me to admit for instance that many characters in the Terri Schiavo saga were downright creepy, I know a few liberals who feel the same way and again this is only a conclusion drawn from a sinner who is so far from the mark but draws the line at killing. As dear old Anonymous once noted "morality consists in drawing the line somewhere", you don't have to twist my arm if Beyonce and Britney, Eva Mendes and Jessica Alba are playing nude volleyball on the beach but I don't like to see dead fetuses in garbage pails. I guess the latter makes you a right-wing extremist, a fringe guy or gal these days at least according to polemical rules as defined by liberals who seem to feel that flexibility in one or more areas should guarantee your pro-choicedom. The other pejorative they'll frequently throw in my face is "Mr. Religious Fanatic" which for me is, as Mike Tyson would put it ludikwis since I've never gone out on a theological limb in any discussion or forum or blog with my latest calculations of who's in Hades these days, quite the opposite. Just an autobiographical note here SO GET IT STRAIGHT!!!

Think tanks, beavers and other things conservatives won't talk about

My friend and I are what you would call non-ideological conservatives. In my view the main problem with politics today is that the vast majority of libs and cons read from the same playbooks. Do libs have to be for abortion at every turn for instance? Anyway we got on the subject of think tanks.

Think Tanks

Many companies today use them. My friend seems to have a thing for supermarkets, always seemed to have been working in one at any given time so he was telling me he has it on good authority that the supermarket business in particular is heavy on the think tank stuff, hiring expensive consultants to implement their recommendations. Think tanks, yes they literally do meet in a house and chart the course of your workday from giving everybody only one day off a week to making most workers part-time but giving them almost full-time hours. Being pro-Big Business the average conservative is not going to talk about these things which is why you have me. On the other hand a rather small but not insignificant portion of the population seems to be happily unemployed and that's where the rest of my conservatism kicks into high gear. If I have to work so do you. At least work gives a discipline and structure to your life as opposed to all these people I just saw waiting for the library to open. What's wrong with this picture?

The Environment

Geez it would be nice if conservatives had at least some love for the environment. I remember when I was a kid my Dad took us behind Warehouse Lane in Elmsford, NY Back then it was mainly UPS there and in this stream you could see the beavers working, gnawing at twigs and building their dams, using their tails to pat the mud down and so I was telling a friend about this and we went there the other day. Have to relegate it to a fond memory though as the place has been more built up since those days with other businesses now but the thought occured: now we're not what Rush would call lefty-commie-enviro-whackos but considering that the beaver population had been so heavily decimated in the past due to early trapping when you do encounter actual beavers today in a populated area doing their thing one would think it has a special value. One would think SOMEONE would have left the place alone since a more reasonable environmental philosophy would recognize that the beaver should have a higher status than the snail-darter and so be worth protecting. In short I want the Palisades Mall AND the beaver and don't see why such things have to be overly political, either/or political pigeonholing. Gotta build! Gotta build! Well having gone there the other day it did bother me, ya gotta leave some things alone not only on an environmental level, there are romantic and poetic considerations as well. Maybe it's my midlife crisis but you should be able to relive some of your childhood memories.

So think tanks make your job rough and you don't even have the solace of looking at the beavers anymore. My schematics say something is wrong here.

Our over-the-top media (as usual) - why I'm not into political necro

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy 1932-2009

I'm sorry but whenever I hear Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" I think of him ("If you told me you were drowning I would not lend a hand") but more on that in a minute. It's funny to hear the msm refer to Kennedy as the liberal lion of the Senate but that's because he described himself as a liberal so it was ok, the msm had no choice. It's kind of like coming out of the closet, the media won't do it for you (the responsible media anyway), you have to get the ball rolling yourself. If not they would have happily referred to him as a moderate because in the universe of the msm, must have something to do with the warping of space/time, parallel universes and wormholes but there are no liberals. OK on to the murky waters of Chappaquiddick.

MY THEORY and it's a darn good one is this and it was first proposed to me by a woman -- Ted was not in the car that night. He gave the keys to Mary Jo when he shouldn't have, everybody must've had some that night and so she was the one who drove off the bridge all alone. This helps enormously to help clear up some discrepancies like why he didn't notify the police immediately afterwards and why he was spotted early the next morning outside his hotel room all clean and with fresh clothes on and seemingly not a care in the world and that's because he didn't know at the time. Not exemplary behavior to be sure but not the monster he was often made out to be by right-wingers to this day.

OK a true John John story. JJ went to a nice restaurant with a woman and the head waiter told this other couple he was relocating them to make room for the Kennedy scion and so the guy was naturally miffed. JJ must have sensed this because after he came in he invited the other couple over to join them for dinner. Years later JJ bumped into the man again and remembered him and asked "so how was your dinner?" That to me speaks volumes, that's all I need to know about the man.

Liberal and conservative views on the CIA

Pretty much conservatives are very pro-CIA. I've a more varied view of the spooks but before I get to that I do think it's a terrible terrible mistake for Obama's AG Eric Holder to decide to prosecute any CIA officials for authorizing or using certain interrogation techniques of terror suspects that liberals have felt went too far. You might make the case from a technical moral standpoint that the methods were somehow wrong but what I for the life of me don't get is this apparent soft spot among the leftie community for those who wish to do us great harm and for Obama to approve of this prosecutorial approach merely cements his repuation as a liberal. From stimulus to health-care to this, it ain't hard to figure. It's not a centrist or moderate pattern at all, it obviously masturbates his base but to point this out you risk the ire of folks like Bill Moyers who, how do I put this? you're engaging in hateful mythology even though you're merely connecting the dots and highlighting the truth. Anyway to balance out my view of the G-men found this under the Wikipedia link for LSD:

"Beginning in the 1950s the Central Intelligence Agency began a research program code named MKULTRA. Experiments included administering LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions, usually without the subject's knowledge. The project was revealed in the US congressional Rockefeller Commission Report."

Yeah so Bill O'Reilly is not a big fan of those Matt Damon/Jason Bourne movies because it casts a bad light on the CIA, liberals can't bash the CIA enough and so perhaps BB can shed some light. Perhaps the late Bob Novak had the best take on politics in general: "Always love your country but never trust your government."

The Freedom of Choice Act

Interesting that Obama has spent so much time on health-care "reform" when he had made a promise at some Planned Parenthood confab a few years back that signing the FOCA into law would be the first act he'd do, Priority Numero Uno. Everyone (libs included) should start seeing him for the bullshit artist he is. Gotta laugh though, when Obama was elected many in the liberal msm sounded the death knell for conservatism as a movement, funny how a few fringe people can derail such a massive project as health-care reform. He tackled too much too soon, wanted to ram everything through and couple impatience with arrogance and it ain't a good combination. Conservatism was never really dead, just waiting for the right moment to reenergize itself and as for FOCA I'd be really surprised at this point if anybody brings it up. With 40 million+ abortions to date since 1973 where is the legislative urgency? Obama has been a boon to the conservative movement so be glad he was elected. We as a country got to Make History and we get our country back too, not a bad deal by any stretch!

Obama is in deep denial

Even many Democrats have turned against the public option and so the best analogy I can use is that Obama is like some man who has so much to offer and yet he's being rejected and so the initial stage is denial, it ain't happening, people don't understand, maybe I need to 'splain better. I said this over at Pamela Hart's blog but Obama putting out a government website to "correct" all the "misinformation" about health-care reform would be like to expect a bunch of JFK conspiracy theorists to consult the Warren Commission Report. Hey dude you need to get over yourself, you ARE being rejected and that cute little tv spot of a bunch of cars cutting off the ambulance (i.e. those special interests blocking much-needed health-care reform) well it was clever but it ain't gonna change anyone's minds. Obama has to know in the back of his head that this is soon gonna be the first major failure of his presidency, no amount of shucking it up at those townhallers is gonna help and he's like some guy coming out of the local porn emporium with his little care package and the pastor sees him, the town widow, the postman, Brian with his yo-yo and the wind opens up his trenchcoat and what comes flopping out but it says SOCIALIST all over it. No man public option wasn't a make or break deal, I got these here for a friend and ah fuck it man, I'm more liberal than my own Congress. I got my Harvard cred, I thought you were with me on this. Nothing personal about your Grandma but that AARP crowd, they're what's known in the game as a bunch of useful idiots. I had the msm on my side all along and even they couldn't help me now how depressing is that?

Interesting questions

Is there free will in Heaven? http://catholicdiscussion.yuku.com/topic/1585/t/Is-there-a-potential-for-sin-in-Heaven.html

Why is there no repentance after death? http://catholicdiscussion.yuku.com/topic/1513/t/Why-no-repentance-after-death.html

As well as my own: If God is Eternal then that means He existed for all Eternity going backwards in Time, how is this possible?

Beth and I discussed the importance of appreciating the gift of life God gave you (and presumably this also means if your life sucks) so basically if you wind up in Hell you can say you had no say in the matter of YOU coming into existence so you're only there 'cause God created you in the first place (for this you'd need a good lawyer).

AND the really really BIG QUESTION of the day: Why is Charles Manson follower Squeaky Fromme getting out of jail but Bernard Madoff has something like 8 life sentences or something?

The msm really really really really wants health-care reform

I wish they'd just go back to reporting the news instead of giving opinions. Hey Charlie Gibson pal, if it bothers you that much write an Op-Ed and oh, those Fact Checks they can shove up their ass. Funny how the "facts" always seem to go against the critics. I don't want some government bureaucrat sticking his finger up my rear, I have my own doctor to do that thank you. Better yet since Obama's so worried about little old me maybe he can put on the latex himself. Hillary seems a little testy of late. I don't think she's happy as Secretary of State, I think she really wanted his job, the bitch wanted the whole enchilada. Maybe they can have a Cash for Clunkers program where you can turn in your fat wife.

Rick Pitino, another crumb

OK so a few years back famed University of Louisiana basketball coach Rick Pitino had an affair with this Karen Sypher woman and gave her money to have an abortion. So unless my closed-captioning deceived me and I seemed to read the same thing in the paper the next morning they had sex in some restaurant. I've said it before but a main problem with the whole pro-choice movement is the basic fact, there's no getting around it that widespread abortion fosters and encourages social irresponsibility and yet the pro-choice movement never seems to care or talk about the moral context in which many of these "procedures" take place. The other thing is with Bill Clinton sexual scandal made him stronger, boosted him up in the polls but with everyone else it's wrong and maybe a career death sentence. Call this the Bubba Triple Standard, some asshole woman reporter by the name of Nina Burleigh once wanted to give him a blowjob for his role in keeping abortion legal, hell put a dead fetus in the room and maybe this chick can start squirting. Hey Rick keep the snake in its cage next time! if your wife won't give you a Slurpee go to 7-Eleven.

Life is like the bad job that never changes

A blog inspired by Beth's theme of late and as I said there sometimes I have to rejigger theology in my own head from time to time due to events. The late playwright Arthur Miller who as I recall was not known for being a religious person had this to say in his autobiography TimeBends: "Fuck you Death!" Probably for many of us we've come to accept death as natural and normal if not really a great thing, it's not and I think Miller tapped into something here basic to Christian thought without even knowing it and that is there is something fundamentally flawed with the Universe, in the original Christian understanding death did not enter the world until Man sinned and I covered alot of this ground already in my blog about why emotionally I can never be pro-choice (http://not-the-left.blogspot.com/2009/01/spiritual-view-on-pro-life-im-entitled.html) .

It's not an either/or situation, you can hold that God exists and yet Life is absurd and without meaning at the same time (although this is largely subjective since the happy and the unhappy cannot seem to relate to each other). The atheist "solution" besides ignoring Intelligent Design is too easy and doesn't address this central existential problem head on. Now whenever I've drifted towards this view people call you depressing, negative, pessimistic...relax, I'm merely stating a hard philosophical truth and do counsel people to get as much out of Life as you possibly can, you can and should enjoy Life to the max anyway but the answers religious folk give in such situations are too pat. So why do those of a spiritual bent continue to fool themselves insisting that God has plans for all of us which are too inscrutable for us to even figure out, always on some unknowing mystical plane? What about the 8 dead in the Taconic tragedy? I'd have thought a divine plan would not be so easy to foil.

The thought occured during my walk in Piermont this morning that maybe we're not meant to be here that long anyway and yet we cling to this life with all its absurdity and tragedy and yet maybe the good angels are whispering to us to just let it go. As soon as we're born we start to die, life's a bitch and then you die so why do we try to reconfigure a reality that isn't? Man sinned, we muffed it and can't seem to get back on track. Why are we here? Why were we born? I have no answer to that just know that it's not our true destination so if it's merely a sojourn does the duration really matter? IMO the real problem is secularism which teaches us to become too attached to this one life and meaning then becomes derived through materialistic means: career, house, money, sex etc. Final Thought - Your life here on Earth is very short, even the average lifespan of say 75 years is short when you stop to think about it so how the tragic affects us emotionally and spiritually is finite too and when the time comes when everyone looks back on this dot called Life, well as I said it really didn't make a whole lot of sense and we're in Heaven now so seen against the backdrop of Eternity its relevance is only temporary.

If it's Bubba it has to be bad

Now you'd think the safe return of those two American journalists being held prisoner by North Korea would be a happy event even if it did take Bill Clinton himself to go over there but listening to Hannity during my drive the other day and, must be manic-depressive politics or something but he seemed to be saying Clinton shouldn't have done that and what did we give them in return? Oh I don't know, maybe Bill got Kim Jong-Il a couple of strippers or a little ulterior motive action, maybe he just wants a little Asian favor in return (once you go Asian you never go Caucasian), how the hell do I know? Wonder if the families of Laura Ling and Euna Lee feel the same way as Hannity but somehow I doubt it.

Well since I brought up strippers funny story. Many years ago my friend and I were supposed to go to my brother's birthday party or party of some sort or some type of social occasion involving brother, brain cells dying on a daily basis so the details are fuzzy at best but long story short we didn't go. We wound up at our old haunt Barnes & Noble as we didn't feel the party was socially obligatory and when I talked to my mother later she scolded me, said we were supposed to go and that we were probably at some strip joint instead having a good time. No Mom we really are that boring.

In the East life is cheap, in the West life is expendable

In the East: "Here's a pack of cigarettes, fix my car."
In the West: "Sorry, that cancer drug's not covered."

Maybe the government should fix your car too. Kind of missed Obama's speech last night, didn't know it was even on as no other president has spoken to the nation so often but caught some snippets on PBS after it was all over. With ObamaCare it has become almost impossible to not see Obama as a socialist or having socialist tendencies or at the very least belonging to some variant subspecies of the socialist genus (let me consult my field guide here). He's so convinced his vision is correct, a charge often leveled against us conservatives, his is an almost messianic mission. His rhetorical device of always painting the opposition to whatever he believes in, nay knows to be true as obstructionists to Progress, I know what he's doing the slick SOB. Obama has often been compared to Ronald Reagan but he's the opposite of Reagan in almost every way. He's killing us softly.

Hot Topics

The 40th Anniversary of Man's First Steps on the Moon

I think we had it backwards. Any rational species would have cured Cancer first, maybe wiped out the Poverty, the Hunger, taken care of a couple other items and then hurtled off into Space. I'm not against space exploration but worry about our own little dot in the Cosmos first.

Walter Cronkite

I know he was a journalistic legend but I got nothing out of him. Very memorable and poignant, him announcing that President Kennedy just died was for me his most classic moment but the Most Trusted Man in America? Who comes up with this bullshit? I think it's because I was born with a bug up my ass but I just don't See Things the way most folks do. Barbara Walters, another one.

The Wendy Williams Show

This supposedly hot hot show has pushed my Channel 9 News past 10 o'clock well into 11 because I have to listen apparently to this happening chick prattle on endlessly about absolutely NOTHING. People in the audience ask for her advice, for example a 28-year old woman stands up to ask if there's anything wrong with her going out with a 23-year old and Wendy all hip says "do him" but I'm thinking what's so radical about a mere 5 year age difference? It's the type of show you find yourself watching about twenty minutes too long with the remote in your left hand and the Christian Brothers to your right and then it hits you like a revelation, why the hell am I watching this?

Sex Tapes

Supposedly there's now one of John Edwards with the lady not his wife but I don't wanna know. The last one was horrible though, Amy Fisher and her fat Italian ex-husband like she's giving him a blowjob and he's squatting there all hairy after he ate too much pasta. It's the kind of stuff if you were housesitting one night and you're all alone and someone left it on the coffee table on top of the gardening book and the TV Guide and there's really nothing at all on TV like Wendy Williams, some lame 2 & 1/2 Men syndicated repeat and some crime show on Ch. 2, you're like you're only gonna watch it for laughs. You ARE gonna pop it in for perusal, not at first, it's only a theoretical concept then, just an intellectual note that it exists and you're aware of it for keeping tabs on the culture but then your robotic arm puts it on the beckoning discholder and it will be rationalized as a comic evaluation to talk about some day around the water cooler should the topic ever present itself and you'll be the knowledgeable hipster but even porno pete is ashamed.
Obama

It's like the man has legislative OCD or something. He's like the person at work handing around a petition, "here here, quick sign this" and you don't even have a chance to read it. If he's doing this much in six months what's he gonna do in four years?? Maybe I'll just be like my cat and sleep it out.

The REAL purpose of Government

I've heard it said that the First purpose of Government, maybe the only legitimate purpose of Government is to keep us safe. It's not to pass health-care reform, God knows it's not to take over the auto industry, it has absolutely nothing to do with teaching kids about sex. It's not paying for abortions or funding some aspiring artist who may be controversial, it's not any of this and yet in their primary purpose the Government fails miserably. OK we've done a better job with terrorism since 9-11 but just the same the average citizen should be safe from violent crime in general ya think? So why is it the chief role of Government to keep us safe? so we can enjoy our God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that's why. I know I'm speaking as an old fart here, soapie and I be geezers with our walking sticks who aren't with the times but if the Government can't keep you safe on the street or in your home or at the airport or on vacation here or abroad WHAT THE HELL GOOD IS IT?!? OK good I now have government-run health care but I've just been shot, well whoop-dee-doo!! OK so just to review the real purpose of Government is what again?

Sarah Palin's resignation

This is hard for me. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced her intent to resign last Friday, July 4th eve and libraries were closed that day, the holiday of course and Sunday too due to summer hours. She did it on purpose but just wanted to say this was a slap in the face to every Alaskan voter who voted for her. They wanted HER to lead, HER to govern them, no one else and she obviously doesn't recognize this moral and political obligation on HER part. Either way you slice it it ain't good, somewhat fruity and nutty in the middle, slightly eccentric on the outer edges. It either makes her look suspicious (there was a menage a trois between her, SC Governor Mark Sanford and this Chapur babe down in Argentina) or weak (who knew DAVE had so much power?). Oh God it feels good to get this out ("I'll be out in a minute!").

Cancer detectives

We covered alot of ground in our phone conversation last night Beth and I and so I wanted to explore further a theme about cancer I brought up and it's this: just how old is cancer? when did it first appear on the scene? when exactly did people start dying from it? Even as a kid there is something about the cancer problem that has always struck me, something unusual, we act like it's an old disease, ancient in fact but is it? I've read alot in my life, reading lists we had in high school and then just for the pure enjoyment of it later on and I said I don't even remember cancer being a topic of conversation let alone people dying from it during the Middle Ages, in the colonial period, even during the Abe Lincoln era. Did Shakespeare ever remark "the Queen just died from cancer?" So we mulled this over and Beth said maybe cancer existed back then but people didn't know what it was but I lean more towards it didn't really exist until modern times and by modern times I mean at least the framework of the 1900's. I'm now looking at cancer historically, in the context of History. It's the timeline that interests me the most and as we all know that Nazi doctor Dr. Josef Mengele became infamous for conducting medical experiments on human subjects including dwarves but what kind of experiments were they exactly? specifically what was he looking to do and what kind of work was he really doing for the Hitler regime and why? Does cancer disproportionately affect people of certain races? Does cancer have something to do with the explosion of modern technology and were we all better off in the days when we lived a more natural life as Beth seems to feel?

You know one of the most beautiful things about blogging is you get to exercise total creative control over your work, I'm happy with it and if you don't like it just move on and so what I try to do here is to come up with an Original Thought or two every now and then. Just heard on the news this morning that Obama has appointed some type of Cyber Czar to monitor people's online habits so where are all the liberals on this one? Frightening! but at any rate they're more than welcome to read this.

I don't have all the answers, I only pose the questions. BTW my sitemeter crashed the other day, it's apparently broken like some odometer that goes back to zero so pay no attention. I'll be off tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday of course since that's the schedule of most public libraries in my area around this 4th of July weekend. Make it a safe one and enjoy and see you back on Monday.