In other Pope Francis news

Ebola and ISIS have kind of consumed the news of late but there's also the gay synod, I mean the synod that addresses gays and the Church. The draft of the draft is widely seen as being pro-gay, the only thing missing are the sex ads and Pope Francis always seems to be flirting with changing church teachings but then denies having led you on. He's a bit of a theological coquette but he still gives you that tingle. So the pre-draft/working paper talks about the gifts gays bring to the Church and society. Nobody's denying this (interior decorating, the arts, Chaz Dean's WEN Shampoo) but the more traditional wing of the Church wants to crack down harder on the sodomites and those couples in general who are living in sin. Now Francis always noted for saying Trendy Things has also said you can believe in evolution and God at the same time, there's no contradiction. I've no problem but do the evolutionists think that? Does Stephen Hawking agree with Francis? doubt it. OK so the church cafeteria is open and I'm gonna go grab me a bottle of abbey ale:)

Are you ready for Ebola?

It must have something to do with gay marriage. I'm not a medical authority but I do support a travel ban until it's contained. CDC Director Frieden is way over his head since the most serious thing he had to do as NYC Health Commissioner under Bloomberg was to try to ban big sugary drinks. The Drudge Report lately could be more accurately titled the Ebola Report and on the flipside the other school of thought that's been developing is that the media is talking about this way too much, a journalistic preoccupation or obsession or overkill. Then again I can understand it too since we have a decent chance at a real medieval plague here especially since nobody's on the same page. I myself get instinctively cranky whenever a subject is ground into a fine dust. As Saty once said everyone knows about the tits and I feel the same way about Ebola at least for now or I was but the CDC doesn't inspire me with confidence so I'm beginning to worry. FDNY now can't say "Ebola" over the dispatch for fear some nerd might be listening in on some scanner. OK so BB, Saty and maybe Dave can respond:)

Voluntarily signing over your privacy

Yesterday I got in the mail a questionnaire from my doctor's hospital group. I knew beforehand I wasn't gonna send it in, just a vibe you get but I read it anyway. First few questions the gist was how are your doctor's visits, did you call him up within the past 3 months with a medical concern, did he discuss your blood results in a prompt fashion and overall how is he doing on a scale of 1 to 10. I fairly like my doctor who's a young guy, a budding professional and I didn't want to get him in trouble. I WISH there was a section on colonoscopies though and I would editorialize when you wiki it there are at least 3 or 4 other major and valid screening tests for colorectal and yet when you go to the doctor they act like there's only one procedure (the worst one). Anyway towards the end another question asked how would you rate your overall physical health? That's hard to say, I engage in the proper John Tesh-recommended behaviors and habits during the first half of the day and in the latter half I tend to have a cigar and later on some brandy, half ascetic and half hedonist I guess you could say. The question after that how would you rate your mental and emotional health? Dunno, why don't you leave me alone? I've had alot of philosophical and spiritual suffering in my life but I never thought of it in terms of mental health just the human condition. I mean what a useless question anyway, most folks are gonna go with the correct answer of at least good and nobody's gonna admit they're nuts at least on paper. The whole thing smacked of bureaucratic Big Brotherism, overly prying like a mental colonoscopy. Then I pretty much tore it up and chucked it in the garbage. Nosy nosy nosy:)

The international coalition of the unwilling

My position which has evolved is that there needs to be an international coalition of boots on the ground in both Iraq and northern Syria to combat the psychopathic evil of ISIS. Also this constant conservative sniping at how Obama is handling this international crisis/tragedy is not part of the solution and usually at such times with such a real foreign threat out there their usual counsel is to get behind the president. Even Canada has gotten involved but whenever a new coalition partner makes an announcement it's usually along the lines of we're willing to do airstrikes in Iraq but not Syria. Well ISIS has adapted to airstrikes since they pretty much knew they were coming and Obama should never have ruled out boots on the ground so categorically when his own generals are saying otherwise. Lastly the FBI says they know the identity of "John the Beatle" or that masked hostage-beheader seen in those infamous ISIS videos but are withholding this information and not making it public for strategic reasons it is to be presumed. I don't know why since not making the name a matter of the international record has not stopped the latest hostage Brit Alan Henning from meeting the same fate. So those are my thoughts and I would say the matter is urgent.

You may not be able to call 911 but at least you can browse

I kinda like it when Technology fails. First off I'm sick of all the technology commercials on tv by which I mean mainly smartphones and tablets. You need Siri in your life I don't know what to tell you. The debut of the new iPhone6 and 6+, people waited in line for blocks and now they're grumbling on social media. Seems the 6+ bends when you have it in your pocket all day but people c'mon you're not supposed to sit on it! Then there's the issue of dropping calls but at least you can check your Twitter feed in the meantime. Others are complaining the phablet version is too big to stick in your pocket and yet the coming screen sizes were the big draw in the first place. More hacked nude celebrity photos have been posted recently, makes ya think the only thing young Hollywood A-listers and B-listers do with their phones is take nude selfies. Social Observation: is it possible for a woman to walk around Target or Bed Bath & Beyond without looking at her smartphone half or most of the time? Tech-commercials and pill commercials that's like all you see on tv:)

Axis of Isil

I thought President Obama's speech last night detailing his global strategy for dealing with IS was rather brief and subdued. I thought it would be longer and more impassioned but I'm not against it and generally agree with the tenor. Obama has quite obviously chosen to use the label "ISIL" or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant instead of the more popular "ISIS" and there are reasons for this. Using ISIS constantly the way most in the media now do makes it sound like we're in a war with the ancient Egyptian goddess and also using this term all the time has that "Get Smart"/comic book feel to it (remember Don Adams and his nemesis KAOS?). Another reason Obama prefers the term ISIL is it definitely refers to the threat IS poses to the nation of Israel since Israel falls under the definition of the Levant along with other countries like Jordan. I haven't really read the reviews yet in particular those of the always nitpicking right-wingers but the war and it is a war will eventually include airstrikes in northern Syria and it is the pundit's view that just like Bush left the Iraq war with Obama Obama will leave the Syrian mess to the next president. Syria has already bombed certain IS targets in the north and I couldn't help thinking if they could have they would have used chlorine gas again. The Sotloff family spokesperson has alleged the so-called moderate forces fighting Assad, the Free Syrian Army, sold Steven Sotloff for a price to IS but the State Dept. denies this. OK thoughts:)

Mad dot in the universe

The God Problem - You finally meet God someday and go to him "how come you didn't do anything about ISIS?" God: "Who?" then you see Him quickly searching wikipedia. God truly has swarms of galaxies solar systems and other planets to worry about but then there's the guardian angels. As a Catholic we're taught they exist but I see no evidence. Where were James Foley and Steven Sotloff's guardian angels? (angel walks in on the imminent beheading: "what's going on here?" bullets passing harmlessly through his Michael Landon-type body to the utter amazement of the crazed jihadists). Are our guardian angels too busy on their smartphones? Foley even prayed the rosary during his captivity in Libya, did it help? A priest or theologian might say it helped his soul but did it help his situation? Personally speaking my faith crisis really started after Newtown which imo is the most shocking news event to happen in my lifetime after 9-11. We still don't know why the bug-eyed psycho did it and it didn't change Wayne LaPierre one iota so there goes your great Saul-like conversion on the road to the gun show. My Mom just had a dear friend die of cancer, why doesn't al-Baghdadi get cancer or at least a damn bug egg-sac in his brain to say nothing of Kim Jong-un? Why doesn't the executioner/beheader the day before suddenly get a heart attack instead of your brother-in-law or dearly beloved aunt? Ray Rice was done in by TMZ not God but maybe God works through TMZ? Look it's fairly obvious to me God the Creator or an architect of the Universe or a central planner exists but does He care? Big Speech tonight, no not God although He should be giving one too:)

iCloud Storage for Life's most intimate moments

Re that celebrity nude photo hacking scandal personally speaking I don't use my smartphone for those purposes. I'd be slightly trepidatious and I don't care if it's on your device, in the Cloud, on the moon whatever. Maybe it's trendy right now among the Hollywood set, take a picture of your twat and put it in the Cloud but even if you delete it from your device it's still right up there floating around in the atmosphere somewhere along with Anthony Weiner's pecker. BTW what's Ariana Grande doing on the list? Now the time and effort by these pervo-nerds to actually pull this off by one hacker's admission it took literally months of time and hard effort. Two things do they work and think of the energy that could have been committed to a cancer cure instead or even a successful weight loss program! Apple and iOS are supposed to be impervious to these types of things not like the ever dangerous Android operating system but I've always said that's only a matter of time. The new iPhone 6 is supposed to have a bigger screen something like 5+" and I'm thinking a phone should be rather fairly small to begin with. Ya got a phone now with the screen the same size as a small tv set - "Excuse me I have to make a phone call" - and there's an old guy at church I know has a big one by the size of his black case prominently strapped to his belt for all the parishioners to see. Probably an LG, showoff. So what kind of gallery do you have? BB's smart, he doesn't have a phone.

The rise of the appy savage

Their mentality and overall religious outlook is straight out of the 1400's yet they know how to upload videos to YouTube, cave-dwelling techno-savages who even make trendy and newsy references to events in Ferguson, MO. Next thing you know they'll be blogging. I thought YouTube like all mainstream websites of this nature have a TOS, you know you can't just submit a video say of how much you hate N-words or harass your ex-girlfriend so why is it technically ok for ISIS to upload a video showing the beheading of freelance US reporter James Foley? Various Islamic terror elements also take to Twitter, Twitter feeds, Twitter accounts - they've finally joined the Twitterverse those religious troglodytes! Now libs spend a good part of every waking day concerned about the threat posed by the Religious Right (oooooohhh!) but when was the last time Pat Robertson beheaded an American professor who passionately teaches evolution and then put it on YouTube? ISIS has said the beheading was in retaliation for US airstrikes, they just lost control of the Mosul Dam and the peshmerga are on the move so this is their way of making a Statement. Obama needs to keep pounding away however and I don't see how after such an atrocity you can rule out boots on the ground which should give McCain's heart a flutter or two. So stop worrying about Pat Robertson and Gary Bauer and start worrying about ISIS coming to a mall near you:)

What's up with the Ferguson PD?

If you were a troglodyte the past week and just popped on the tube you'd swear there was a major terrorist attack in the community of Ferguson MO. OK so let's rap about race and the police again. Despite my recent post re the NYPD for me Eric Garner is not Sean Bell is not Michael Brown is not Amadou Diallo and why don't we throw in Tawana Brawley while we're at it. I approach these cases on a purely individual basis and you can make the case that maybe Sean Bell or his friend was driving his SUV towards the cops OR that yes maybe teen Michael Brown was tussling with a police officer in his squad car and went for his gun after strong-arming a convenience store. Look I get it but put these other cases together and start comparing and they all highlight even more at least for me that the Eric Garner case is the weakest in terms of the NYPD POV & PR. He wasn't running down the street half-naked waving a machete, he didn't have a gun or a device that resembled a gun or even took out a black wallet the way Amadou Diallo did in the Soundview section of the Bronx when four officers shot him to death. So for parts of the right-wing like the New York Post to unreservedly support the cops as a general rule is a huge socio/political mistake imo if the GOP wants to get serious about attracting the Black Vote and no Bo Dietl doesn't know more than the NYC ME. Missouri - well at least conservatives are starting to wake the hell up by criticizing the increasing militarization of our nation's police forces what with all that surplus army stuff the federal gov't doled out to them in years past. Actually you know something? conservatives all conservatives should start reading Twelve Years a Slave if they haven't already and watch the movie as it's obvious they have no interest in or never got the whole Black Experience. Lastly conservatives waste far too much time talking about Al Sharpton:)

The latest celebrity tragedy

While not an epidemic exactly more and more Hollywood stars have gone off the deep end of late as in over the cliff - Heath Ledger, Philip Seymour Hoffman and now Robin Williams (1951-2014 RIP). Of course the truism holds "money can't buy you happiness" but there are deeper forces at work as there always are - drugs and/or alcohol abuse, depression etc. I kinda think the Bieber and Charlie Sheen antics are all for show, they're actually the least likely to off themselves in some fashion. There was a period of time when almost every movie I watched it seemed had Robin Williams in some kind of starring role. With him what comes to mind is not just a great actor but versatile. To go from comedy to high drama ain't easy, can't imagine Will Ferrell doing that. The last one I watched I think was Insomnia with him and Al Pacino. Suicide imo is the most undignified way to go but ok so we have something to talk about besides Ebola and those immigrant kids. Thoughts? You can even blame Obama if you like:)

I never thought I'd agree with Sharpton

but...I don't think I'll be installing the NYPD app anytime soon. NYPD has a force of about 35,000, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says they'll have to retrained all of them. I was never big on this broken windows theory of policing or go after the squeegee men and the homeless basically and the Chinese guy with his left nut hanging out. When I used to drive the van for the wholesale flower company I had to go down the city really early one morning, got off the West Side Highway somewhere and there was one of them guys with the bucket and the squeegee and my windshield was dirty anyway so I gave him a buck. Polite, didn't bother me, didn't feel threatened, didn't feel gangsterized. By some convoluted logic of modern policing go after the graffiti artist and the serial killer won't take the girl into the woods, dunno. PBA issued a statement saying that while their thoughts and prayers go out to the Garner family this tragedy wouldn't have occured if Mr. Garner didn't resist arrest. Vile. Disgusting. Offensive. That's a union for you and if Giuliani or even Bloomberg were still mayor they'd be chiming in too on the side of the cops of course. All conservatives can ever talk about is Sharpton's rhetorical style but imo he's being mighty civil in this case. Broken Windows - Broken Lives.

Why not just have a coyote app?

Actually it'd be far cheaper than subscribing to Sarah Palin's new Web TV Channel.

On the South County Trail in Westchester County

No Sasquatch pics yet.

Maybe it's not so much the NSA, maybe it's Google

Slow day at work so we got to discussing Google. A woman thinks Google+ is a good idea but I said I wasn't comfortable. That's a public profile so if you're not big on privacy folks can get to see that you downloaded The Advanced Guide to Rimjobs let's say or a self-help book regarding substance abuse. I was reading an app review for Yonkers PD Tips and there's an actual guy's name who commented and I clicked something and got to see his literal movie, book and music library on whatever devices Mike has. Now they make conservatives out to be nosy people poking around in folks' business but I really don't care to know all this. Google Maps and the Street View, guy at work told me how they get those images. They have a team who drive these white cars around with yellow things on top that take the pictures and they do this every six months. Hey BB there's a job for ya. Of course out in CA Google is test-driving driverless cars and then there's all the Glassholes out there. It's ALL OUT THERE but it ain't all good imo. Dunno, maybe the Snowden rage is misplaced or could be divvied up more. Mommy there's a Google monster under my bed.

OK so maybe now we can all hate the SCOTUS

For decades now conservatives have hated the Supreme Court because of the Roe vs. Wade decision among other things. There are other things of course but that was/is primary. NOW liberals including feminists and the New York Times hate the SCOTUS because of its recent Hobby Lobby decision even though for the longest time liberals have counseled accepting Roe as the Law of the Land mainly because the SCOTUS said so. Here's a thought though, maybe the Supreme Court shouldn't be the most powerful branch of government in the Land. If it takes the various cycles of the political pendulum to see that so be it.

I'm not an appy camper today

I lost my techno-virginity a few years back, I know a few moves. Now I don't have the same knowledge as one of those e-dorks you see hanging out at the public library all day with their devices but I do feel I'm fairly literate in the area now. We can talk about the pros and cons of sideloading .apk files and I'm comfortable. So lately I installed on my tablet one of those much-ballyhooed cleaner/sweeper apps to improve memory and storage and so there's an option for cleaning your media files so I read the prompts and messages very carefully and took my time mulling it over. Now nowhere does the app say this will delete your media files, the very word "delete" is not even used but the operative word is clean so eventually I went ahead. Lo and behold my entire music library was deleted as well as a few videos I downloaded. Not the end of the world, there were no important docs but I just sat there on my bed and it was a warm and muggy night and I was just stunned just the same. Mind you this was an app update so I went to read the app reviews and the vast majority were negative. Now instead of actually addressing the complaints of the app-users the Mobile Support Team kept repeating one or two stock answers over and over again. Very annoying. So I HAD to uninstall the little monster yesterday else it might one day actually eat up, inhale my tablet. I've kind of come to the conclusion over time that while Apple is vastly more expensive than anything Android the iOS is not as annoying and frustrating as the Android OS and they say malware is not really a problem. Read any tech support forum devoted to Android users and you get the drift. WHY all the suffering, is it necessary? I mean folks are busy, they don't have time for this. So yesterday I did my first Google Maps street views and while it's creepy it's also fascinating. Is that BB there trimming his hedges? All these techno-issues though, no wonder everyone's walking around so irritable. Maybe this is what happened to Shia LaBeouf, dunno:)

Conservatives, Vietnam Syndrome and Obama

In a way Bush's foreign policy has become Obama's foreign policy, try as he may Obama cannot fully extricate himself from the situation. We're probably gonna see some big-time action in Baghdad starting with air strikes and as much as Obama distanced himself from Bush and the Bush Doctrine during the campaigning inevitably he's become Bush 2. Now I read a fair amount of conservative commentary, have a few issues of National Review and The Weekly Standard on my tablet and in my view there are many, maybe even most conservatives who when push comes to shove feel we should have stuck it out in Vietnam so the same thinking of course applies to the Middle East. Obama has the perfectly reasonable position that we can't stay there forever but for your average conservative and that's a neo-type no matter how many body bags let's get the job done. Radical Islam, a couple people here don't get it but easily it poses a far greater threat than the Christian Right. I mean c'mon purity balls vs. massacres at shopping malls. In coastal Africa the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group al-Shabab has been going door to door in villages during the night while people have been tuned into the World Cup and asking the men basic questions about Islam and if they fail to answer correctly they get shot, a kind of terrorist version of Jeopardy (Moustafa: "what was the name of Mohammed's wife?"). Imagine the Jehovahs doing this going door to door with their Watchtowers and if you brush 'em off they open fire. Of course over at the Hannity Forums you can't really talk like this because you're questioning a faith system. Look I'm no fan of Obama but on Iraq the bulk of the blame goes to Bush.

App Permissions - for the NSA to collect your data

How many saw Brian Williams special interview with Edward Snowden last night? Probably didn't make much of an impression on ole BB though we learned for instance that the NSA can turn on your smartphone even when it's off and take pictures. Don't know what they'd do with my cat though or me watching Home Shopping Network. Brian Williams called this chilling and then we also learned that Mr. Snowden was not just a low-level "hacker" or NSA contractor but had worked for the CIA as a spy overseas, had training in this area and so knows what he's talking about. Also he had a nice haircut and for the ladies out there a couple of moles here and there. NSA's main concern is preventing the next big terrorist attack or even small ones leading up to that but with all these lone fuseboxes out there getting ready to blow who populate the social media and leave copious e-trails with not infrequent weird rantings you'd think there'd be an algorithm for that. I mean if we're gonna give up our privacy en masse in these massive data-mining sweeps it's not too much to ask to go to the mall or get a bite to eat in relative safety. He also said ask the US Government why he wound up in Russia. Then I went to bed.

Other thoughts on the Santa Barbara shootings

I was watching the PBS Newshour last night and Judy Woodruff was interviewing reporter Adam Nagourney of The New York Times. I didn't know this but Mr. Nagourney stated quite clearly that the guns 22-yr. old shooter Elliot Rodger used in the seaside massacre in Isla Vista were all legally purchased and CA has some of the nation's strictest gun control laws on the books. I've long felt while I'm fairly in support of gun control in many cases and welcome some legislation to that effect I'm also realistic enough to know it's not the magic bullet if you'll pardon the pun. It was truly a bizarre manifesto Rodger left behind and my first thought was angel dust or bath salts but you know what's scary? if you're this Nutz and you're NOT on drugs, I mean at least ex-rapper Big Lurch can fall back on that. My other thought was let's say Rodger in his YouTube videos and other postings steered clear of the more violent and weirder elements it would have come across as angry and whiny but truth be told many men would have agreed with him. So instead of discussing maybe a valid social issue or two once the person behind the "cause" resorts to violence that invalidates the cause right off the bat so then the trending topic turns to potential armies of psycho virgins training in the caves somewhere instead of maybe what alot of men can relate to. I honestly think if he was this far gone take away ALL his guns he would have easily found another way to commit mayhem perhaps with a samurai sword say. This is one of the very rare times when I actually agree with the Scientologists as I don't put much stock in psychiatry as a whole as the guy had his therapists and counselors and look what happened. The debate needs to go beyond gun control and the latest theories of the shrinks but that's where it seems to be stuck:)