When does life begin?

Which set of statements is true?

(a) You came from a fertilized ovum. You came from an embryo. You came from a fetus.

OR

(b) You once were a fertilized ovum. You once were an embryo. You once were a fetus.

If you make a timeline of your own existence and then go backwards in time that timeline will obviously begin at Conception. Now some pro-choicers would have it that at the very beginning of that timeline, perhaps up to about 6 or 7 months if you use the outdated Roe model still in popular use today then within that 6-7 month timeframe you were something else entirely, came from something else. In other words there was a point in your existence when you weren't even human (evolution in the womb? dunno) but since statement (b) above is obviously correct how does this square with the choicer's view? If you once were that fertilized ovum, that embryo, that fetus then YOU were still YOU, it's the timeline of YOUR own existence beginning at Conception. You can't argue with the Math.

So begin but be well-advised that when you advance your traditional pro-choice views I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Don't just throw it out there all confident-like. Think of it like a chess match and as I already know what your answers are going to be I already have my countermoves set up.

A TRUE conservative would......

This is a rhetorical blog and sometimes a liberal on the board will misread (not mentioning any names but it's not the nurse) and so the following does not necessarily represent my own views but how do you feel about the following statement? (I can make a fairly educated guess as to soapie's position):

A true conservative would get rid of --

All welfare and unemployment benefits
Medicaid and Medicare
Social Security
Get rid of all minimum-wage laws
Abolish the Dept. of Education
Abolish the IRS
Ban abortion

and for good measure would also get rid of the Post Office as it currently exists by privatizing it.

OK you get some wiggle room here so if not now then over time. Personally I'd get rid of the IRS in a heartbeat and instead of the cost of a first-class stamp going up practically every year now I'd privatize this racket, open it up to more competition and I would also send abortion back to the states where it belongs. As for the first three, the Big Three, those all began as liberal big-government programs and I daresay it'd be a rare conservative bird indeed who would call for their outright repeal so really everything trends towards liberalism in the end doesn't it? Yanking the Big Three would cause massive social upheaval to put it mildly. Of course liberals would argue banning abortion would also accomplish that but that's for people who have made a habit out of the practice imo but I want to get to something the singer Seal said in 2007 in an interview on A&E's "Private Sessions", in fact it stunned me when I caught a repeat the other night. Now don't get me wrong, I like the man and his music, his haunting vocals, his rich and humanistic lyrics but in the middle of the show he talked about happiness and how you have the right to be happy, have the right to whatever you desire, it's your birthright he emphasized as if this is self-evident and I think without knowing it he really tumbled across the essence, the very marrow of liberalism. You SHOULD be happy, nay you have the RIGHT to be happy (a good job with good wages, a good health-care package, a rock-hard erection, healthy food, great shelter, don't let an unwanted fetus stand in your way etc.). Now Seal didn't say these things of course, he never explained how your very birthright is to be enforced but by contrast conservatives must want you to suffer. "Pick yourself up by your bootstraps young man!" "Show your boss you deserve that raise by working your ass off" "Teach a man how to fish and he'll have food for life" and other nostrums and slogans. All those years of existential angst, if only I realized what Seal realizes I'd be having that poolside Asian massage right now, 'tis my right after all. Added a couple Seal songs to my playlist the other day to show I'm not biased but he really enunciated very well the endgame of liberalism even if he wasn't aware of it.

Just how long do you plan on being out of work anyway?

Certain thoughts form in my head sometimes while watching the news, not nice thoughts either. They kind of come out of the political id somewhere and so I saw a couple days back President Obama at the podium with some well-dressed, poised woman off to his side who was just overjoyed it seemed to me that the bill just passed restoring federal unemployment benefits for about 2 million Americans who've been out of work for more than 26 weeks. House vote 272-152, will add a cool $34 bil to the deficit and debt but hey. The spin: Republicans are being their usual harsh asshole selves. But wait a minute, getting back to that woman by Obama's side the other day she can't find work anywhere? I'm sure there's a deli who would hire her, some department store and so the question needs to be posed to the jobless: are you willing to take a job that you hate? Is it that you really can't find work or you can't find something that you like? Had a department head once, a young guy who felt unemployment insurance was a form of welfare but this other chef was a hardcore Dem and so they got into this political discussion one day and the chef's position was kinda you should plan on using it some day because in his words "I'm paying into it." I was out of work a few months myself back in the day and had credit card and other bills to pay and the reason why I took anything I could get was the simple motivation: FEAR. I never went on welfare or took unemployment bennies precisely because I took some jobs that I hated. All were on the lower end of the pay scale, one I liked but the rest was I had to do what I had to do. This extension is going to foster the culture of dependence on government even more since as was apparent during Obama's press conference the whole stigma of getting a check from the government for doing essentially nothing is pretty much gone.

Finally a word about hatred on the Net. Just yesterday I was glancing over at Pam's blog and for some reason known only to Octopus the subject of Mad Mel brought out all his hatred for bluepitball practically calling blue a wife-beater. While probably not legally actionable it walks right up to the edge. I never got this. I mean I get the passionate, the heated debates but the visceral hatred for your political opposite is just beyond me, over my head and it's not like this is something new. It's been going on for YEARS. You know the funny thing about my Andrew Breitbart/Shirley Sherrod blogs is I think I came out fairly strongly against Breitbart so instead of finding common ground, something libs always say they want if only we conservatives would cooperate, it brought out some issues about ME. It's fucked up.

It's not so much that Mel Gibson and Shirley Sherrod are bigots

I just think we like to talk about Race. It makes us feel more virtuous about ourselves apparently. Mel Gibson's real crime in the past was that he said something against the Jews, don't go there. Shirley Sherrod was a great right-wing blogging topic until more came out. Samir Shabazz of the New Black Panthers is a racist psycho plain and simple and his type is the most dangerous not a drunken Mel or a heavily edited Sherrod is the way I see it. Might we expend our energy and our righteous rage on the folks who really matter? Jesse Jackson once infamously referred to New York City as Hymietown and while it was obviously anti-Semitic in nature I prefer to see it more in the nostalgic light of a brain fart. It's his liberal record that I'm against. Maybe an important part of a post-racialist America will be being able to laugh at race. Race is a quirky topic because it has been so heavily circumscribed by political correctness that we can't say much on it unless you're David Mamet. Sometimes I think we're better off not even discussing it. Fred Barnes is a racist? that's not even blogworthy in my book.

Hated in life, beloved in death - George Steinbrenner (1930-2010)

I heard some people complain because they broke into "Judge Judy" halfway through an interesting court case -- BREAKING NEWS -- because Derek Jeter had something to say and it wasn't just WCBS, all the major stations in New York cut in. Sure it was only a tiny fraction of the Jacko treatment but I thought the guy was no good after what he did to Yogi and taking away dental coverage for Yankee employees and firing Billy Martin so many times and he couldn't even appear as himself on "Seinfeld" and......God you know I remember in the Boss's heyday NY sportswriters always bashing the guy for this or that and now he's a Saint? I really don't have any overriding passionate conviction about the man. His passing is newsworthy of course just pointing out that his pre and post-death coverage seem to be about two different men but that's the way we are I guess. RIP

Sperm, War and God

Why atheism falls short

Had this thought this morning. My Dad served in the Navy during WW2 and I was conceived well after the war. Now if he had perished the atheist would say I wouldn't be here right now but I think most folks would simply say I'd have a different Dad. Now when my father's sperm cell united with my mother's egg that led to ME but if a different sperm cell of his had done the trick would I still be here? Again most people would say I'd still be ME but would have black hair and brown eyes maybe instead of blonde hair and green eyes, maybe I'd be shorter too. If you backed an atheist into a corner over this he might be forced to conclude you had only a 1 in a million chance of coming into existence since that one sperm cell that united with your mother's egg led to YOU but that would in effect make us all into a bunch of walking Lottos. The math doesn't add up, this science of probability that the godless would be forced to fall back on. So if my Dad had sacrificed his life in WW2 and I still would have been born in some form that'd point to Somebody being in charge. Likewise since he survived his tour of duty if another sperm cell of my Dad's had united with my Mom's egg and I still would have come into existence that all points to some type of principle of consciousness at work, the existence of some sort of soul dynamic and ultimately to Somebody being in charge. There's a spiritual, mystical sense to it all even if the rest of Life doesn't make sense. I just want the Bill Mahers and the Christopher Hitchenses to explain the Math. Religion isn't irrational, atheism is.

The Rehab Racket

Was debating whether or not to do a Lindsay Lohan blog. It was either that or I Love Obama/I Hate Obama and I sure as hell ain't gonna do a LeBron James blog (egotist!) so we're gonna go with the Lohan.

Look I don't wish ill on anyone. I'm not from the Andrea Peyser School of Writing which even when I agree with her I think she's way over the top. Call her P-Block as she just wants to DESTROY whoever's on her shitlist for that day. So Lindsay Lohan has gotten 90 days in jail from a Beverly Hills judge for violating her probation over her two DUIs. Now these court-ordered shrink sessions, in her case rehab which she hasn't been faithfully attending, there's something vaguely police statish about forcing someone to talk to some bald-pated bespectacled pc creep (can we throw in "w/orange goatee"?) with advanced degress in what is basically a very inexact science. I say punish the person for whatever they've done and basically be done with it, save moral education for another day. The other thing that bothers me is this enforced puritanism. Puritanism has never really died in this country, it has just taken on new forms. Ms. Lohan is only 24, to expect her to never have an adult beverage for the rest of her life, well that's putting the demon back into the bottle when we need to demystify it. WHY do people drink to excess? THAT is the issue not the alcohol per se which in moderation has far more pleasant effects imo than getting stone-cold drunk (never understood this). It's a psychological issue but since we don't put it in its proper perspective we're left with rackets like Alcoholics Anonymous, a saccharine confession/sacrament of your sins in front of the class as your initiation ritual. It's time we grow up and eschew this creeping puritanism as the road to recovery when it only becomes more of a tempation since even one drop is forbidden. It's fashionable to be against the spirits, everyone at work acts like they're Mother Cabrini and never touch the stuff but I thought we were Adults. Can we talk?

Lindsay Lohan has done wrong and needs to be punished but not for skipping class. Punish her for the original misdeed and btw WTF's up with Mel Gibson???

abortionsport

In New York City it would qualify as an Olympic event. Forty years ago New York became the first state to legalize abortion, old news but as of 2008 according to the NYC Health Dept. there were almost 90,000 abortions in the five boroughs (- a few 100 but Z likes to round off, it makes the math easier). In other words 7 abortions for every live birth and among black women the ratio of abortions to live births was 3/2. Well abortion itself is old news but it's the liberal response to these numbers that, well let's hear what NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn (Democrat/Liberal of course) had to say:

"We can reduce the number of unintended pregnancies by expanding access to contraceptives and increasing sex education."

THIS is the standard liberal line when uncomfortable subjects like too-high abortion rates come up. On the surface this seems perfectly logical and who can argue with it although Z with his libertarian thrust opposes ALL sex education even if it comes from conservative chastity advocates simply for the reason that SEX doesn't belong in the classroom but in the home with your Dad finding your Hustler under your mattress and scolding you that you're gonna make some fat Jewish guy rich. Teach kids to make a living that's what I say. But whatever, the reason why this doesn't work in practice is that if abortion is widely available with hardly any social stigma attached to it at least in places like New York City people feel no pressing or urgent reason to use contraceptives in the first place. Abortion simply becomes A method of birth control, maybe THE method for some folks. You could airlift boatloads of rubbers over the Manhattan skyline and drop 'em down with little smiley faces on them but only a certain % are gonna use 'em, the whole taking-a-shower-with-a-suit-on thing, and well this might be a good time to get to Black Culture.

UH-OH

Like my bro worked for a company once with a few black co-workers, you had a black stripper who'd basically hump 'em & dump 'em, married women, didn't matter and he was party to at least five abortions at last count. It's not like my bro pumped him for information either, he was right upfront about his lifestyle choices, you know, bj's caught on cells, that kind of thing. Plow a different chick on the sofa every week, Springer on in the background and, oh yeah another one called out sick one day and said to the boss "I'm calling out sick today, I have to take my girlfriend for an abortion." Now to be sure

They're not all like this,

but I'm talking about a kind of ghetto mentality even if they're no longer in the ghetto, absentee fathers, you know the usual stuff Coz got in trouble over for even discussing. A subset of the population, all the negative social indicators writ large...hey don't get on my case Margaret Sanger wanted to eliminate them. (Standard conservative racist line follows): Now most of them aren't like this, ya got your white upper middle-class Heathers chicks getting their "uterine contents" aspirated out on a quite frequent basis too but taken as a whole we got more methods of birth control than ever, sex'chal matters being discussed quite frankly in the Schools and we still got this abortion craze. I'm surprised Speaker Quinn being a lesbian herself didn't say Go Anal...hey I got The Weekend off, let me have some fun. Worked with a young guy a few years ago, white trash type who split up with his girl but made nice to her for "one last piece of ass" and so came to work one day and quite openly asked everyone how much an abortion costs. There's a thread in all of this if you'll notice, abortion being taken quite casually not the usual liberal line that abortion is this agonizing moral choice for people, Macbeth hallucinating a bloody dagger, existentialism and all that. I mean isn't it time pro-choicers take on their own side for a change? The widespread practice of abortion undermines social responsibility and ya wanna know something? I can't even blame Obama for this one. You ain't livin' right.

Happy 4th of July folks!!!

Obama's socialist ranking

"We are poised to pass the toughest financial reform since the ones we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression." - President Obama at the White House

"Never let a crisis go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel

CRISIS - SOLUTION

This new consumer protection bureau to monitor credit-card companies, mortgage brokers and banks will be housed in the Federal Reserve. Getting the willies yet?

OK, we had quite a discussion here back in the day whether or not Obama is a socialist. Daniel pointed out that based on the true technical definition of a socialist and a socialist system Obama is not one so let's posit that. BUT he goes right up to the edge of being one, always two or three steps removed. To put it in movie ratings terms you have your R, your NC-17 and your hardcore X. Obama is definitely in NC-17 territory, never quite the technical definition of a working socialist but, here read this from the Washington Post today:

Lawmakers guide Dodd-Frank bill for Wall Street reform into homestretch by David Cho, Jia Lynn Yang and Brady Dennis
(re Goldman Sachs)
"...In the coming year a regulatory council could force the bank to shed its sizeable hedge funds and private-equity activities. It also could be banned from making financial trades for its own profit instead of for clients, shaving roughly 10 percent from the firm's revenue."

So we're gonna have alot more regulators than we had in the past with vastly more powers. Risky activities, somehow I always thought they were the hallmark of capitalism, they could be limited in the future but derivatives haven't been banned outright under the proposed bill. Also if this passes and it will banks will have to have more money put in reserve for those bad times but the regulators will figure this out don't you worry. I know I know auto dealers have been exempt from your new consumer protections and most mutual fund and insurance companies made out ok, community banks are good but on the capitalist/socialist scale there's a sense out there that Obama's philosophy is closer to the socialist end than the capitalist end. Liberalism has gradations just like conservatism has and Obama certainly doesn't talk as if he's in love with our capitalist system. Ours as soapie is fond of pointing out is a mixed economy, not pure capitalism but I don't like where this is headed. It moves us further along on that scale even if it would be more important to plug that damn hole in the Gulf first. I've yet to hear Obama say anything positive about wealth and wealth creation which doesn't prove ipso facto that he's One of Them but he's definitely an NC-17 kind of guy pushing the envelope. Question is if he does get a 2nd Term will he go hardcore?

The Westchester County Gun Show

When it comes to guns I'm a superfreak. I'm a little liberal on the issue but in the end take your basic conservative position, well yeah conservative but without your NRA extremism. Today there's a gun show going on at the Westchester County Center here in White Plains NY. Now the last County Executive Andy Spano, a Democrat banned the thing but now we got a Repub in office, Rob Astorino and he brought it back. Now what is the main purpose, actually the only purpose of a gun or firearm? It's to kill people at least theoretically so I've always found those who drool over guns at these shows to be somehow, to be charitable here of the Ozark mentality. Not quite right in the head, a couple screws need tightening is all, Off-Center and it's like the time at my sister-in-law's. The story goes they saw a deer in their yard once as they live in the sticks and while everyone was ooohing and aaahing one of the friends goes "I wish I had my gun right now" and, well it was kind of those brain farts again, the type of thing you shouldn't express at least in mixed company anyway. Basically the guy's a dickhead but he's kind of emblematic of the species. Now my bro ain't into guns either but few years back as a favor he took a friend to the same gun show and there sitting at some table was some guy with swastikas on his belt selling some white supremacy books. Friend goes ignore him most folks ain't that way but my brother wanted to get the hell out of there just the same. Now on the other hand I've always said pass all the gun control measures you like and for the record I'm not against all of them but it'll only affect the law-abiding and honest among us. Criminals by definition break the law, that's why they're known as criminals and so to somehow disarm the rest of the populace seems well to me that's it's a complicated issue not given to easy liberal sermonizing. So gun shows attract weird people and I kinda have to go with Spano on this one although he effectively booted himself out of office by constantly raising people's property taxes. Rob Astorino, good ole Republican boy gotta open up the cowboy show again. If I'm somewhat Satyish on the issue that's because I am, the gun crowd gives me the willies, the heebeejeebies and you can sex it up all you want by having Sarah Palin eating a bowl of Moose Nose Stew but when I'm driving up the line on the Taconic in the Dutchess County area and pass Farmer Joe's Road you can't help but think of some farmer/Dad sneaking into his daughter's room at night, gap-toothed perverted overalled church usher bastardo on Sunday (don't like me making jokes? change the name of the road). I know I'm stereotyping but then again my friend and I were driving on Sprout Brook Road recently by some nature preserve/trailway system, that's kinda in the general hillbilly geographic area I'm talking about here and the sign had a bullet hole in it so I said let's get out of here. Conservatives who are birdwatchers, dayhikers, yuppie cyclists, Pelican-cleaners, photobugs, mallrats, I-podding skateboarding mofos, I think we need to go with them and leave the gun enthusiasts/masturbators at home. It's just a vibe thing.

How come lib critics of the President aren't racists too?

(I have borrowed some of the following information from Moderate Republicans' blog of 6/17, Obama, Oil Spills and Rhetoric. Mod Repub, ever a useful resource)

First it was Kirsten Powers who seemed the first to fall out of love with him, then the Ragin' Cajun' went ballistic. I heard also that Olbermann had something not nice to say. So what was the impetus for all this? The Crisis in the Gulf of course, yes it took something of this magnitude for them to finally turn this spaceship around and head back towards Earth but here's a list of some other liberals who've had critical things to say:

E.J. Dionne (Wash. Post) - a fair lib imo not given to hyperventilating
Gail Collins (Ole Gray Lady) - I recall her name from somewhere and it wasn't for her conservative musings
David Broder (Wash. Post) - I think he's some type of lib but I'm not really sure. Seen him on gabfests with Gwen Ifill on PBS and he always looked kind of boring to me like he'd get out his lawn chair with a few other oldsters and sit outside of Macy's on a hot sweltering day in July. Looks like he uses the stall in the Men's Room alot.
Tina Brown - THE Tina Brown
Robert Reich (HuffPo) - we all remember him.
Roger Simon (Politico),

& on it goes. Now many of them are saying the same things you or I might say. You know I gotta break this down and get to the Westchester County Gun Show but I'm just sayin' if you're a Tea Party motherfucker you're a racist by definition but if you hang with the above set your criticism is somehow more cerebral and fair. In short why has criticism of Obama become niggerized but only on the conservative end?

The Mother Hen retires

It's not that I find Helen Thomas to be an obligatory subject for a blog post. Quite the contrary, I pretty much blog about what I damn well please but how does this grab you? She had every right to say what she said even though it was offensive and racist and whatever else you want to throw in there. You see that's the thing about Free Speech, it's only real test comes when a Helen Thomas comes along or a Don Imus or a South Park or a Glenn Beck or a Larry Flynt or a......and it seems like in too many of these cases we simply fail the test. A rabbi asked her what she thinks of Israel and she said they should get out of Palestine and move back to Germany and Poland and so if he didn't like the response why'd he ask her? So is Helen Thomas an anti-Semitic bigot? at 89 probably as I'm sure she didn't just wake up one day on the wrong spot.

The thing about the Middle East is I don't pretend to understand it. It's one of those things you need Monarch Notes for and both sides insist the other side is 100% wrong and they are 100% right. Obama is getting alot of heat these days for being anti-Israel and for snubbing Bibi as some war criminal but again unless you're a Mideast junkie who's to say? The Mideast is the world's most controversial issue and I think the sheer tenacity of the issue over the years is what grates on me most. It's 2010, the Palestinians should have a homeland by now so we can move on to other pressing international issues that desperately need attention. I've always found the continent of Africa interesting with its long history of wars and despots and coups, its diamonds, tribes, culture, dialects and way of life and was pondering the other day about the usual conservative rationale for toppling Saddam when those phantom WMDs failed to materialize. They said and continue to say sure that was some f*'ed up intel but not only Iraq but the world is now better off without him and I was thinking the same can be said of Robert Mugabe. Africa has always been some type of nightmare continent, well parts of it anyway and as a kid growing up I was always thankful I wasn't born there to maybe wind up as part of Idi Amin's dinner banquet. It's a continent that desperately needs saving and its Third World status has gone on way too long. Let's talk about THAT.

Helen Thomas, this is what happens when you're still working at 89. She apologized for what she said and seems to me after 50 years of covering the White House there's a better way to go out.

How did liberals become so conservative on the matter of the Oil Spill?

Normally they wouldn't be. If Bush were in charge today, OMG if Bush were in charge today you can bet dollars to doughnuts that that scalawag Michael Moore would probably do a scathing documentary on it. Pretty safe bet that MoveOn.org would have something to say too. Now I wasn't gonna do a new blog on this subject so soon but Shaw's blog yesterday inspired me. Actually alot of folks both right and left have some very good points to make. Mal's point that the government and BP should just get together and solve the damn thing first makes the most sense, assign blame and let the bashing begin but LATER. I also get Saty's point that the government doesn't have the technical know-how to cap the damn thing but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be involved at all and pretend it ain't happening. Actually I find the liberals to be most inconsistent here first because they're normally such big environmentalists and such strong advocates of the government taking the leading role in other environmental matters such as global warming and climate change. Nay in the liberal cosmos those aren't just matters but crises as well. Funny thing though is if we conservatives said what they are saying we should say, namely advocate for no governmental involvement in the matter whatsoever we'd be lambasted for that too. Basically the reason the libs have come up with this curious application of a very basic conservative, libertarian free-market position/approach here is really quite simple: they are still so damn in love with Obama that it's the ONLY logical position open to them whereby they can still defend their man. It's parabolic logic at least for a liberal, a default position and they know it just like if your brakes fail you pump the pedal up and down or turn off the keys or just jump the hell out of the car. I strive for absolute honesty here in my blog and on another matter if I am mildly curious why the Gores are separating or divorcing then you liberal bloggers have every right to opine why Rush seems to keep turning off his wives. Have at it, it's all good. On the crisis in the Gulf the consensus has been reached rather quickly among people as varied as James Carville, Colin Powell and Malcontent that Obama has been disengaged from this crisis from Day One, doesn't know how to handle it but the hardcore libs still aroused by Obama deny he's been Peter-Principled into office and would rather attack conservatives as if this is gonna somehow save all those Brown Pelicans and the Louisiana shrimp industry. Actually this is the one issue that we should all be nonideological on, could've been a proud moment. As liberal Matt Rose has said Obama is a loser. Just admit it, it'll make the pain go away.

It's not race, the fact of the matter is...

...that when this country chose to elect a one-term junior Senator from Illinois and put him in the White House he was in effect Peter-Principled. He is now 49 years old so the question is can he unPeter-Principle himself? I don't think that's ever been done before, it goes against the Principle itself. Two and a half more years of PP'ing, at least look at the blogging material!!! For all you libs look on the bright side, Sarah Palin can be Peter-Principled too.

Progressive conservatism

Z said I should do a blog about this and not having much else to blog about these days besides Oil and maybe Lindsay Lohan it's a good idea. It's a term I used the other day in the Rand Paul discussion and it really means things like if we've made some social progress, in this case regarding race, then by all means just accept it. Don't go back and reargue the whole 1964 Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater is not the guiding force of the movement anymore. Progressive conservatism is meant to directly take on what I consider the drawbacks of libertarianism or rather extreme libertarianism. Some drawbacks of extreme libertarianism in my view:

(1) Free association means if you're a private establishment you have the right to discriminate against blacks (or anyone of your choosing). It's retro and backwards and definitely out-of-the-mainstream. It's an interesting intellectual point but ultimately folds in on itself. Libertarians are not big on civil rights, the rest of us got with the program a long time ago and have moved on. They're in a timewarp.
(2) The War on Drugs is somehow invalid in libertarian thought. No it's not and it's kind of murky if libertarians actually support drug use as a harmless recreational activity or simply it's legalization. The War on Drugs seems to conjure up alot of passion on their part but explain WHY it's invalid. The root of the anger at government over this is also interesting, is it as simple as you want to drop some acid? Not sure why the National Review has become a leader in this vanguard, maybe Wm. F. Buckley Jr. toked towards the end. Rich Lowry is usually more sensible than this.
(3) Pro-Life. Libertarians hate social conservatives and their concerns. This is why Barry Goldwater became testy in his old age towards the Right. They got no problem with starving the cognitively disabled to death as long as they're able to order Chinese and a pizza while they're visiting their aging uncle who is now on the ultimate diet and a burden on the family treasury. On the unborn they really really hate you and get all fidgety. They've no use for Pro-Life as there's no $$$$$$ involved, the only thing they seem to care about. They tend to be secular (tend?).

Those are just three items plucked at random. Even though they're not racists themselves their intellectual framework would allow racist practices to flourish. They have no problem with narcotizing the masses even if you have some LSD and PCP mind-bending mofos walking around. If you somehow make it past the birth process they'll deny you food and water in your old age or disabled state or allow others to do so (BUTT OUT!!!). Most of us here are libertarian to a point but our libertarianism is moderated and allows for other social and moral concerns. It's a blend as any successful recipe has to be, theirs is one ingredient. LIBERTY AT ALL COSTS has never really caught on though and despite the wide variety of political beliefs in this country theirs is as minority status as you can get though they somehow feel their influence is so important it should be more dominant within the party.

Progressive conservatism - Accepting racial progress, drugs are bad for society and it's better to have a pro-life culture to name but a few. Progressive conservatism, if the enemy does something good give him credit but as of this date the only good thing I can come up with (seriously) is when Obama gave the go-ahead to have those Navy snipers shoot the Somali pirates and that's going backaways. We can throw in progressive conservatism is by no means hawkish but not pacifist in nature either. We don't need anymore cowboy diplomacy but we don't need a president apologizing to our enemies either. Progessive conservatism is forward-looking and hopeful and it's a theme I'll have more to say on in the future.

WTG Rand Paul!

Historic and landmark civil rights legislation has been bothering you for how long now? The new Republican winner of the KY primary recently told MSNBC that private businesses should not have to abide by civil rights laws. Rand, who has strong Tea Party support, is known as a libertarian kind of guy. Just when Republicans have finally shed the skin of a largely undeserved imo racial reputation

DUDE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?

Pretty funkadelic. Rand reminds me of that quirky member of your extended family, some relative down the line, say some aunt who's visiting. You're all sitting on the patio conversating on a nice day and Mamie goes "Hitler was a very intelligent man." Now you don't exactly know what she means by that but she says it loud enough so the guy bbq'ing next door freezes just for a nanosecond in the midflip of a burger and you're like "Mamie, can you lower your voice? You're not exactly part of the mainstream."

I know someone here is gonna strongly object but anyone else really wanna jump on this here Bandwagon?

Scientology - dangerous cult or religious fad?

So what do you think of the sci-fis?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_McPherson
http://www.lisamcpherson.org/

The sad story above predates Obama's Rise to Power as do alot of Other Bad Things. Yes we will on occasion explore some older topics here as it's not an Obamacentric Universe. Wondering too why so many Hollywood celebs today never gravitate towards the more traditional faith systems, it's either Kabbalah or Scientology these days. I guess Jesus never rode on a spaceship before, I mean how uncool is that? Tom Cruise is the best-known sci-fier, I just think he's naive but they all remind me of the creepy characters out of that Mel Gibson movie Edge of Darkness only instead of nuclear criminals you're dealing with a bunch of conspiratorial cultists. So how did such a weird religion catch on? BTW you are perfectly welcome to tie all of this in with Obama, I mean he is some kind of Omega dude isn't he?

Confiscatory taxation as a violation of the purpose of work

Dunno if Aristotle would say the things I'm about to say but I'm borrowing a very important concept of his and using it in my own way. Aristotle used a word, the telos, and basically what that means is the purpose or end of something. Teleology is the study of the nature, purpose and ends of things so what is the telos of work? For a very few it might be something aesthetic or emotional but let's go out on a limb here and say for the majority of us work means to be able to have food, clothing and shelter. As soapie likes to point out it's a means to an end at least for most of us.

The Problem With Overwork

Let's say I with my normal 35 or 40 hour workweek have enough to procure the basic necessities of life. I'm not living high on the hog like King Henry VIII throwing ham hocks over my shoulder but I am now able to afford adequate food, clothing and shelter. Now let's say I have a workaholic boss who wants me to go over, work alot of OT well then that violates the telos or purpose or end of work for me. Those extra hours and that extra work go far beyond fulfilling what I consider to be the telos of work as it relates to me. Now somebody else might look upon those extra hours as an opportunity. Now the telos as it relates to him or her is to be able to afford more food and clothing and to pay off and secure more of that shelter but the problem with the modern Work State is that the telos of work applies differently to different people. Just because you want to work like a Mexican shouldn't mean I have to.

So Where Does the Idea of Income Taxes Come From?

Having settled upon a workable definition of the nature and purpose of work or the telos of work I'm gonna go a little further out on that limb here and venture that for the majority of us the purpose or end of work does not include giving part of our earnings which we contracted for with a second party and forking it over to the government to do with as they see fit, no way. Giving various percentages of our earnings to the government in the form of taxes in order to redistribute the fruits of the sweat of your brow is a new definition of the telos of work and could only have been invented by a liberal (try Karl Marx) but it certainly isn't the original purpose or end of work as commonly understood.

So the problem or issue with work for many of us is twofold: we are working longer hours and doing more and harder work to please others (e.g. the boss, the company) when that extra work may go against the telos of work for us but more importantly confiscatory taxation is violating the principle of work for everyone regardless of individual work ethics. Now we just mentioned that the reason many folks are willing to work those extra shifts is to help pay off the mortgage or put their kids through college let's say so if it's mutual the telos of work has not yet been violated but let's say you're a bus driver and happily put in a 60+ hour workweek anticipating your next paycheck but then see that a good chunk of that extra income just went to the government well then the purpose or end of work has been seriously violated. One of the basic differences between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives get the concept of telos more certainly as it relates to work whereas liberals expand the telos of work to include more on their social agenda and that is because conservatives and liberals see the purpose or end of government, the telos of government as being two very different things and that is the subject of our next lecture. For your assignment......

Rigatoni Gorgonzola - a fine summer salad

Boil three boxes of Mezze Rigatoni (that's the smaller rigatoni). I like Barilla as it holds up well. Boil for 8-10 minutes or whatever the instructions call for. Personally I'm not into al dente but just go slightly past al dente, you certainly don't want your pasta overboiled and mushy. Cool the pasta off in a colander or strainer under cold running water. Now get yourself a nice big mixing bowl and add 2 or 3 cans of medium black pitted olives and 2 or 3 of those small containers of baby tomatoes you see in the produce department. Get yourself a nice red Vidalia onion but don't dice it, slice it up and throw it in. You should be able to find the gorgonzola cheese in crumble form in any of the finer delis at the cheese island. If they're out of gorgonzola your average blue cheese works perfectly fine as a substitute as it has a similar gustatory effect and they're all from the same family anyway. Make sure you put enough cheese in there. Put a decent amount of Italian dressing in the bowl, put on your latex or vinyl gloves and mix well. If it's your preference you can spritz on some dill weed.

Serves 3-5 (or one fat person)

Was Jesus a liberal?

This is really a Dave Miller thread. I just might watch Beth and Dave from the grandstands for 3 innings or so as I enjoy my piss-warm beer and overpriced hot dog.