Thoughts on radiation/cancer and the Japanese nuclear crisis

With a possibility of a looming Japanese nuclear meltdown I had this thought that I'm gonna throw out there with the complete foreknowledge that this thread will be easily proven wrong by the more learned medical folks here but this blog is more in the style of thinking out loud and so there is something I can't wrap my head around exactly. With the evacuations in certain sectors of Japan and the threat of some type of radioactive cloud drifting towards the West Coast with the Surgeon General telling us to take precautions (I don't know what this means) here it is: we use radiation to treat cancer. In one instance radiation is obviously bad for you and in the other it's the preferred mode of treatment combined with chemo. Now I know Saty will say it's the amounts or some such thing, we don't exactly nuke cancer patients but just the same many of them do look like Auschwitz survivors but this is to be expected whereas in other instances we're told in no uncertain terms to evacuate. I saw a few nights back on a news program how they are now trying to attack cancer cells in the brain with electromagnetism. It was Katie Couric's show and the initial results were promising and they showed one brave soul with his wife and he has been undergoing this experimental treatment for some time now but the reporter stressed that this treatment has to be combined with the more traditional chemo/radiation regimen and my question is why if the electromagnetism is doing a great job on its own? So why in one situation do we run away from radiation and in another embrace it? I thought it was always bad all the time but anyway there you have it:)

Political correctness kills

I have to repeat it although it's an obvious truth, Islam is problematic. The majority of Muslims are not terrorists but the majority of terrorists are Muslims. Radical Muslims are not the whole of Islam but they are a substantial minority and substantial minorities can cause problems. Today is the first day of Congressman Peter King's hearings on homegrown radicals, you may have heard this Congressional investigation is controversial and Peter King has been called all kinds of names and well, let me just say again, Islam is problematic. I think it's a matter of emphases, everyone knows there are Muslim terrorists in the world but the liberal crowd wants to stress the peaceableness of most Muslims (not hard to understand) whereas conservatives are troubled by we don't really know who's who, who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. Seems to me though the good Muslims may want to take back their religion first before they complain and I know I'll hear the usual points by soapster, Satyavati and surely Shaw but my whole thing is the situation is complicated so why can't we understand that?

Fast times

...(resisting the Sheen thread)...Today Wednesday March the 9th is the beginning of Lent, Ash Wednesday for us Catholics and I'm wondering if any of us truly fast anymore. Now my last church bulletin laid out the rules, one regular meal today and on Good Friday and two smaller meals at other times of the day are allowed but they cannot equal another regular meal. Got that? you do the math but since I was dieting for the second half of last year it's probably easier for me so today for lunch I had a tin of sardines, six crackers, a pear and washed it down with some Poland Spring. Later on I'll eat regular but not pig out, dunno what it'll be yet but I do find fasting to be a spiritual experience so let's lay it out. How do YOU fast? Once the hunger starts to set in do you reach for that Twinkie or Ding Dong and rationalize it? Sure you do before you go all Gandhi on us. The Friday thing of abstaining from meat is not an issue for me since I LOVE seafood anyway but the Question before the Board today -- have we become pussies when it comes to fasting?

1 1/2 Men

The show is often deemed the best tv has to offer but for me it's a mixed bag. Yes several episodes were funny but the whole thing is contrived. Yeah I know contrived like duh it's make believe and it's a sitcom but in the last episode I caught even Alan gets laid and that after only meeting some woman in a bar who seems to have a Nazi fetish and later makes a Hitler mustache on Alan with indelible magic marker. It's one long drawn out penis joke over many seasons and Charlie's biggest problem in the show seems to be where to take a nap in the afternoon after banging five different women, does the theme of rejection ever come up? My friend and I were discussing producer Chuck Lorre's vanity cards which flash at the end of each episode, so quick you can't even read them and we both agreed the ones that pissed off Charlie Sheen were inappropriate. Charlie is (or was) a worker for Mr. Lorre, Mr. Lorre was his boss so it'd be like if your boss posted stuff at your expense on the bulleten board, say you're an alcoholic or whatever personal problems you have it ain't right. By now we ALL want to know what Sheen is on and the only way to get to the bottom of it is good old-fashioned blood work. His interview on 20/20 made semi-sense in some creative drugged out sort of way (sometimes you gotta pull back and be objective about this sort of stuff) but he's lost me, now he's just in the Bermuda Triangle, he's tiresome and painfully boring but what a weird way for a show to end. It'd be like if All in the Family suddenly came to an end in its heyday because Carroll O'Connor became fucked up in the head or The Brady Bunch got yanked because Robert Reed became a dickhead overnight. BTW all those who say they've had enough of this story you'll be the first ones to chime in:)

emotional judo, mind masturbation & other techniques of the ancient fighting skills

Channel-surfing last night and on came this commercial about animal cruelty, some animal group which does good work but I always change the channel. I'm sensitive to this stuff so it begins with some hungry and tired dog walking the sidewalk with the caption "when will I eat?" The thought occured why doesn't the cameraman or whoever is filming this give the dog a bowl of Alpo and some water? Watch me suffer to make a political point - the former abortionist turned pro-life activist Dr. Bernard Nathanson passed away Feb. 21 at his home in Manhattan. The Silent Scream, basically he was friends with an abortionist, Dr. Jay Kelinson in New York City and since the procedure was gonna be done anyway it was shot in ultrasound and the rest is history. I would have done without the title though, slightly Elvira-ish. So I was watching this NOVA/National Geographic special couple weeks back about venomous critters and they showed some guy suffering in a Vietnamese hospital after getting bit by a poisonous snake known as a krait. Seems antivenin is rather expensive there and most folks can't afford it so they hooked him up to a respirator instead so he could breathe and it takes a few weeks for the venom to run its course this way and, I don't know it's fucked up.

Does Obama care more about gay marriage than Libya? I really don't care how he's evolving, Rodan the Thinking Man. Just do Something, about Libya that is. He's the kind of person if he worked in a deli he'd be farting around in the kitchen making a seafood pastry puff and you'd have to kick him in the ass to help with the line up front.

I caught Joe Scarborough on the Today Show this morning and it reminded me once again of why I never liked the guy. He said Newt Gingrich is unelectable as president because in the past he has called Obama a socialist among other things. Joe has made a fetish out of pointing out when he feels other conservatives are being a little extreme, think McCain's daughter but less stupid. I even question whether the guy is a real conservative but if Newt's policies are good for the country I don't see a problem. At some time it was decided that it's a Bad Thing to call Obama a socialist, it's a control issue between liberals and elite conservatives like David Brooks to kind of fence us in, the whole argument from intimidation thing. It's a I Want to be Popular at Manhattan Cocktail Parties brand of conservatism, it's hip to be hip, the whole moderation is sexy thing until I'm so dull maybe I don't stand for anything anymore. BTW you can't say the work "cocktail" at Hannityland, discovered that once otherwise it'll be cut off. Reminds me of why I don't miss the place:)

The saddest part about Charlie Sheen is

it's taking away from his important and groundbreaking work on 9-11. I almost think it's a government conspiracy to supply him with 'hos and drugs.

An Oscar thought

I don't watch 'em. The only two movies I saw last year was Inception and Wall Street 2 - Money Never Sleeps. I had this thought though, Italians seem to be the only ethnic group happy with their portrayal in the movies (Jersey Shore doesn't count) and btw I'm not talking about official Italian-American spokesgroups just folks you work with and hang with every day (I had to add this because I know BB is hunting up a link right now). I asked as least three Italians at work how many times they saw The Godfather and they all said so many times they lost count. Goodfellas, another popular flick second only to Marlon Brando, ripe for discussion. All other groups - the Irish don't like it when they're portrayed as drinkers, Puerto Ricans don't like it when they're drug dealers and OF COURSE Muslims don't like it when they're cast as terrorists - the other ethnicities and tribes all have their issues but

The Godfather

the best movie Of All Time hands down and you can bet they own the Trilogy. You don't hear them talk about Citizen Kane for instance or The Maltese Falcon or The Ox-Bow Incident and as one Italian guy I work with noted "every time you watch The Godfather you pick up something new that wasn't there before." That's quite a work of Art. Of course this is just another one of my over-generalizations as Shaw will no doubt point out, maybe it's just the ones I work with and oh, watch what you say about Frank Sinatra. The two mozzarella boys made a delivery to us a few years back and my co-chef said something about Frank Sinatra that was less than glowing and while the boys were busy hustling 'n' bustling, they had to make their rounds they both stopped dead in their tracks and just looked or rather glared at the guy and there was silence in the kitchen. I told him ya gotta watch what you say about the Chairman of the Board. The black guy at work said they don't get offended by gangster flicks because they know it's true. As for the Awards you're free to discuss, I just won't know what you're talking about.

The Evolving President

Now if I were a gay man I'd be kind of offended by the President's recent statements that his views on gay marriage have evolved and are evolving but more on that in a minute. Do you want a president who evolves or who has firm convictions? That's not to say that evolving is always a bad thing but how come he doesn't evolve in a more conservative direction? I mean if all bets are on the table and seems to me the AG Eric Holder should at least be defending the DOMA law in court for now as I think it safe to assume most liberals would expect a future Republican president to uphold health-care reform. Now picture yourself a gay man and re gay marriage the president, your president says his views are evolving on the matter maybe even in your direction as seems to be the political consensus now on Obama. Well what do you mean exactly that you are evolving, are we somehow an acquired taste? Is there something distasteful about the whole thing? It took you that long to like us and you're still not there yet? They say Obama is the best friend gays have at the moment but I would think it would be not just social conservatives who would be disturbed by his evolutions of thought:)

Liberal diversity of thought on abortion?

Not as I see it. Saty believes overall that conservatives all share the same political opinions basically whereas liberals do not and she believes, actually believes this applies to abortion as well. Well obviously it doesn't because while liberals may wax poetic about our nation's diversity and pluralism their overall conclusion is exactly the same re the practice notwithstanding the occasional oddball like Nat Hentoff. That conclusion is that abortion should remain entirely legal, they wholeheartedly support Roe in other words. Now if you had some libs saying abortion legal only during the first few weeks, others saying maybe 4 or 5 months and still others advocating parental notification laws and others not, IF you had one hearty group of libs saying yeah we're pro-choice but the legal framework behind Roe really sucks and needs to be overturned or at least revisited and another group saying no 'tis fine, these and other finer shades and nuances would indicate liberal diversity of thought on the issue but you lose on this one Saty, oh boy do you lose!

Now if I were a liberal Democratic strategist I would counsel the Left distance themselves from abortion. Push the green issues, labor issues, the rights of dissidents in foreign lands and whatever else floats your boat but to chug away at something that is by its very nature ugly makes no eminent practical political sense to me. It's a creepy brand imo (make that creepy-cubed when you throw in Terri Schiavo). There doesn't seem to be that great a diversity of thought on gun control either or immigration for that matter. I'd go so far as to say that overall liberal and conservative thought tends to be fairly homogeneous over time and that is to be expected since liberals have roughly the same ideals as other liberals and conservatives share generally the same ideals as other conservatives and there's gambling in Vegas. So for Saty to tout liberals as somehow being the Great Thinkers of the Age on what planet?

Have at it. I'm pumped and primed and when it comes to splitting hairs and parsing language I already know your next move. I wasn't going to do an abortion blog so soon but her misguided encomia to modern-day liberalism cannot go unaddressed. BTW when it comes to liberal diversity of thought on abortion I want copious documentation and quotes:)

afterthought: You know here's a weird thought, there actually is more conservative diversity of thought on abortion than liberal diversity of thought on the issue. Conservatives also from what I've been reading in the blogosphere and in organized punditry these days also have differing views on gay marriage, Jonah Goldberg is rather all over the map......hmmmmmm......

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

President Obama gets slammed for throwing our longtime and Israel's ally Hosni Mubarak under the bus but he would've gotten slammed for not throwing Mubarak under the bus and not siding with the protesters. First Tunisia and Egypt now they're saying the next dominoes to fall will be Yemen, Iran and Libya and the concern here is whether this will augur in a new wave of democracy in the Middle East or the rise of the Islamic fundies. The brutal sexual assault against CBS News correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo, this would be like if the civil rights marchers of the '60s then engaged in hooliganism and thereby tarnished their own mark in History. Even from a pragmatic standpoint WHY would you do this unless of course that's WHO you are?

Mankind at its finest

According to a new book those 33 Chilean miners who were heroically rescued on international tv wanted and got pot, pornography and blowup dolls and thought about eating each other. Actually it is my understanding that the last item was denied as they didn't have enough to go around and the guys would've been fighting over her but be that as it may it's amazing to me that in such a situation where you're staring Death in the face one of your first thoughts is Sex. We'll even forget the reefer here but when I was lost in Clarence Fahnestock State Park here in Putnam County for the better part of a day with no food and water and night fast closing in let's just say my immediate thoughts were not of a sexual nature. Folks who seem to go out of their way to fulfill their own stereotypes, blogged about this a couple times back in the day. The Latino Horndog, when sticking your face in the very Jaws of Death jerk off first.

Sad to see Beth's last political blog but I can understand where she's coming from. I've been away from blogging for all of two days now but I'm a'ight. Tuesday I had off with my friend and couldn't hit a library and yesterday went to work after a bad night's sleep and figured just go home after it's all done. Now I don't know if this was a factor but the night before I had some gin and was browsing through the mammoth history classic The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester who also wrote Death of a President. You've heard the name Krupp of course, well the Krupp dynasty goes back centuries and officially ended with the death of head Alfried Krupp in 1967. Turns out Alfried helped bankroll Adolf Hitler and his rise to power and ran concentration camps himself during WW2 as a form of mass slave labor for his steel/iron/armaments industry which in turn greatly helped Hitler's military thuggery around the world. One concentration camp was expressly for children and in another adults were either severely beaten when they couldn't churn out the work product or else put into this tight little cage which was so horrible many inmates opted for the beatings instead. Now Alfried Krupp was finally convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and his entire assets, holdings and property were confiscated. He was released a few years later by U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy who apparently felt bad for one of Europe's leading industrialists if not the leading industrialist of the day. Now the Ole Gray Lady was biased even back then and despite the excellent reportage of one of their women writers they practically buried Alfried's Nuremberg trial which lasted about as long as Adolph Eichmann's but anyway after his release from prison and his livelihood restored back to him he became the leading mover and shaker in the European Common Market. A disturbing, depressing and shocking read but important for the historical record and you might wanna go easy on the gin 'n' tonic here, you won't be sleeping too good. So good luck to Beth but I have a feeling she'll be back and have to say Saty gave me a really good laugh when she said conservatives all hold the same opinions whereas liberals encourage real diversity of thought and I was thinking of all the real liberal diversity of thought over abortion let's say or gun control but I'm gonna have to cap it here:)

This has to be a joyous occasion

Occasionally you'll hear or know of a person who is actually underweight, maybe even very underweight and their goal is actually to gain weight as per doctor's orders. I am thinking of Michael Douglas who after all his chemo he's been through is severely under his ideal weight and is happily working on getting it back. Now this is really COOL that you are now officially sanctioned to pig out,

"pass me more bread please, and oh the butter"

if only for a brief period of time, a few weeks, a couple months like you just had a hearty meal and couple hours later you go oh let me hit a McDonald's. A Nirvanic window of opportunity, a quirk in the normal flow of Life. Enjoy!!!

Scales are weird. You'll have one day when you did everything exceptionally right. You really put in the exercise that day, not only that you ate purely for nutritional purposes, no going over, no overeating (it's actually amazing when you do this you see as if in stark relief how everyone else engages in totally unnecessary eating throughout the day) and so you do all this and step on the scale at night and you actually, what is that? gained a couple of pounds?!? Now here's the other thing and doctors never explain it, when they talk about your ideal weight should you weigh say X amount of pounds even after having a decent meal or what exactly is the definition here? The thing with losing the weight is maintaining your weight and you always, but always sense a little creepup. Had a nice cheesecake slice at work the other day, pondered it but said what the hell and so wouldn't you know it and this was at night and into the next day too probably plussed another pound. I don't obsess over it but I can see why this is such a frustrating area for so many people. Then there's the Inversion of Values by people who resent you for some reason like the guy delivering the meats yesterday who says to me "oh you lost weight, was it deliberate?" I like somebody who

Gets to the Point,

I can dig it but no dude I didn't put some bad dick in my mouth or finished off my round of chemo/radiation. So what part of "my weight was related to some blood pressure issues and so I decided to finally address that" don't you understand? People act like this dieting thing is some type of vast Mystery for the Ages but it's really all about discipline and since so many people fail at that, in fact the failure's expected that somebody who actually sticks to the Program is outside-the-mainstream I guess but talk about beating a subject to death! The horse wants to be buried already. Guy at work, I guess he's trying to lose the weight and so he always asks for Weight Watchers bread to be used on his sandwich every day but imo he got it all wrong. It ain't that, he just needs to get his boots on and climb up Mt. Spitzenberg in the middle of this wonderful winter we're having, that'd be a 545' summit in the middle of the Peekskill woods here and do this once or maybe twice a week. I guess it's easier to go with the special bread than the North Face and the frozen snot though:)

Overtime vs. Leisure Time

This constantly amazes me, that most folks seem to see the opportunity for increased overtime as somehow being more important or desireable than more leisure time. Had to leave on time yesterday and the next guy wasn't in yet but because it was slow I said to the older gentleman I was working with I'm goin' and he said but you could get some overtime in. Now here's a very partial list of what the average person has to do on any given day: haircut, oil change, laundry, renew driver's license, visit sick relative in hospital, pick somebody up at the airport, food shopping, exercising, reading, doctor's app't, blogging, cultivating friendships.... I ain't getting it but the biggest practical reason why I now philosophically opt for the leisure time over the OT is the IRS. Make enough overtime and you'll be pushing yourself into a higher tax bracket and will probably owe the IRS some dough, they'll see you as wealthy. Now if we got rid of the income tax entirely then the philosophical argument for OT over leisure time becomes more compelling but until then you're just a bunch of fools folks.

Charlie Sheen

Martin must be so proud,

& finally a Philosophical Question

Ever have a day at work where something can be right in front of you and you ask for help and somebody says over there by the ... and you still can't find it so I jokingly says to the guy yesterday don't yell at me because I'm a little retarded. Now this is not meant in a disparaging way but if you know you're retarded then you can't be retarded just like if you know you're insane you can't really be insane or if you know you have the Alzheimer's then you really don't have it. Are the people under these conditions always unaware of their situation? It's like this is rare but a few times I had a dream and while dreaming I knew I was dreaming. Since this is becoming a little Convoluted

Oh hell let's throw in a Political Point too

Re the proper role of Government in our lives what with racial and economic disparities, the lack of educational opportunities and health care and all the other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune my conclusion is this: Saty's overall philosophy resonates with me, she taps home but Beth is right on the merits. I think they're both basically saying the same thing that we should lend a hand to those in need, to help those less fortunate than ourselves but Saty sees the government as a prime mechanism here and Beth sees it instead as I do as a whole Biblical/Christian mandate kind of thing whereas Ayn Rand resolved the whole thorny philosophical dilemma with Fuck Charity. So soapie what you have done to give back??? Good day folks!

The crisis in Egypt and its implications for the geopolitical consortium

(Disclaimer: I don't know WTF I'm talking about here)

Sometimes certain major topical events pose a type of dilemma for the average blogger. I am not an Egyptologist, the Mideast is beyond my pay grade and yet I feel rather compelled to open up the crisis in Egypt for discussion. It's one of those topics you have to google or bing so as to appear semi-literate ("Mubarak's 30-yr rule", "Anwar Sadat assassinated in 1981", "Suleiman for VP", "40% of oil to Europe flowing through the Suez Canal"......) but you'll never rise to the rank of university professor rapping with Jim Lehrer (the reader will note I didn't have much to say on Tunisia of late). It seems to me Mubarak has to go, even his own generals are against him (how am I doing? OG I wish I could blog about Charlie Sheen right now!) but Mubarak kind of reminds me of Pinochet, our kind of dictator about whom we can look the other way at least for a time. Did the looters get to the Pyramids yet? there's a curse on that sort of stuff you know. I have to give my blog some heft with an occasional foray into foreign policy, people are still starving in Niger you know, but as Wikipedia would put it this article can use input from an expert or scholar in the field. BB?:)

The snow/climate change connection & some other Notes

Oh God I was homebound yesterday not because I couldn't go out but I didn't want to lose my parking space, the space I spent a good hour shoveling out (garbage cans are so yesterday). The 7th snowstorm of the season up here in the Northeast, snowiest January on record for Central Park where there was 19" of the white stuff on the ground yesterday. This is the time of year when you browse through large swaths of the conservative blogosphere and you'll see the predictable large-scale photo of the latest blizzard with the title "What Global Warming?" and a few potshots at AlGore so yesterday there was some Japanese scientist on the Today Show saying maybe this all has to do with global warming. Seems there might be more moisture in the Gulf of Mexico these days colliding with that rush of Arctic air coming down from Canada and you really have to love the sheer philosophical tenacity of the global warming crowd, whenever you're theorizing and encounter contrary evidence spin it your way. Now I've been theorizing my whole life about people, things whatever but you're bound to encounter things that don't always support your theory every now and then. Some people become more devoted actually when this happens and have an uncanny ability to work the odd stuff back in but that's not good theorizing imo. It's like with the few people and they're not in the majority by any stretch but when you lose alot of weight your co-workers think you're sick but when you tell 'em two or three times the deal they still stick with the erroneous theory ("Z-man has been losing alot of weight lately. It can't really be all that fish and veggies and exercising, must've been sucking some mean dick. I mean does he ever talk about a girlfriend?" chatter chatter) You know persisting in bad theories is, well just plain bad and can cause all sorts of trouble, a real snowjob you could say. Now I'm more open to theories of climate change than your average conservative but a snowstorm a week beginning the day after Christmas is still a snowstorm a week beginning the day after Christmas and if we had glaciers forming on top of skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan we'd still have the same Japanese scientists blaming it on some jetstream of warm air down south. So temperatures are rising folks but expect more snow. Yeah I thought of doing a blog on Obama's SOTU and his reemergence as a conservative (did he actually say something about unnecessary regulations and parts of the health-care law being bad for Small Business?) but this latest commentary on the winter we've been having up here in the Northeast is just too rich. BTW re this work thing soap feels you should work during a blizzard if you're scheduled to go in and Beth feels in general if you're scheduled X amount of hours during the day you should work those X hours. I just feel you should be able to use your last ten or fifteen minutes to wash up and rap and you have to use your own personal judgement about the weather. My position can best be summed up: in this here 21st Century there should be a more rational way to work. I challenge anybody on this stuff but if you want to talk about the SOTU instead I got no problem. BTW if you're driving in the City and your car gets stuck Bloomberg says you may be towed at your own expense. This guy STILL doesn't get it!!:))

American Idol - Season 10

I liked it, it worked. The new team of Randy Jackson, J-Lo and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler proves that a show doesn't have to be cruel to be interesting. Not having Simon is like getting out from under the yoke of a bad boss and the proceedings were much more pleasant this time around. Got the impression they let a few more go through to Hollywood than were warranted and imo a few were let through because of their compelling personal stories alone which kind of made up for their less than special renditions but whatever (you gonna say no to the guy whose Dad just survived throat cancer or the young Kosovar girl?). That 17-yr. old from somewhere in Jersey had me fooled, didn't look the part but crooned his heart out like Frank Sinatra. Benson somebody and I think the judges agreed he was the best so far, look for him to go a long way in this competition. That overemotional chick who works in a shopping mall who they had pegged only for Broadway they let through after she begged and pleaded, a decent enough voice but she definitely needs to reign it in. There was the 16 yr. old girl chock full of Personality and a good voice for her young age who said "yo yo dawg" to Randy and overall I enjoyed the evening. I'm sure you're gonna get your tv critics to nitpick the thing (Linda Stasi) but I have to say it was a'ight:)

Do liberals and conservatives share the same goals?

The fashionable answer is yes and I've been hearing alot of this lately but it really is a rather vague statement and is it even true? I'm gonna go with a no. Do liberals and conservatives both agree on you keeping more of your hard-earned money? Do liberals and conservatives look at the wealthy in the same way especially regarding the previous question? Do liberals and conservatives view Big Business and Labor the same way? I daresay liberals have a problem with Walmart and conservatives want you to work your ass off for even peanuts because by so doing you're setting yourself up for a mansion and Lamberghini down the road (HAH!!!) Do liberals and conservatives share the same goal of making abortion rare? Again the fashionable answer is yes but just saw on Yahoo News abortions increasing in major cities and in NYC it's almost like an Olympic Event so what have liberals done for us lately?......do liberals and conservatives view your right to self-defense the same way? Does this include the right to bear a firearm? Do liberals and conservatives view RACE the same way? (do liberals ever ask blacks why they commit so much crime?) our nation's security? war & peace? the cops? God and faith in general? SEX? (that there deserves its own blog) and so on down the list. Name any political issue and is the basic goal the same? Of course your personal health not to mention health care deserves another blog but I'm gonna go with libertarians just wanna be left alone and liberals would rather you eat an apple instead of a Funny Bone and seem rather obsessed about it at times. The same goals? I just don't see it.

Bankruptcy

Some of the soapster's most recent comments about Big Government got me thinking and instead of directly responding to his previous remarks I thought I'd do a blog about how far back the problem really goes and today we're gonna focus on this thing called Bankruptcy. Now I always have First Impressions of everything, gut feelings, call it my Primeval Conservatism at work and if you provide a good or service for somebody and you don't get paid and that person or company or corporate entity does not have to pay you after hiding behind a bankrupty filing well that just seems immoral and unjust to me. Of course your initial reaction can me modified by other factors as I feel credit-card companies charge usurious (there's a word you don't hear anymore) interest rates and so the person legitimately trying to pay off his debt gets shafted. Now I'm no lawyer and don't know all the intricacies of bankruptcy law, there's this chapter and that chapter and a few subclauses but you take a large company that has gone into 3 billion dollars in debt let's say and then they get protected by the Bankruptcy Court and get a chance to reorganize their gangster outfit and even get a bailout or loan for their troubles. Well HOW exactly did they go 3 billion dollars into the hole in the first place? At what point in time did nobody notice what was going on? Where was the company auditor in all of this, asleep at the switch? Was there corruption, were honchos putting their hands in the till? The people who were responsible, have they been held to task and if need be prosecuted or at least told to look for other work? Well in our fictitious example (or maybe the better word is factitious) all these questions become moot as they in effect get rewarded for their past bad behavior. Now I have a few philosophical issues with Ayn Rand but at least in her vision if a company deserves to go out of business they deserve to go out of business and in a pure laissez-faire marketplace system businessmen would be forced to be more careful and then there's the question of how is a bankrupt company gonna pay off a government loan (well actually a bank loan but the government is somehow involved as always)? So a couple of immoral things have happened, the vendors who provided certain goods and services won't get paid and the company gets rewarded in effect for their past bad, irresponsible or even corrupt behavior by getting a loan because it's been deemed by Big Government they're too big to fail.

The Republicans "reformed" bankruptcy laws, the Dems want to swing back but I say we need to start at Square One again. IMO it's the bailouts that drive the Tea Party. I give you something, you don't pay me and the government protects you and even arranges to get you more money. If you don't see the dysfunction here then you're not a true conservative, maybe a neocon at best. President Obama in his speech at the AZ Memorial Service spoke briefly about what he called "the forces that divide us." Well no Mr. President it's the forces that disagree with you and your vision of what government should be but this old old polemical device seems to be a favorite of his. So in effect we are left with failing companies that have run their course, should be out of business by their own doing but are being propped up by the government. Remember when the Five & Dime (Woolworth's) went out of business? THAT'S the natural course of events or used to be and it may be Destiny's way of telling you you need to be doing something else with your life, accept it. The Question Before the Board today: should we get rid of ALL bankruptcy laws?:)

On the shooting

In the tragic wake of the shooting last Saturday in Arizona where Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded you could almost have written the msm's script for them (actually strike the word "almost"). Channel-surfing last night and stopped to browse a little at "Meet the Press" (but only a little as I can't take much of this stuff lately) and caught key words like Tea Party (what did they have to do with it?), free speech, we have to watch the words we use, Sarah Palin (but of course!) etc. etc. This is the usual framing of the issue by the msm after such a tragic event and follows the narrative arc set by the George Tiller murder which is basically that right-wing rhetoric is ultimately responsible for these happenings. The young shooter, Jared Loughner is known to be anti-government and as soon as I read that in my morning paper the day after the massacre I already knew what the media spin would be. Now many people and groups have been "anti-government" down through the ages and many were lauded by the Left (e.g. Vietnam) so when did all of a sudden being against the government or anti-government if you will become

a bad thing?

Used to work with a Jamaican chef back in the day, always struck me as being very intelligent and he felt AIDS was invented by the U.S. government which when you stop to think about it why should there be a new disease? You had the CIA's MK-ULTRA's social experiment dosing unsuspecting citizens with the mind-altering LSD, a documented conspiracy so who's to say where one's grasp on reality ends and paranoia begins? At any rate the Moral of the Story is that assholes exist, have always existed and will always exist. It is said the Columbine shooters were obsessed with the movie The Matrix, does that mean the movie should never have been made or we can't enjoy it (although the sequels were existentially painful)? So to kind of drive the Point home here the Tea Party ain't the real problem or Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or O'Reilly or Sarah Palin or your right-wing mailman......the simple fact of the matter is the existence of the asshole a problem eternally perplexing to Mankind that dates back to the Stone Age. I don't know what makes the Asshole tick and they can wreak all kinds of havoc but if Leviathan Government uses the case of the asshole who takes matters into his own hands to say you shouldn't criticize Leviathan Government and if the media backs them up then I see that as kind of a bigger problem and I think that's the whole point actually of the predictable media commentary (I almost said coverage, 'twould be nice if the msm could just get back to coverage). It's using such tragedies for political ends and then the second point after they're done bashing conservatives becomes Gun Control. It's really why I've been reading field guides to mammals lately:)

Maybe it's me

but lately I just find people downright insufferable. I ain't blogging that much politically because really, if you get a boner over Boehner I can't help you. The real downside to John McCain losing the presidency is his omnipresence again on the Sunday morning political roundtables, frankly I 'd rather watch Gadget Girlz. I'd sooner do a blog on Buddhism than this current political season. I'm a misanthrope who can't even get off on Politics anymore. God if I read once again about how we can make the Tax Code better for everyone, just chuck the damn thing in the circular file already and be done with it. Can somebody tell me why Kim Kardashian is important? I ain't getting it. You know I mean this in all seriousness, I'd rather read a Field Guide to the Mammals than any of the current political bestsellers out there. A Self-Defense Guide will stand you in better stead than any of the crap churned out by Ann Coulter or James Carville. I'm going to services now, see you tomorrow or Monday:)

and protect us from all anxiety

One of my favorite lines in the whole Mass occurs around the time of the consecration when the priest says "and protect us from all anxiety." It's an unusual line in that it's not overtly religious in the sense of save us from the fires of hell and that sort of thing, hell theology itself causes anxiety and for me the thing right now is this free-floating anxiety out there. Had a pretty good blast of Ole Man Winter day after Christmas and so folks hit the food stores before in droves, pounded the area delis pretty hard and so that's the thing with anxiety, it's hard to define but in your head when mixed with a healthy dose of imagination it takes on distorted dimensions. Now I'm sure a few people actually needed food but I think in many people's minds they had visions of being homebound for a week slowly starving to death. Never quite got this but anyway I was scheduled to work the night shift yesterday but after a couple hours shoveling out my car made what I thought was a very educated decision on my part to just call work and tell 'em I'm not coming in. The plow came through very late in the day as I live on one of those side roads on top of a hill and the tipping point for me was that in my neighborhood it's very hard to find a space at night in such situations and so the co-mgr. picks up the phone and you always get this, it's like from a playbook or something -- Me: "There are too many problems in my neighborhood (yada yada)..." Him (tooting his own horn): "We all have problems but I made it in" but I remained firm and he hung up. Bears mentioning he's a self-described Republican and I'm telling you your average Republican is not good on labor issues, is not on the side of the worker which is why we need a kind of fusion politics these days, recognize the shortcomings of whatever political side we fall down on and combine the best ideas from both although I do realize this deviates from the enemies' camp approach and is problematic for many who seem to revel in a kind of political trench warfare. Dad became sick right before Christmas so nobody was gonna visit there, kids might get sick and so all things considered it was definitely one of those off-center holidays. Talked to my best bud last night and we really don't critique each other about how we may fall short in the friendship department, that ain't true blue and he deals with the same shit at his job and so we rapped about that. It takes too much energy to hate but I'm telling you civil service people have it good, too many flakes falling from the sky and they just head on home, no conservative boss trying to lay a guilt trip on you either. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, never was and if you're gonna do something no better time like the Present and so while most people vow to lose weight after the Holidays been there done that and no I didn't lose those last nine pounds all in one week, got close and decided to round it off and today I'm at that ideal weight I've talked about but that's probably because I shoveled so much of the white stuff yesterday. Truth be told I know this correction guard and he used to be a husky guy until I went to a party one day and barely recognized him, thought he had the cancer or something but he simply decided to lose the pounds although imo it's better in his line of work the way he was. OK so last post before the New Year's and let's stop causing each other anxiety, Life's too short anyway. Adopt an animal, chill back and if someone gets offended because you refuse to marry your job that's their problem. Me? my main thing today is trying to find a use for anchovies:)