Thuganomics and the psychology of organized crime

With the passing at 69 of mob turncoat Henry Hill there have been some positive things to say about the fellow from people who should know better.  His main claim to fame/celebrityhood is that he was the main inspiration for the mob classic Goodfellas and the Ray Liotta character yada yada and the eulogies go on.  Hill was a drug trafficker among other things and was involved in the infamous Lufthansa heist at JFK.  You know the rest and I think it's a fair social comment to make that we've romanticized, glorified the life of the gangster and this probably goes back to Mario Puzo and The Godfather book and movie.  By all accounts The Godfather (Parts I and II, forget the 3rd) is a superb film from a cinematic standpoint but my friend had a rather oblique take when he said how many lives taken is the movie responsible for? by which he meant how many joined the Club because the life portrayed in the movie inspired them to?  Actually this may not be that far off the mark as a key member of the now defunct young gangsters known as the Tanglewood Boys in Yonkers admitted to the late NY Daily News columnist Mike McAlary that they watched Goodfellas a number of times and it was sort of their inspiration.  Here's the deal for me though, take any level gangster or thug and let's say he led an independent life of crime, killings, robberies, general mayhem Society would level at him that he's a bad dude, a psycho, a criminal, a mutant, a deviant and needs to be taken off the streets pronto and go to the Big House for a long long time BUT take the same psycho and have him working as part of a GROUP operating in concert for some unified ends, a hierarchy, a criminal bureaucracy so to speak and it's somehow respectable, even glamorous.  Read two cases in the paper recently of a Mafia member putting out a hit on an average non-criminal man for the sole reason of going out with or marrying the mobster's ex-wife, this was two separate situations and let's say he wasn't a member of Cosa Nostra and did the same thing he'd be universally condemned as an obsessed psycho, a stalker yada yada but because he's a member of organized crime there really isn't the usual social and reportorial commentary you'd expect in such a case because hey that's what gangsters do.  Organized psychos is another way of putting it and the usual psycho/anti-social labels are dropped because it's an organization, a group, a conspiracy, a secret society and so it's somehow rational, none of the member's self-esteem will suffer because we're in this thing together and hey we're selective, we ain't bumping off old ladies crossing the street.  Serial killers and rapists bad, gangsters good, that's our social mindset/collective moral philosophy and we simply don't know Right from Wrong anymore, never really did.  The media wants to keep the theme going though with more books from former mob wives down the pike and some new tv shows with mob themes even though it's a passe genre by now, bloodsuckers is where it's at.  We love the desperado but hate the psycho even though they may be one and the same:)

While Obama can certainly win there are Problems

Not the least of which are Syria and those nat'l security leaks.  There's a reason many are accusing the White House itself of taking a leak, all the leaks are positive in Obama's favor and help burnish his image.  Who knew he was engaging in cyberattacks against Iran and every Tuesday shuffles a deck of terrorist playing cards and decides who's gonna get droned that day? but I don't hear the liberals complaining because hey it was quick and they weren't waterboarded like under Bush.  The atrocities continue in Syria on an almost daily basis.  Bashar al-Assad needs to go, everyone on the Planet except Russia and China seem to agree but Syria is fast becoming Obama's Rwanda.  Then there's Barbara Walters who helped get Assad's former press aide and political adviser/spinmeister into Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs because young 22-year old and Playboy material Sheherazad Jaafari helped land her the big interview with Assad, that's not Obama's fault of course but Walters has always annoyed me.  I thought she had a View to do but whatever.  Apparently Putin's Russia is sending the former ophthalmologist and current psycho leader of Syria attack helicopters and we're learning all about Assad's militia the Shabiha, a pack of low-IQ killers on steroids doing his really dirty work like massacreing women and children in the villages.  So who's supplying the 'roids?  The leaks, Assad and the Economy not necessarily in that order but ya just know some highbrow moderator at one of the first prestigious presidential debates is gonna ask him about fat kids and soda:)

Last Tuesday's recall vote in Wisconsin

I didn't blog about it at the time the goings on in Wisconsin when Republican Governor Scott Walker was ripping public-sector unions a new one, I like to go my own way when I blog but as you all know by now Walker won last Tuesday's recall vote 53% to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's 46% this despite practically every major union in the country making an all-out effort there to mete out justice and if you read the fine print about 1/3 of Walker's support came from union households.  His sins? he pretty much put the kabosh on collective-bargaining and public-employee workers now have to chip in more towards their pensions and health care and no more automatic deductions for union dues.  Before all this the recall of the GOP-controlled Senate also failed as did the effort to get rid of a conservative State Supreme Court justice and that was just a warmup for the Walker treatment.  So does this spell the death knell for unions? if there's enough Governors out there like Walker probably but I don't think the country is in as much of a union state of mind as back in the day.  For some reason when I think of unions I think of Jimmy Hoffa.

Over the past several years I worked with at least two young managers both men and it was quite obvious from their remarks they hated unions this despite our jobs in the food industry being heavily unionized.  So what was their #1 complaint?  I know when you talk about labor and politics the subject gets complicated but it was no more complex than when you have a union you can't FIRE somebody and let's face it in most workplaces there are definitely at least a couple of people who need to be shown the door at least this is the way the free market is supposed to work, better for everyone.  I can come up with at least two names myself right off the bat and so this is the #1 complaint even over and above fiscal concerns.  Good God have you been reading about the sexual goings-on between some HS teachers and their students in NYC? that's not even the point, sexuality has always been somewhat warped to begin with but it's existentially difficult to fire the tenured ones because...it gets complicated here.  There's a section on it in Glenn Beck's book Arguing with Idiots and ya gotta collect and collate your evidence first, get your witnesses and present your charges of course to this board or body or that and then all that has to finally go to an arbitrator at least some point down the road into the not-so-foreseeable future and even then the arbitrator for some strange reason often has a soft spot for the more pervy ones.  NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott would like the sole power to fire the truly bad ones but he has to lobby Albany first, that takes time and you know how that goes and the United Federation of Teachers likes the system the way it is after all they fought for it.  I don't recall this going on when I went to school as a young'en but then again we had nuns who'd crack a ruler over a student's knuckles so unless you were seriously into some S&M or a little clothespin action......

Pretty much in my place the only straight up reason you can fire somebody is if they steal something:)

The little irony of Obama's birth control mandate

Birth control or the oral contraceptive is not without its complications:

Does ObamaCare cover this?  Something tells me no and if not why not but if it did how is this saving $$$$$$?  A little feminist conundrum if you will, enjoy.

What this election is NOT about

- Osama bin Laden
- Women's lack of access to birth control
- Mormonism
- gay marriage
- Romney giving a gay kid a haircut
- Trayvon Martin/hoodies
- Stop 'n' Frisk
- Bain Capital

"Throw another log on the fire Cory"

What does OWS & ice-fishing have in common?

Not much.  I lost alot of respect for them when they stopped protesting throughout the winter months.  Sure some judge told them they can't camp out in Zuccotti Park anymore but what was it? by late December or early January they weren't even in the news anymore probably replaced by some Kardashian crap and the latest political scandal.  Lost alot of steam imo by hibernating like this, even the 'possum risks ice-frost every now and then to get a bite to eat.  The brave May Day protests to shut down work, schools and banks, expect more brave protests throughout the summer months, probably into the fall as well.  This blogpost is not about whether you agree or disagree with them, you probably don't and will comment as you see fit but real protesters protest in whatever kind of weather.  12 degress in the middle of January, you're out there with your frozen snot and a chapped ass, a rumbling belly because you're body expelled all that fine OWS cuisine and you have to use the Port-o-San at least 10X because you had a couple cups 'o' joe when you woke up in the morning, now that's Democracy in action and I can respect that politics be damned!  They really need to watch reels of those old-time black civil-rights protesters from the 60's getting pushed back by fire hoses and bitten by German Sheperds these hippy/yuppie hybrid malcontents.  Bunch 'o' pussies, meteorological cowards.  They don't make protesters like they used to:)

Obama's OBL playing card

I didn't think he'd do it, I mean even though I'm not surprised.  I'm talking of course about the ad on the one-year anniversary of whatever happened to Osama bin Laden and would Mitt Romney have done the same thing when he's on the record as saying we shouldn't spend billions of dollars and move heaven and earth to find one man.  Yeah that ad touting the fact that President Obama gave the go-ahead to take bin Laden out.  For me that'd be on a par with (dated allusion follows) "I did Marilyn Monroe."*  Sure you're proud of it but true class dictates you don't talk about it, no need to it's on the record and folks can weigh it accordingly and the second thing is for Obama to even play the OBL card means to me his accomplishments during his first term are so weak and/or controversial that he has to fall back on this but again I would have thought ultimately he'd listen to conventional political wisdom which simply dictates Don't Go There.  You know I still have people come up to me saying they don't think bin Laden's really dead and my Dad who served in the Navy during WWII says you don't give the world's most wanted terrorist who was responsible for the loss of almost 3,000 American lives a dignified and solemn burial-at-sea so even his greatest historical accomplishment somehow didn't follow the correct script.

* I wanted to update my point with a more modern celebrity but it's tough, Lindsay Lohan or Lady Gaga?  MM is legendary so the writer has to go with this.  Kardashian?

Beavers making a comeback in Westchester County NY

As I blogged about in the past there used to be a healthy beaver population behind the old UPS plant in Elmsford NY, that'd be part of the Saw Mill River but don't really know their current status since it's been awhile since my Dad took us as kids to see them busy at work.  Googling the subject recently there was one spotted a few years back in the Bronx River downaways possibly looking for a mate, got a writeup in the Times and I did watch a YouTube video of one in one of the lakes in the Blue Mountain Reservation in Peekskill which I hike alot.  Anyway today is my day off and it's a beautiful one, sunshiny and cool and nippy with a good breeze so parked along a stretch of the North County Trail in Yorktown Heights in upper Westchester County, it's right there on 35 just past the Amawalk Reservoir before you enter town.  I was walking in aways and noticed part of the paved bike path quite flooded in spots and there were about five sandbags down.  I noticed this about a week ago too and it was unusual in that we've been having a drought of late, reservoirs at no more than 90% capacity but today I saw that someone, probably the DEP put up a sign saying "Caution - Do Not Walk on Beaver Dam" and there it was in all its glory, at least two beaver dams made of various size twigs and branches and mud and that's what's been causing the stream to flood and slowly turn into a small pond.  The users of the trail which is quite popular here don't seem to mind and everyone seems to be accomodating to the beavers though I've yet to see one here.  It's a slice of heaven in these parts, a real tonic for your nerves and every now and then you need a magical moment like this.  BTW went home yesterday early afternoon and just got out of my car when a fancy maroon sedan with a chauffeur pulled up, the back door opened and a fine British gentleman in a suit asked me a set of three questions - "where is (a certain local address nearby)?", "where is the nearest cemetery?" (I gave him an answer but kinda muffed it, there was a closer one nearby but I'm lousy with spontaneous directions) and finally "where do you go to register a birth?"  I can understand the first question but the three in toto were oddballs especially going from birth to death and if anything it stimulates the mind on an otherwise boring day when you're getting ready to go in late for work.  Should I get all conspiratorial about it?

Ted Nugent is like your brother-in-law from hell

You may have to interact with him from time to time but he'll drag you down.  He causes the big family blowup and then sits in his darkened little bedroom with the hockey game on all Charles Manson-like, you don't know how exactly but he caused the whole thing.  He's the guy you take fishing with the idiot mouth like the time I was fishing in the Kensico/Rye Lake Reservoir in a rowboat one day and we passed these two nice girls sunbathing on a rock and yeah it would've been nice to stay in the area and angle a bit, maybe strike up a conversation but I just kept rowing and rowing away from the area and normally I wouldn't do that but I knew what could come out of the guy's mouth, some nice stream of pottyisms and you'd be like I just picked him up he's just some homeless guy I'm taking to the highway on the other side.  I don't understand these efforts at minor endorsements, I mean why not Romney going after Danny Bonaduce's support as well? get Kardashian's endorsement too in your back pocket I mean who the hell is Henry Kissinger anyway?  Nugent which sounds like a candy bar, no he doesn't threaten the President he'll just say things like he'd like to sautee his testicles and when the Social Service finally comes around when they're not whoring that is it was all meant figuratively speaking of course and crack open his skull come November in a figurative political sense and......The Fringe, it's time to lop 'em off, send 'em off into Space and orbit the Earth which reminds me I just saw the most interesting NOVA program on the Sun's corona last night:)

Will the Hilary Rosen remarks rise to the occasion?

By which I mean will she get the Rush treatment? I never really heard of this chick before as I usually don't watch CNN except when they have it on it seems all the time on the big Akai screen when I'm in the waiting room at the doctor's office and even then I'm not really paying attention ("just tell me when I'm gonna die doc!") but CNN commentator Hilary Rosen said about Ann Romney the wife of Mitt Romney: "Ann Romney has never actually worked a day in her whole life" this despite Ann Romney having raised five kids. Echoes of the other Hillary and chocolate-chip cookies and it seems to be a deeply-rooted feminist theme firmly stuck in their subconscious this business of the Stay At Home Moms (how dare they!). When Rush called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute it was The Most Evil Thing Ever Said (well the I-man once said nappy-headed 'hos so it's a tossup here) and libs are still talking about it or let me put it this way they haven't forgotten it and payback is a bitch. I actually find the Rosen comments somewhat more offensive but that's just me. Now President Obama and many assorted Democratic figures have rightly denounced and distanced themselves from the Rosen remarks and good for them, I've no complaint but that's not what I'm talking about here but rather will it have staying power? will it become a kind of weekslong obsession with calls for boycotts and other delectable punishments? In short will she get Rushed?

The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, spinning out of control

As you know by now Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey has brought Murder 2 charges against the shooter of Trayvon Martin. Even Trayvon's Mom said she believes her son's death was a kind of tragic accident at the hands of George Zimmerman a way overzealous and quite possibly racially charged neighborhood watchman. Now for the bulk of this case I've taken what you can call the "liberal" side for lack of a better word but 2nd degree Murder is way out of whack, some type of manslaughter charge would have been much more appropriate and it's my opinion that Ms. Corey will eventually run for some type of office down there in the Sunshine State and she wants this high-profile case. So what we have here is maybe a second travesty of justice and it's a damn shame IMO. A word about guns, I'm not a fan of 'em even though I'm a conservative. They make me nervous and yes I understand the 2nd Amendment but I think there's many many people out there who don't know how to use them responsibly, to exercise proper judgement and restraint and this goes for licensed gun owners who've been "properly" trained. One lesson - public pressure is fine, it's our right and constitutionally protected but it doesn't always lead to the right outcome:)

The Obama Platform is what exactly?

I mean when things finally get down and dirty between him and Mr. Romney what is it shaping up to be or to put it another way why is it self-evident we should reelect the man? He can't run on the strength of his first term because there wasn't any at least that's not the word that comes to mind I'm sure even among his most ardent supporters. His main achievement would seem to be health-care reform and a majority of Americans are hardly behind him on that one so should he push it even if the SCOTUS strikes him down? He can always trot out of course the OBL Card but even here that video the news networks keep showing of bin Laden talking and the other one of him watching the boob tube wearing a wool cap looks like some B-actor out of a bad spoof (he found time to watch porn too?), too SNLish to have the gravitas of a world-master terrorist at work and maybe if I were the networks I'd keep it in the can. There's Obama's race to consider naturally and the nostalgia born from the historic and emotional moment of this country finally electing the first black president hasn't worn off and this is understandable, it was a good moment historically and it's like you want Tiger Woods back in the game. You can make the case that he played a major role in Khadafy's demise but even here he has been pretty much laid back on Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad. I believe at last count the death toll there of the citizenry stands like 9,000 or something so maybe when it reaches 10,000 he'll get off his duff. Taken as a whole, snowballing it altogether is all this reason enough for those who voted for him the first time to do so again? Of course for Shaw et al. it's a no-brainer but why would you not have a Democratic primary season especially when your main guy is so weak? My Dad who served in the Navy during WW2 and is as rock-ribbed conservative as they come said to me one day Hillary would've been a far better president than Obama. All you liberals out there make the case here because I'm not getting this one, it's way over my head:)

In a weird way I kinda agree w/Obama

Conservatives have said the President is "threatening" the Supreme Court on health-care reform but Obama is saying here in effect why are the courts the most powerful branch of the US government? Now I oppose ObamaCare myself especially the part about the individual mandate but I'm confused by conservatives' newfound love for the SCOTUS. I mean weren't tons of books written and speeches given on the Supremes having too much power over the will of the people on the various contentious social and political issues of the day Roe being the classic example of course but also affirmative action and so on down the line? When I went to the Mount in the Bronx and I always remember this in History class we learned and it was right there in the textbook that we have or are supposed to have 3 co-equal branches of the Government - legislative to pass the laws, executive to enforce the laws and judicial to interpret those laws, a kind of checks-and-balances system. I don't like the health-care but I find myself kinda agreeing with the President philosophically here. Apparently I'm in the minority though as usual:)

So why can't liberals give Bush the Obama treatment?

You see this is why I HATE politics, it all boils down to you hate our president and we'll hate your president. Political debate in this country is still in its infancy, nothing new but browsing through some left-wing blogs here the other day the main point seems to be we're not giving President Obama a fair shake. We're not basing our POVs on Fact and we're blaming him for things he really has no control over like high gas prices and how he deals with foreign affairs. Basically we just hate the man and deep down we probably don't like blacks. OK ok ok I get it but by the same logic liberals need to go back and retract some of the things, many of the things they said about Bush. That'd be Bush Jr. of course but why complain about our treatment of Obama now but we shouldn't complain about their treatment of President Bush then? Politics seems solely based on emotion these days but look I'm gonna take them up on their offer to go easy and cut some slack where justified for the current president ONLY if they go back and take back some of the things said about Mr. Bush.

(silence)

So as I was saying I can't stand President Obama because......

thoughts on mortality

I didn't want to start a label called "death" because that'd be creepy but at 48, just had a b'day a couple weeks ago you begin feeling that tug from the other end. I remember in that movie Uncle Buck or something John Candy is in bed and the kid he's in charge of starts talking about The Topic and he goes just think every single second of your life right now, every moment, it's one less second or minute you have left yada yada so the kid finally falls asleep and John Candy is laying awake in bed all night just staring at the ceiling. HELL -- I've gone both ways on this and for most of my adult life didn't really believe in it but lately you can't say everybody makes it and that's the thing. Everybody dies and they're strumming banjoes in Heaven looking down on us and smiling? Whitney Houston dies in a bathtub with coke and other drugs in her system and she's in Heaven?!? Not saying she's in Hell either but why even try to live a good life if we all wind up in the Good Place and right away at that? I don't believe most people go to Hell over sexual sins, I think there has to be something more (gangsters, Mafia yes) and I think the Church over the years has taken private revelations like at Fatima and maybe added stuff like the vast majority of people in Hell are there because they're lovers of the flesh, a kind of anti-sex message. Is there Sex after Death? You'd think there would be for all those times you couldn't get it in real life, would kinda even things out. I think the idea of reincarnation is rather neat since there's so many things I want to do in Life and one lifetime's not enough like be a private investigator. Let's be honest, the job sucks there's no fulfillment there and technically the very first day I can retire I'm doing so and sit on my front porch for the rest of my life and take up gardening:)

Failed business models

Seems like every now and then when I take a little vacation and come back there are some major upheavals and changes on the workfront and it got me to thinking during my walk today. Now I had a bad manager back in the day, may or may not have been a psycho but definitely an asshole and there was alot going on back then, had some health issues which seemed to start around then, blogged about some of them at the time yet Upper Management made a decision to bring him back. Dunno man but I say if somebody is at best a question mark let them be a memory, a part of Back in the Day but all this work stuff got me to thinking about bailouts and such. Now of course the bailouts didn't start with Obama, Bush really got them going but as a general statement I'm against bailouts philosophically and here's why. If you let the free market work as it's supposed to companies that deserve to go under are allowed to do so. It may sound harsh but there's a reason for everything, maybe they don't treat the workers right, maybe there's corruption, whatever but government throws these economic life rafts and blankets out constantly now and it interferes with the whole natural process, a kind of business Darwinism where the undeserving are allowed to fail. The usual rationale is but the people will be out of their jobs but they can always dust themselves off and find new employment with hopefully better companies but they tend to pigeonhole themselves (once a butcher always a butcher). Now let me ask you if a major company goes bankrupt and then has to file some austerity plan on orders of the Bankrupty Court and so then there's a wage reduction and then a wage freeze for years on end and other major gutting of certain bennies and perks hard fought by the Union over the years HOW is such a bailout beneficial to said workers as a whole? That's called Taking It Up The Ass, Thuganomics 101 and there's a certain loss of basic human dignity involved so what good are unions in the first place? Wouldn't it have been much better for the business to simply close up shop like in the old days because they were fiscally and even morally irresponsible throughout the years? That's the beautiful karma of the free-market system at work folks, the workers will dust themselves off and pick up better jobs if not now then down the road. So how is a massive bank or gov't bailout (really the same thing) gonna help change the Peter Principle? Back in the Day if a place went bankrupt there was a reason for it and there was no chance in hell of getting a bailout or recovery loan. Let me put it in more simple terms and we've all done this us men -- you screwed it up with a chick bigtime, that's all your fault and you have the rest of your life to think about it and chew it over but that's called learning from experience and starting over so when was the last time somebody came up to you and said I'm bailing you out with a new chick?

Racial unrest in Florida

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/sanford-city-manager-says-were-barred-arresting-trayvon-134007644.html

Al Sharpton is visiting the Sunshine State today, always a voice of reason and calm but I see this one as having the potential for riots and bearing national repercussions. I don't see how you cut it you can defend this guy Zimmerman, a one-man neighborhood community watchman/vigilante and I think on the merits I agree with the black activists and the black community in general on this one (now when was the last time you heard a conservative say that?). You shouldn't be shot dead if you're a 17-old young black man carrying a bag of Skittles through a probably mostly white gated community so how did this happen? Now I live in a neighborhood where when I look out the window, that's kinda the extent of my community watching here and if I see something dubious or questionable or in any way a gray area and let's face it some of these situations do involve young black men 9 times out of 10 I don't call the police. It's too, how shall I say vague...what do I say when I get the sergeant on the line? I'll call the police on average about one time a year over something happening in the neighborhood but by all accounts Mr. George Zimmerman was the exact opposite, hyper-alert and hyper-observant and probably hyper-imaginative as well. I think his racial adrenaline was flowing heavily juiced on by the reality of black crime is my view. This story has picked up so much steam I had to blog about it. I don't even see how the case justifies as an act of self-defense and he should've been arrested by now but I've had my say. What's your 2 cents?

This eternal social conservative/libertarian war within the GOP (& my solution)

I knew there was a problem many many years ago when I was driving a van for a wholesale flower company. That was back in the day and you really met a garden-variety of people on your routes and one young guy in particular ran a flower shop in the countryside and he made no secret of his strong dislike for the then Democratic president at the time Mr. Bill Clinton and liberals in general. I never really brought up the subject matter at the time, why would I I'm only delivering product but apropos of nothing he complained to me out of the blue one day that abortion within the Republican Party needs to be taken off the table. FF to the present day and you have Patrick M, soapie, Pamela Hart and Malcontent to name but a few righties here who are pro-choice for lack of a better word and would pretty much say the same thing. OK so it's obvious to me this social conservative/libertarian tension-hatred/rift within the GOP goes way back even as far back when Sean Hannity was discussing Hummergate on practically a daily basis and even beyond that to the Barry Goldwater days when in his senior years he started making testy and snarky comments about Jerry Falwell and evangelicals in general. Libertarian-minded conservatives act like they can somehow drive a stake through the heart of social conservatism once and for all, the good guys if you will in an updated political version of Vampire Diaries but you know how that goes, there will always be one of us Originals around and it got me to thinking. The only real solution would be for social conservatives to leave the Republican Party AND for libertarians to leave the GOP as well. Why should one be asked to leave and not the other? Whose mansion is it anyway, can I see the deed? Why do we even need opponents of gay marriage and those who want to legalize angel dust in the same party? Instead of trying to purify your own party from within in whichever direction you happen to be, a never-ending task where there's more agita than rewards have your own party going and go all out with it. The 2-Party System is bankrupt anyway, not much of a choice for the average voter (yes yes I know there's tons of other parties out there to choose from but they're not mainstream in any sense of the word more like political trivia questions). Pat Robertson living in a house with fetal parts backing up the plumbing system, makes no sense to me:)

Thoughts on the Tyler Clementi/Dharun Ravi case

Instead of summarizing this tragic case myself here is the link: http://news.yahoo.com/former-rutgers-student-convicted-webcam-case-155436220.html
Why oh why did Dharun Ravi give up that sweet plea deal? He could eventually be deported to his native India as a result of his conviction on all 15 counts including invasion of privacy a no-brainer and the more gray bias intimidation charge. Even the judge in the case found the NJ statute muddled and I remember Sean Hannity once discussing hate crime laws in general saying how they punish thought. If an obviously gay man is mugged is it because of his orientation or because he just came out of an artsy museum with his boyfriend and this points to some affluence? I have a Non-Opinion in this case, I've read several divergent commentaries and they all sway me to some degree but basically Ravi was convicted of a hate crime here. That's always a difficult thing to do to police somebody's head but then again there were the tweets and the texts although many friends said he harbored no strong anti-gay animus. What if the original tryst were of a heterosexual nature would it have been caught on cam too? You see that's the difficult part at least for me to get inside someone's mental universe although by pretty much universal consensus even among Right and Left Mr. Ravi is some serious species of Jerk. Of course there's the requisite jokes that now Ravi will be raped in prison but the judge will not sentence him to be raped in prison and the whole issue of prison rape needs to be highlighted and not made light of. Is a bad toilet also part of the punishment? There's a strong and I mean strong social conformity bias in Society. Just the other day a woman co-worker asked why I'm not married. I thought it a rude and prying question and I would never think to ask this of another co-worker and while I don't agree I can well understand the genesis of the whole hostile workplace environment construct. Why should you be uncomfortable when you work or go to school, when you're laboring or studying? at a minimum it's very distracting. I'm not gay but the woman after posing her very personal question may as well have stuck a pickle in her cheek and moved it back and forth. The case opens up a much needed national discussion and I'm not sure if it was the right verdict or the wrong one and I know you gotta come down with Instant Opinions these days like Sanka. I'm very big on nuance and intent and am fluid in my thinking and would probably aggravate the other jurors no end, a modern day Henry Fonda keeping everybody from going home. Dharun Ravi was not charged of course with causing Tyler Clementi to jump off the GW Bridge in September of 2010 but let's be honest here that's why the whole case was brought to trial in the first place for closure purposes and a debt to Justice in this young man's death. So chime in here and convince me of your position I'm swayable.

Does the Left hate the Right more than the Right hates the Left?

Browsing through the leftworthy blogs lately you're dealing with a sheer hatred of the Right and all things Rightward. We're talking exorcism-grade hate, pea soup, projectile vomiting, F-carpet-bombing in some cases (ahem), closing one nostril and shooting a booger at the opposition with the other one, an ultra-serious hatred with no humor attached whatsoever after all this is serious business and nobody on the Right can sincerely hold a certain belief ever. Said belief will be meticulously scanned for inconsistencies, who doesn't have those? ok that's fair game but then we get into Motives and those of conservatives are always dark of course. WE HATE WOMEN, we wake up in the morning us white males we do and what inspires us all day is how to hold women down. WE HATE OBAMA because he's black never mind his first three weak years of his first term. WE HATE SEX and we only use it to reproduce ourselves so we can eventually take over the Planet. WE HATE THE POOR, WE HATE THE GODLESS......Personally speaking if we hadn't gone after Bill Clinton with the sheer passion that we did I think our rather strong dislike shall we say of the current president might point to some real flaws in character and policy instead of being chalked up to the usual pathological hatred of any Democrat who occupies the Oval Office, a derangement syndrome and I have to say I was far less harsh on Bill Clinton back in the day and still am than your average conservative and I believe it stands me in good stead to this day. I'll leave the title of this blogpost an open question I'm just wondering why Sarah Palin is a cunt:)