Why libertarianism has never really taken off

You'd think such a political philosophy would be the order of the day, people like Ron Paul should be elected President in a heartbeat, I mean what is more important and American and critical to a democracy and people's pursuit of happiness than unfettered liberty? then again we have

the drug situation,

and not just the ordinary drugs that used to make for movies like French Connection grown from poppy fields in Afghanistan but things made up by weird and evil scientists, mad eggheads who can't just go off in the woods and beat off around a log fire while drinking Coronas after a bad day of fishing like most normal American men...sci-fi writer Aldous Huxley sang their praises, the father of LSD and then there's also

unfettered abortion

late-term fetuses (proper usage now) in garbage bins & a kid's right (in libertarian views) to access porn in public libraries. Libertarianism will always be a minority and eccentric political movement, people want some protection from the Ravages of Life even if it means government has to step in every once in a while.

Bhutto.....

it's a shame, some people just don't want peace.

In z's view the largest obstable to a proper ecumenical understanding and accord between the world's religions is not things like

Mel Gibson

but radical Islam (wondering how a robust discussion of this is going over at Hannityland where they have special rules regarding conversations about Islam).

Make yourself at home

So I was at least 45 minutes delayed masturblogging today 'cos some computer user at the library leaves his station to go outside for a smoke, goes back to the computer, strike that, his computer, continues vegetating in front of YouTube all the while chatting on his cell, he has something in his ear with a wire, he thinks he's Jack Bauer...would you like a Corona and a bowl of party mix w/that?...another guy, the 30-something unemployed male live-at-home slug sitting next to him, also vegetating in front of YouTube...seems the days of staying at home circle-jerking to badly produced porn are a quaint relic from the Past, we seem to have evolved beyond this amoeba stage, now we take our act into the library -- SOLUTION: install software that cuts people off after a one-hour session let's say -- I'll buy you a computer, I'll take you to Circuit City myself in my 2005 Honda Civic, just get the hell off the computer already!!!

The Republi-Cult and how it works

"overtime, overtime! yeah, oh God no!"

The Cult wants to bring You over to its worldview ("you have a problem with Sarko? you socialist slacker you!") and so you start feeling guilty ("you know I really should like work more"). Work is like a Zen experience for them instead of a means to an end to pay off a few bills, like Denny Crane and Alan Shore they sit on the balcony afterhours smoking their Don Tomases and go over the day. Only people on welfare, the poor folk, like, or rather, are obsessed with Sex, preferably with Judge Judy droning on in the background. Yeah yeah, we're hip, there's always time for a little tapping...

in between jobs,

but we know what's more important, the opening bell on Wall Street and we will bash any Pope who gets in our way by sermonizing over our excesses,

and NO, you got it all wrong, the French don't know how to enjoy Life better than we do, the pussies wouldn't even go to War, there are no alternative views and we will invalidate them anyway by our clever use of name-calling (Michelle Malkin is our Asian pit bull if you please, don't get on our bad side),

and we're so stupid (aka The Stupid Party) that we don't even know our language doesn't resonate with the People anymore, we've lost the common touch and we'll most assuredly lose the next Election to HillObama. Our own Republican pollster Frank Luntz likes to remind us from time to time about how stupid we really sound but he can always be replaced, the only issue is how do we beat the Bitch?

What exactly is Mall Security???

The latest chapter in the Psycho Rules (because we let it), some 19-year old loser who lost his job at McDonald's and his girlfriend too went to a major mall in Omaha, Nebraska yesterday with a gun and shot 8 holiday shoppers to death. Now z always found these tragic episodes problematic, here you have one psychotic a-hole who wanted to "go out in style" (he also shot himself of course, they always do) against hordes of innocent people, I know your first impulse is to flee and find cover, fear is a great paralyzer (I'm thinking out loud here as I always do) but the larger issue is how do you define Mall Security? They don't even carry guns or tasers, some of them are ex-cons and you don't even see them patrolling the mall all day, chances are they're in the Mall Security office glancing at about 4 or 5 TV monitors on the wall if they're not dozing off already. Ditto VA Tech. Z is just tired of reading about these predictable tragedies every few months (they seem to follow a cycle), do we just passively accept our victimhood?

(it can only help him)

From the 12/5 edition of the New York Post:

Dems trade 'choice' words

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's team had a pro-choice supporter bash rival Sen. Barack Obama's record on abortion rights - but his camp responded with past praise from his basher.

Ellen Malcolm, president of pro-choice EMILY's List, held a press conference denouncing Obama for voting "present" instead of "yes" on a "critical" abortion rights bill when he was in the Illinois Legislature.

She also faulted a US Senate floor speech he gave opposing Chief Justice John Roberts because Obama "barely" mentioned Roe vs. Wade.

But Obama's camp released a May 2006 letter from Malcolm praising his "fighting to make change happen."

Geoff Earle

.....ooops, just a little more,

Saw a commercial for Efflexor last night, if your other antidepressants aren't really helping you there's this but potential side effects MAY include an increased risk for suicide especially in children and young adults (kids are depressed again because why?) and so help me out here, you're depressed and this pill MAY make you kill yourself, I'm not getting this one but look on the bright side, you won't be depessed any longer (but other people will because of what you did and then they'll take Efflexor)...reminds me a little of bequeathing,

Truthfully, only Rudy Hillary and Barack are the only real interesting candidates here. Watching the Sunday morning shows, now I know politics is a dry subject but these shows are so BORING, z-man just wants to go back to mast...masturblogging. I mean even before he was a serious candidate John McCain must have on these shows at least a thousand times, Tim Russert always looks like he has the trots and the men's room is ocupado.....prison boredom.

I'm not a big fan of talking and eating at the same time, for me it's an effort, you go visit people, it's a birthday party and everyone's chowing down talking a mile a minute about whatever, they're not bad people but can we have some rules here? Z-man, being the contemplative type, wants to stay home next time, watch the car chase in Bullitt one more time, really study it.

Thoughts on money

Had a debate once about you can't take it with you with an older person, said why not spend it while you can and have a good time and she made the point that bequeathing it is more important on down the line so I got to thinking let's put this into practice,

the children have been left their fortune by Mom and Dad, sharing the same guiding philosophy as they did they hardly spend it either so they grow old and make out their will and the succeeding generation does the same thing and so on for 5 generations but it just sits there, meanwhile Iran now has the nukes and Putin's successors have teamed up with China and they're threatening the West so yes, it IS important to have a nice nest egg,

"the money's there, don't worry but you can't touch it"
"why is it there?"
"I really don't know but it's important that it's there and it stays there"
"Can I take some out?"
"Of course but just a little bit at a time"
"Is that a mushroom cloud I see?"

A common male attitude

You'll often hear a married man or just one who has a steady girlfriend say this among the boys:

"Going to a strip club and getting a lap dance or two is not really cheating."

In a strictly legal sense, ok, if you define cheating as having intercourse (my my, how Billy Boy has corrupted the country, you asked for a legacy pal, you got it, thanx brotherman!), but in z's book it's cheating in a spiritual sense and anyway

if you really dug her you wouldn't be going there.

Like I'm not sure what's supposed to happen here

Worked in a deli once and the guy just went on his lunch, a nice young man with an eye for the ladies, and it's kinda slow, early evening and this attractive young lady approaches the counter, looked like Teri Hatcher, and so I very casually saunter over ready to take her order when a blur of color whuuushes past me, the guy's back from lunch and he does her order instead of me and I'm like

wa'happened?

and so, in his head the pretty young woman married to a corporate lawyer, they're both just back from Rio and she's getting the cold cuts, is ready to risk it all and have an affair with a 20-something deli clerk because he was exceedingly nice to her and got her a 1/2 pound of Boar's Head Ovengold Roasted Turkey Breast sliced razor-thin of course, he had to get his micrometer out and a 1/4 lb. of yellow American,

I had more to offer though, much more. I know how to make quiche but he scared her off.

I don't know how to break this to my folks

Sociologist or cultural professor or whatever she is, Christine B. Whelan, writing in yesterday's New York Post, says studies show that the college-educated fare much better in the romance and marriage stakes department, they are less likely to divorce than those without college degrees and far less likely to have kids out of wedlock than us uneducated yokels (presumably those with degrees never use drugs or watch porn either). The degreed also attract more members of the opposite sex, the Educated Man is more likely to be seen as a good provider (Dr. Laura's apologia for Social Darwinism).

I'm concerned. You see my Mom and Dad have been married for over 50 years now. Dad was a Navy WW2 vet and then drove a truck for almost 50 years, Mom never had a degree, both are now happily retired (or are they?) with full pensions and Social Security. How do I tell them they're on the road to ruin?

The bee-itch

You may have heard, a woman on one of John McCain's campaign stops asked him "so how do we beat this bitch?" to which he replied "that's an excellent question." Usual denunciations, now if you make the case the sitatution was highly inappropriate, well ok, I won't argue with you there, just seems to me in a more humorous, less pc age it would all have been so hilariously funny. McCain's from the olde school, for cryin' out loud the guy was a POW for 5 years, can't have a little fun?

Ever walk out of the store at the mall and forget where the hell you parked? So you're walking with your bag and you don't want to look like an idiot, all the silver Honda Civics begin to look alike - "Mommy, who's that man who can't find his car? Is he on drugs?" - and you begin to think your car was stolen until you finally find it and vow it will never happen again but it does.....

A poem.....

Be patient suffering soul, I hear thy cry
The trial fires may glow but I am nigh.
I see the silver and I will refine
Until My image shall upon it shine.
Fear not, for I am near, thy help to be
Greater than all thy pain My love for thee.

The New York Post

A friend of mine says he hates this paper but he's hooked on it. There's the high politics and commentary section to give it a somewhat respectable gloss and then there's the

SMUT

like some 18-year old pasty-faced porn geek is writing and editing certain sections and masturbating while he does it like yesterday's millionth sex survey about how New York City's women rank at the top in terms of kink.

I cannot endorse this paper anymore and I know Phil Mushnick feels the same way but he can't say anything. It's like watching Ron Jeremy, you have to take a shower afterwards.

The Camille Paglia theory of Britney's meltdown

Dr. Phil says it may be a wise thing to have her involuntarily committed, she may even pose a suicide risk the theory being that Owen Wilson, look how normal and happy-go-lucky he was and what he did so what would a kooky person do? I'd love to have Britney's life though, I mean the good aspects, you're being creative and artistic and don't have to put in your 9-5 like most of us paeons. Even if she never put out another CD and called it quits on her touring she has enough of the dinars to live happily ever after so

wha'sa problem?

I gotta go along with feminist writer Camille Paglia though. In any good investigation you can create a timeline and a linear clue quickly emerges, her life began to, ever so slightly, spiral out of control the day she and Madonna liplocked at the Video Music Awards on MTV, Paglia calls it her kiss of death. So maybe it's not so much what Dr. Phil says or the Brooke Shields theory of post-partum depression (is this responsible for the situation in the Middle East too Brooke?) but it may have everything to do with her moral compass. You look at that other problem child Lindsay and you feel her hopes are better, she at least seems very aware she has a problem and is actually more likeable than Brit who recently served her own Mom with a court order to stay away from her own grandkids while she's on her meds and don't blame it all on the paparazzi either, these people want fame but they don't want it but they still want their picture in the paper.

I personally don't believe Britney deserves all this coverage, a one-year blackout on all things Britney might be a good thing. Last I checked we had a War on Terror going on.....

The new breast cancer/alcohol link

The neo-Puritan movement will come up with anything these days.

Drink up gals!

Rudy courting the NRA

now it's getting downright creepy

very Nosferatu-like, like the undead Danny Glick boy in "Salem's Lot" floating up to the bedroom window of his friend and tapping on the glass

"right-wing base let me in
right-wing base let me in"

Ahmadinejad - I want you to want me

The leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at Columbia University yesterday, introduced as a "cruel and petty dictator" by President Lee Bollinger of whom you may have heard. Lee came on strong right out of the gate so as not to have that screaming mimi, Michelle Malkin, write a column about him and about the precincts of the radical Left in academia that he inhabits. Forget about Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial, his nuclear ambitions, his call for Israel to be wiped off the map. Re gays he said this: "There are no homosexuals in Iran like in this country."

This is not good.

(In fact, this is serious stuff)

Holocaust denial. I had a neighbor once, an older gentleman and he gave my Mom some literature. I always thought he was a regular right-wing kind of guy, pro-life, opposed sex education, but there it was, "documentation" that the Jews invented the Holocaust to keep the $$$$$ rolling in. Now a respectable conspiracy theory I'm all for, mainstream ones like JFK's assassination and I'm all ears, but in order for the Holocaust to never have happened you'd have to have all the major historians in on it for starters. Wouldn't one of them say "I ain't gonna be a part of this"? The mind boggles,

Anyway

Fidel Castro is now the most respectable tyrant on the world stage, remarkable for his wondrous health-care system, no cruel and petty dictator he or, as Michael Moore believes

you scratch my nuts and I'll scratch yours.

What Confucius didn't tell you

Even if your life is not all that you'd like it to be, it's a failure in artistic terms, everybody is at least able to do one thing well and this gives some purpose to your life. For some people it's gardening, for others it's mechanical ability, some have an artistic bent and paint. No matter how my life is going I like to be known as the guy you go to if you want to make quiche. Confucius said "if you enjoy what you do you'll never work another day in your life." I was on a recent visit to the famed Culinary Institute of America (CIA for short) in New Hyde Park, New York just past Poughkeepsie and there was an energy in the air, young students in various classes learning the finer aspects of the gustatory arts. There is even a portrait of Paris Hilton's grandfather in the lobby, granddad must be proud up there. What Confucius didn't tell anyone is that in a few years time these aspiring chefs will be working some very long shifts, 12-14 hours a day for 6 days a week on average in some very hot kitchens where civility is not the norm. The flip side to Confucius' maxim is that you can quickly hate what you used to love to do.

There is a line near the end of the movie Wild at Heart where the fairy godmother in a vision of some sort tells the Nicolas Cage character, Sailor, "if you're truly wild at heart you'll fight for your dreams. Don't turn away from love." These are really some profound words, it's my whole philosophy of Life and even if you fail at your dreams you put up the good fight and it ain't over 'til your friends finally send you off with that cold-cut platter fringed with the olive loaf and the mortadella (no wonder this country is so fat, we're fixated on eating even while we're in mourning). Fight for your dreams even if others don't agree or put roadblocks on the path to your Happiness. Boredom is the bane of existence or, as the final line in the mystical poem "Manhunt in the Desert" says "take life by the root."

Let's touch on lab animals

Not much of a debate anymore but in its heyday animal experimentation to cure diseases was a hot topic. During such lulls we can look at these controversies with more of a level head and so I've been wondering, millions and millions of assorted creatures, from rodents to monkeys, have given their lives so let's posit that the researchers are morally correct, the larger goal is saving human lives and so some egghead psycho causes a tumor in a white rat, hey that's cool but

where are all the cures? (I'm not a vegan btw)

Next time you use some big word at work, well not really that big a word but big to them, and they say how smart you are ask them why they're so dumb. Next time someone says you're over their head say WHY? It's chic to be dumb, call them on it.

Why is it assumed, in a male-dominated work environment and you're a man, if you don't talk about your sex life you're not getting any? It's like do you want me to keep a diary? Poor Man's Kennedy's son wants to know.

Americans have a weird way of mourning, no matter how tragic the death, say your best friend gets hit by a Budweiser truck, everyone's obsessed with food, even before the death invites go out it's catering at your local deli. What? can't mourn on an empty stomach?