So was there a roundtable at some point...

...to define this term we use alot these days, "extremism", and how often do these roundtables meet to clarify what is extreme, moderate, conservative, liberal, politically eccentric, flaky, provocative in a charming way, radical, off-the-charts...ok kids today the Subject is Welfare.

Now in the Olde Days a person was ashamed to be on welfare, couldn't wait to get off it. Those were the truly sad cases, a woman with kids whose husband just dumped her...oh God how times have changed! Now I've had my spans of being out of work but it never even dawned on me to start fondling the Government Tit. Maybe it's the way I was brought up but during these depressing timeframes I automatically filled out a certain number of applications and wasted tons of postage sending the resumes out, this was in the days before the preferred online methods. It's just the way I'm programmed, wired, it's like breathing drinking and sleeping, you work as St. Paul says otherwise you don't eat...and so who exactly are these people who say if you don't believe in the Welfare State, the safety-net you're an extremist? Now class let's review once again z's main principle that in the end everything tends towards liberalism, even the vast majority of conservatives these days accept the need for welfare, just yesterday Sean Hannity said we still have a safety-net. I recall years and years ago RUSH said to just end welfare, just end it and people will be forced to work but you see RUSH is a bit of a paleo-con, never got with the program and while it seemed harsh to me at the time and likely to give conservatism a bad name I've lived it, I know with a strong family and a good community it's possible. This is the Marvin Olasky position which so influenced Newt Gingrich at the time when he was the Speaker of the House and got welfare reform through. Cooking is my thing not installing fences which I did at one time, you just did whatever got you through the day and blocked it out of your mind. Now some rather old radio interview has just surfaced with the self-avowed non-socialist Barack Obama saying the Supreme Court should get involved in redistributionist change, now if that isn't something out of Chiller Theatre I don't know what is. I'ma gonna vote this Tuesday of course but maybe I just won't watch any election coverage at all that night......get hammered.

What's a play about Obama without a skinhead or two?

Call me cynical but it's almost like it had to happen, the feds just busted a plot involving two skinheads who planned to drive towards Obama and shoot from open windows and also for good measure to shoot up a black high school. Now I agree with Joe the Blogger who holds that Al-Qaeda poses the biggest threat to Obama, radical Muslims who hold that Muslims converting to Christianity is punishable by death but there's a point to this whole ObamaDrama with two skinheads in the dramatis personae. I caught the report on the UPN 9 News last night here in New York and there was some expert talking of course and up flashed on the screen "Keeping Tabs on the Radical Right", you know something the ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) might have as a regular bulletin for concerned citizens. Now I've lost alot of respect for Abe Foxman's group over the years ever since they lumped Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition in with various and sundry hate groups, being strident or shrill or rigid is not necessarily the same thing as being hateful and plotting mayhem. It's hard to read these things when they flash up on the screen and you're about to go to bed but I caught part of a sentence that went "even on more traditional websites..."

OK, so there you have it. There is a metaphysical, mystical association between the rest of us right-wingers and those skinheads, this goes beyond the loose ties of Obama/Ayers, these are spiritual wisps in the minds of the Left. To the msm we all share the same politics but the neo-Nazis rachet it up a notch or two is all. "Keeping Tabs on the Radical Right", um no, there's the right-wing and then there are skinheads and we don't inhabit the same political universe, sorry. Same thing they tried to do a few years back with mainstream pro-lifers and the occasional abortion clinic bomber, lump us all together and I can only think that this latest episode in ObamaDrama can only help the candidate, a few independents out there may equate conservative opposition to affirmative action let's say with a couple of weirdos out in the hinterlands. You've heard of sleight-of-hand, well the media practices sleight-of-mind, juxtapose certain things on the screen when you're tired and have to work the next day, it's a political imprint and the average person ain't even aware of it and not only that McCain looks positively dull by comparison. I mean if some people hate Obama that much he must really stand for something, the only person McCain might piss off is the cashier at the local supermarket ("it says here the Metamucil's on sale"). It's all like a coloring book, pass the crayons please.

So it's all Mr. Magoo's fault

There he was, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan being grilled by Democratic Rep. from CA Henry Waxman. Greenspan as we all know was in charge during the Clinton economic boom of the 90's and was a big champion of deregulation and lower interest rates and so Waxman asked him "so you would say your view of the world, your ideology was wrong?" and Greenspan said "partially" although he said that during the last 40 years he saw growing evidence that his views were right so he came to his new position rather late. What Waxman really means is that the conservative view of the world, the conservative ideology is wrong and no sane person would be against regulation of the market and most importantly Wall Street. Never mind that scores of people took out mortgages they could never pay back, to paraphrase the Bard the fault lies not in our stars but in conservatism. So here is the true essence of liberalism, as Bernie Goldberg once noted about the media and I'll apply here liberals don't really see themselves as liberal at all, just reasonable, their truths are so self-evident and so of course we can't let market forces go unfettered (the Randian view, since outdated). It's all good though, it's not that common that the issues in a presidential election become so clear and focused, this can only help the voter make a truly informed decision. We'll know how most of the country feels after November the 4th but I can feel it in the wind, there's nothing like a good nipple to suck on. If we're weaned off government too early we'll be sucking on blankets like cats taken away too early from their mothers so blame it all on Mr. Magoo if it makes you feel any better.

Conservatives secretly in love with the demigod

Seems the topic du jour this morning on the talk shows is Peggy Noonan's column in the Wall Street Journal basically saying what any good Democrat would say, that Sarah Palin is not ready to be the Chief Executive and that this reflects poorly on McCain's judgement. This former Reagan speechwriter must have had an erotic dream about Bam and you know what they say, when you dream about someone you really want that person. If Salvador Dali were alive today a classic going for many millions would be a surreal image of Bam arising out of the ocean with his giant magic phallus bestowing peace and love and brotherhood upon the whole world.

Other big or I should say overrated story is Colin Powell's endorsement of Bam. I used to work with this young liberal Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx, one of those political junkies but on the other side, might as well be blogging for the Daily Kos so anyway we're rapping one day and I throw out that I thought Republicans have done more for African-Americans in general like putting them in key spots and I brought up Colin Powell and Condi Rice and he goes "yeah, those are house niggers." He might as well have said Scatman Crothers and Corey should be janitors at the White House (W: "Corey, throw another log on the fire"). It's kind of Life's Little Ironies that a few liberals I have encountered in my day-to-day travels are far more likely to use the N-word to sprinkle their speech than us racist conservatives, because they're liberals who are for all the right programs to help blacks down through the years they carry around in their wallet next to their Sam's Club membership card and their TGIF pass a License to Use the N-Word to be renewed every three years. Now I have a diverse workplace and he'd walk around all day referring to just people in general as "these niggers and I went to the mall the other day" and his general tally for n-wording might be 10-15X a day, I kid you not, and he'd freely verbalize in front of our black co-workers as well but it was accepted. Me? if I so much as used the word "niggardly" as in "the honchos are being very niggardly with their budget this year" it'd be "Z, come to the office NOW!" and there'd be no "please" qualifier or "when you get a chance." Well anyway Colin Powell was never a conservative in the first place and I've always found him vaguely annoying, his sense of his own self-importance ("I am about to pronouce"). He reminds me of a manager at work who won't always say HI to you in the men's room, he 's better than you, he knows it, you know it, he's on the computer in his office and you walk through and go "how 'bout that game last night" and he doesn't respond.

With so much study of the paranormal going on

I have a question. Now ghosts can do all sorts of nifty things, shake a hanging coffee cup for 20 minutes when there's no breeze in the kitchen, rap on the wall, turns lights on, move your glass of water you left on your nightstand, give off smells of which you don't know the origin of (perfume and pipe smoke are common ones), sit on the edge of your bed when you're dozing off, communicate to you in dreams, the list is as long as there are ghosts but I have as yet to hear of a practical case of a friendly ghost popping up your car door lock because you left your keys in your car.

BTW I'm not afraid of dead people, I'm afraid of live people.

It's McCain's to lose

He practically avoids the whole abortion issue by which he could make headway against Obama. Obama, if he wasn't a senator running for the highest office in the land could just as well be the president of Planned Parenthood. McCain should focus on his opposition to the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act" which even Hillary and Ted Kennedy supported which practically puts Obama to the left of Freddy Krueger. Also culturally many aren't in tune with modern-day feminism anymore, it's more than a little off-center and has messed up women's heads. Fems have refashioned suitors from the old school as stalker-types with the kind of funny result that women routinely go out with and even marry the porn-addled average Charlie rather than a guy who sends them roses so add feticide to their psychologically vague male hatred and you have a potent mix. Telling a risque joke in the workplace is a crime in their book but strangling a mid-term infant on a cold metal table is not. Ayers is yesterday's news, if McCain can't paint Obama into a corner with the a-word and continues on his present course he deserves to lose. It's a culture war out there and although Pat Buchanan was demonized at the time for bringing this term into our national lexicon nowadays even liberals use it. Just make the feminist link is all, tie him in with the NOW crowd and on abortion legislation he's keeping it psycho. As it stands now conservatives have too many reasons to stay home. Cojones, grow a pair!!

McCain's past ties to abortion clinic bomber

Now that I have your attention. It' s not true of course but imagine if it were! and would the msm even use that all-important adjective tangential to describe his past associations? Now I understand why Bill Moyers has guests on his show saying Obama's past...er...links? to former Weathermen Underground terrorist Bill Ayers is irrelevant, inaccurate and in bad taste for the McCain campaign to point out but everyone seems to be saying it these days like trendy Demochick and FOX News analyst Kirsten Powers. I don't mean talking about the Obama/Ayers matter for three whole hours every day like Hannity does but what I'm not getting is why exactly is Obama's past ties, however tangential, to Ayers that unimportant? and why am I a racist if it's just one of many factors entering into my decision to vote against him? We are in love with Bam, what can I say?

My travelblog

Went up the line yesterday with my friend, on up the Taconic past Carmel NY where your ears pop, hooked up with I-84 W and up Route 9. Fishkill, Wappingers Falls, kind of a rundown town, a touch of ghetto, an element of romantic squalor. People who live here tend to work farther south towards the Westchester area where the wages are higher but live near Poughkeepsie 'cause the real estate is lower. There's a Giggles store here with its generic mind-numbing porn with a heavy bias towards the Japanese creepy stuff ("all actresses 18 or over and under duress"), seems a necessity in a depressed area, kind of in keeping with the theme and oh look, there's a Dairy Queen! don't see many of them around anymore. It was Tawana Brawley who put Wappingers on the map. There's a gourmet supermarket here by the name of Hannaford's, nice place. The main goal here was the Po'town Galleria, an ok mall as far as the mall scene goes but generic just the same with an overabundance of trendy t-shirt stores but I'm looking for practical, I really don't need a set of KISS whiskey shot glasses and a humorous set of mini-rubbers. I used to go fishing alot but now I'm a mallrat. After this we hit the Home Depot in the picturesque town of Carmel, this overall general store is so huge it's like an airport hangar, then back on 84 and on down the line. Now I just love the country but there's something about these pockets of civilization surrounded by the boondocks and these wide expanses of open field and swampland that, how do I put my finger on it? you're surrounded by woods and mountains and the possibility of a Bigfoot or two living up there in them thar hills and when the sun goes down there drops like a curtain a certain existential loneliness like UFOs can land here. A state trooper sits in his car on the divider of the highway, takes a couple sips from his hot cup of joe and a bite out of his cruller, glances up into the starry nighttime sky and goes WTF!?!, is that Colossal Man coming out of the saucer? (bleep-bleep) bb-idaho can relate but dunno, seems everything's generic these days. Caught part of the big debate last night of which I have a few thoughts, I always seem to sleep well after these things.....

Not voting as an act of conscience

I've never built my own personal philosophy around platitudes, first off they're often nuggets of false wisdom and there's also that faint whiff of conformity about them, the best distillation that groupthink has to offer but you can have your VSOP. For instance you often hear it said that it's your patriotic duty to vote and as an extension of this if you don't vote you have no right to complain. I disagree in this sense, let's say you sincerely feel both candidates would do damage to the country, you're not voting for the lesser of two evils anymore, you've conscientiously thought it through, turned it over, stretched it inside out and come to the same conclusion. In such a limited case, and I'm not talking here about young'ens who don't vote 'cause they're lazy, in this restricted scenario I hold that not voting can be an act of conscience. It's kind of like a person who never marries or ain't marrying anytime soon, sure he/she can do like everyone else and vet candidates they can live comfortably with, someone strongly likeable but the purist would insist you really should be in love with someone before you marry them and if he ain't feeling that amorous about anyone of late than not marrying can be a personal act of conscience albeit a painful one at times, better to be lonely for a bit than not be pure at heart. Stands to reason you should be "in love" with a candidate first before you pull the lever for him or her, of course the Obama-ites are enraptured but what about our side? Sean is only getting jiggy with it because he's such a party hound. I'm turning Conventional Wisdom on its head here, that's the Z-man thing, an outside the box kind of deal and the possibility is always there that I won't vote this time around. It's that remote option for most of us because we don't like to be held in contempt but I've always been the type to hold to an opinion even if 9 others disagree with me. As Benjamin Disraeli once said "the majority is usually wrong."

Maybe we're orbiting through a supernova of pot right now

Apparently the 9-11 conspiracy theories have more legs than a centipede. Michelle Malkin talks about this worldwide poll they did, some 16,000 respondents in sundry nations and seems many inhabitants of Planet Earth believe that somehow OBL and Al-qaeda were not behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks after all but our own government along with our best buddy Israel of course. Now I wouldn't waste my time responding to and counterbutting every technical point of the conspiracists, the true hallmark of any bona fide conspiracy theory is they come after you, think Karen Silkwood and auto accidents. Last I checked Charlie Sheen is still doing 2 1/2 Men, if he were really on to something he'd be walking down Sunset Boulevard and a big ole black sedan would pull up with at least 3 tall clad in black G-Men, all clean-shaven with Neo shades on. They'd take old Charlie around the block

and warn him,

then while the car is still in motion they'd push him out the door and he'd go rolling like a tumbleweed to the curb having learned his lesson never to speak of 9-11 conspiracy theories again, maybe he'd go home to a dead cat but that would be the end of it. Is the Hub of the Conspiracy having high-level meetings right now in some mid-Manhattan penthouse overlooking Central Park on how to deal with Rosie O'Donnell?

Sorry guys, this conspiracy theory's a dud, life should be so exciting.

Bam: "You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig"

en espanol: "Usted puede poner lapiz de labios en un puerco pero es todavia un puerco."

i'm lovin' it

But Howard Wolfson this begs the question

If the John Edwards scandal would likely have put all his voters in her corner just how did the Hillary Handvac fail to suck up this dirt? When you're watching TV at night sooner or later you have to realize the cat threw up behind the couch, there's a centipede on the rim of your coffee mug, or the mouse that got stuck behind the wall is just now starting to give off those wonderful aromas. Come on Hill, this'd be like on a big fishing expedition for lunker bass catching a bluegill on a strip of baloney on a warmup cast from shore. Losing the old Clinton touch, they have to have a time machine for these things, it must keep you up at night. BTW I bought my copy of the National Enquirer yesterday and got up to speed on that love child, yes my reading range encompasses Atlas Shrugged as well as Mike Walker, it's good to be broad-based as they say.

Guilt

The longer you live the more you become a student of human nature, things you took for granted in the past now form patterns not just for me but I've heard others say this. You're now a detective of the human psyche and of course there's a chance you are wrong but you don't think so. Take insomnia and here I'm talking about the chronic of the chronic cases, those people you come across like at work who never ever seem to get a decent or at least an adequate night's sleep. I'd have to say this is highly unusual, even the big-time insomniacs admit it's an off and on problem. Um, in my book this falls under the "you killed somebody buddy" category, maybe a hit-and-run, who knows? and brings to mind the Bard's classic "Macbeth doth murder sleep" speech. Discussed a person like this with somebody once and she goes "must have so much on his conscience." Or take the person you're ice-fishing with and it's an unusually severe winter, we're talking at least 3 feet of pure ice and just auguring the hole and your body will be sore for the next couple days so the two of you are walking out into the middle of the frozen lake and he goes "don't walk so close to me." Or maybe you're boating with someone else and just coming out of the harbor to catch some monster blues and he goes "don't go so far out" but that's where the blues be. So you start thinking ok so what did he do? It's almost as if they expect to see the Hand of God come up over the cliff ready to smite them, they know their Bad Karma is a couple weeks overdue and they're taking precautionary measures, I mean caution is a good thing and all but what's up with the overcaution? They're not ready to meet the Maker yet. Bishop Sheen was great at seeing through all this and held that unacknowledged or unconfessed guilt create unending neuroses, shadows in the mind. I'm all the listening ear but some people are just a tad off-center is all so the next time that chronic insomniac complains to me sleep sucked again last night and is it time to go home yet I might just pull out of my pocket a "ok, so what did you do?"

The two Joes

I have a question.

You work in an office with two managers named Joe, one of whom is white and the other one black. You don't quite have a handle on the black guy's last name yet and the phone rings and you pick it up. It's for Joe the African-American. If you say on the intercom "black Joe pick up line 2" is that considered racial? Conversely you can also say at another time "white Joe line 1" OR do you just say "Joe pick up line..." and let them both pick it up?

Has McCain lost his mojo?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wolf Blitzer's CNN show "Late Edition" on Sunday that Obama being the first African-American nominee of a major party is "great for our country. I do think it says we've come a long way." She said she's made her decision who to vote for but wouldn't reveal the answer and denies rumors that she wants to be Obama's VP. She'd be a great choice though. Picking Hillary would only be a reminder of Obama's traditional liberalism, since he is now under the powerful vortex of Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal Condi is the ONLY way to go. Yes, Hillary is sooooo yesterday she's not even assured of the VP slot anymore, you got the black chick in leather boots who has strode the colossus of the World and who can greatly offset his inexperience in the foreign policy arena. An Obama/Rice administration even has, let's face it, a certain sex appeal for those bored with all things McCain and don't worry, she's pro-choice. Won't even be close, it's Kama-Sutra vs. Straight Missionary after a highball, it's the modern Shakespearian version of Batman as opposed to Adam West and Robin and the Batcave, it's Maroon 5 doing a song with Rihanna, it ROCKS!

These chicks have issues

"I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little souped-up 4 wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seat
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights
Slashed a hole in all 4 tires
And maybe next time he'll think before he cheats."
(Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood)

"And don't tell me you're sorry when you're not
Baby when I know you're only sorry you got caught."
(Take A Bow - Rihanna) ~~~btw I always thought this would be a great line a state trooper could use when he pulls you over, he could even sing it~~~

"I learned the hard way
That they all say
Things you want to hear
And my heavy heart sinks
deep down under you and
Your twisted words your help just hurts
You are not what I thought you were
Hello to high and dry."
(Love Song - Sara Bareilles)

I detect a theme here. They really should make this into the Men Suck World Concert Tour of 2008 so I say let the chicks vent. I have to say though I like the Bareilles song, for starters the singer has a very clear voice and you can make out every word without googling lyrics, something I have to do with Fergie and others from time to time. Take it away.

Shades of Gray

From a recent blog of napqueen's at http://www.napqueenspress.blogspot.com/ under "Are Conservatives Stupid? "Liberals can see the gray areas of an issue while conservatives see only black and white and are too stupid (emphasis mine) to see the gray."

Ah yes! I've been patiently waiting for this moment of ultimate clarity. It's the Peter Principle applied to moral philosophy and the result is moral relativism or agnosticism, a marked inability to come to final moral conclusions about things. We've reached our level of incompetence, our Final Placement, we can' t figure out Right from Wrong and we're never to be promoted...and we're happy about it! It's a Cohiba moment.

Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal

A rather potent force in politics, in Life in general and here's how it works. A typical conservative will say something like liberals are pro-abortion or in favor of destroying the unborn. The lib says "oh no that's not us. We're not really for abortion, in fact nobody is, in what universe?" It also works the other way. A typical liberal will say conservatives don' t care at all about the poor and the poor conservative will reply "yeah but we give more." So criticism, especially political criticism, by its very nature exerts a powerful inward pull towards the direction of the position of the critic. So the law of criticism or negative appraisal is for the target to deny the point and then to move gradually towards the critic's stance so all I have to do is make a critical point and look what power I have! Liberals may be from Mars and conservatives from Venus but we take each other's points personally, to heart. This is why Obama has of late made great strides at least towards the political center in his rhetoric, it's all that name-calling in the past that he's a hardcore lib. Of course the exception to Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal are all the left-wing bloggers out there who live in a universe all their own who can't understand one of their own being subject to the same laws of political gravity as the rest of us.

That Cartoon

The now classic New Yorker cartoon with Obama as some sort of anti-American Muslim and his wife as a Black Panther type, McCain was predictably outraged, "tasteless and offensive", but it would have been nice if he had said:

"You know something folks, I have the intellectual capacity to get it. It is so over the top it is obviously intended as some sort of social satire, a parody of right-wing fears of Obama. In fact let's use this as a watershed moment to get rid of Political Correctness once and for all. This PC regime of ours, it's not why I fought for our country. We're all adults here so grow up! BTW Jesse Jackson can't cut these out because they're made of brass."

Alas!

The LAW says go digital

So very early next year you'd better have a digital tv or converter box to convert the signals in your old tv to the new digital format otherwise you just might lose everything brother, not only this it's federal law. Now I'm hardly some techno-nerd but I read somewhere it has to do with using up all that "white space" on all those blank channels or something but already the conspiracists are whispering Big Brother will be watching you. Dunno, I'm more into reading again, Chef Ramsay can only do so much bleeping in one whole hour before I start channel-surfing again, I'm still wondering why The View is an important show basic to the Republic and why Oprah can talk about salacious topics that Stern got in trouble over on mainstream radio. As the bumper sticker goes

WHATEVER

Just something to blog about

Obama told a group of people the black father has been AWOL. Jesse Jackson was doing some show and didn't know his mike was still on and said "he talks down to black people. I wanna cut his nuts off." I don't know, sounds pretty gangster.