And They Call The Left The Nutroots

Yes, Glenn Beck is mad.  As in crazy.  Beck's overly histrionic behavior is deeply indicative of a man with a tenuous hold on reality and in Chinese Medicine he would be diagnosed as shen disturbed.  We use the tongue as a diagnostic tool along with appearance, smell and actions and his tongue has a longitudinal crack down the center and is considered a telltale sign.  It isn't as deep as Marshall Applewhite's but it reveals quite a bit about Beck's personality.  They say the eyes are the window to the soul and Beck's are pretty glassy even without the tears on demand, another sign of mental derangement.  Thinking that he makes sense and has America's best interests at heart is the equivalent of thinking that a spaceship is hiding behind a comet and has come to take you away to a better place.

Speaking of a better place, that would not be Oklahoma.  For a state that is so fond of the only Second Amendment 75 percent of their high school students not only don't know who the first President of the United States was, but only three percent of those surveyed could pass the citizenship test that all those immigrants they love to hate must take to prove they are worthy to become Americans by choice instead of by birth.  Eight years of the No Child Left Behind initiative and these kids would probably be lucky if they could find their state on a map.  Exactly how would the rest of us suffer if the south was to secede?  Other than lowering our national ignorance score to tolerable levels and reducing the public monies that flow into those states and not out of them, how would we know the difference?

If Scalia thinks that current law should favor religion can sharia law be far behind?  Or is that the wrong religion?

Limbaugh wants to return to segregated busing and feels that racism is normal.  All righty then.  The White House can pretend that racism doesn't exist but it doesn't get much more blatant than that.  Actually, segregated busing sounds like a good idea.  Put all the crazies on the bus and drive them to the nearest institution, lock them up and throw away the key.  We wouldn't have to provide healthcare or any other societal benefits they object to and they wouldn't have to pay taxes that they hate.  It's a win win for everyone.

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Of War And Death

Surprise, surprise, surprise.  Not.  Our ignorance, and mind boggling arrogance, has killed quite a few of our own soldiers and now it seems that we, the taxpayer, footed the bill and installed the mines before some of these poor kids were even born.  How's that for irony?

In the article, British journalist Kate Clark quoted an unnamed Taliban commander as saying, "There's a kind of landmine called a Dragon. Iran's sending it. It's directional and it causes heavy casualties." The commander said the new mine would "destroy" large tanks "completely", whereas "ordinary" anti-tank mines had only caused "minor damage".

If true, the revelation that an improved Iranian anti-tank weapon had been killing US and NATO troops in larger numbers would have been a major development in the war in Afghanistan. Roadside bomb attacks are acknowledged by US and NATO officials to be the cause of most of the casualties and deaths of foreign troops in the country.

The rapid rise in casualties over the past two years is attributed in part to the increased lethality of the Taliban mines.

But according to the Pentagon agency responsible for combating roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increased Taliban threat to US and NATO vehicles comes not from any new technology from Iran but from Italian-made mines left over from the US Central Intelligence Agency's military assistance to the anti-Soviet jihadists in the 1980s. (Emphasis mine)

Ah yes, the mujahideen and the Reagan Doctrine.  Can't say that worked out real well for us.  Now our soldiers are paying the price for a policy most people have forgotten.  That still doesn't give us the right to burst into hospitals, tie up staff and visitors, and force patients from their beds.

As tragic as Corporal Bernard's death is, the highly disputed AP photo is only showing the consequences, the true reality (he died on the operating table) of war.  Soldiers are real people and they are really dying and in horrible ways.  Being outraged over a photo, instead of how the young man came to be in that condition, is the real travesty.  And as sorry as I am for the family, I am even sorrier for his teammates who have those moments and many more like them seared into their brains forever.  If we can't handle looking at a photo then how do we expect our troops to function after seeing people die violently on an all too frequent basis?

I'm against the death penalty on principle, several of them if you want to be picky. One of the principles is that it isn't uniformly applied.  In Kentucky Steven Green gets five life sentences for raping a teenage girl he and his friends had been stalking, killing her, her parents and her six year old sister, then setting fire to the lower half of her body to cover it up.  Meanwhile in Florida, the death penalty is being recommended for Michael King who killed a young mother of two.  If one crime is more heinous than the other wouldn't you think that what Steven King did was the most evil?  Hopefully there is a no pizza provision as part of his sentence.

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When Did We Lose Our Ability To Empathize?

What the heck is wrong with people?  Are our math skills so poor that we can't do simple addition and subtraction?  For a supposedly Christian nation we sure are harsh on those who have the least.  A recent Gallup poll finds that even though the economy has tanked, that rental prices have risen as home prices have fallen, that food and medical costs have also risen high enough that families making $50K a year are visiting food banks to supplement their pantry and doing without medical insurance while hoping for the best and yet only 41% of Americans think that the poor are paying their far share of taxes and 16% believe that the poor pay too little.  If you want the poor to pay more taxes, you should let them earn more money.  As Warren Buffet pointed out a few years ago, his secretary and cleaning lady paid a higher tax rate than he did.  In other words, a larger proportion of their income.

In California the minimum wage is $8 an hour.  If your company hasn't forced you to take an unpaid vacation or cut your hours you will gross $320 per week, $1,387 per month and $16,640 per year. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?  Back in the day, the rule was that you were to spend less than one third of your income on lodging so living by yourself is out of the question if you plan on eating.  Rents in Santa Clara for a one bedroom apartment hover between $950 and $1400 a month.  These numbers can be reduced if you are willing to live in a high crime area on the wrong side of town or live so far away from your job that it takes you an hour to get to work.  But what the heck, you're poor and don't deserve to live with the "better" members of society.

Federal and State taxes are taken out before you ever see your check, along with Medicare, State Disability and Social Security taxes, so that $1387 a month is really closer to $1000 which means you compromise and live in a house or apartment with several other people and rent will only cost you $550.  That doesn't include utilities or telephone, be it a land line or cell.  If you don't have a car there are no payments, repairs, registration or insurance to worry about but the bus pass for the bus that doesn't run on weekends or holidays that's a mile from your apartment on one end and a mile to the job on the other is $70 a month.

Now this job obviously doesn't have health insurance and if you are young and never been seriously ill, the premiums can be pretty low but heaven forbid you're over thirty because you are looking at premiums around $250 a month.  I hear tell that you are supposed to buy new clothes occasionally so you had better be a Wal-Mart shopper, but not too often.  No going to the dentist either and if you need glasses they had best be of the birth control variety.  Fortunately they happen to be in style now.

You really shouldn't have pets, hobbies, own a television now that everything is going digital and you can't afford cable or satellite, go to the movies, smoke cigarettes, or enjoy a beer or latte because that money is coming directly out of your food budget since you gross over $1100 a month you aren't eligible for food stamps.  And with the price for a decent loaf of bread coming in at over $3.50 you should be eating rice and beans.  It doesn't matter if you aren't getting proper nutrition and are gaining weight because all you can afford are simple carbohydrates, you're poor and that's all the world owes you.

Now what happens if you stupidly fall in love and get married?  That salary will not support two people but you will finally qualify for food stamps.  According to the traditional view of Christian marriage a man is supposed to support the wife and she is supposed to stay home and take care of the kids you can't afford.  Reliable birth control is out of the question and abortion is a no-no so you better not have sex either.

Unfortunately this recession is hitting all income levels and the ranks of the newly poor are swelling at the same time as all of the safety nets are being eliminated.  For those of us who are either not knowledgeable or have too much knowledge, poverty is our future.  It won't matter how much you have paid into the system over the years, your fellow Americans think you are a loser and abusing the system because they are positive you're lazy.  Not that the job that required a Master's degree when you took it was shipped overseas and the only thing left in your area is working at Wal-Mart and they won't hire you because you're over qualified.  Even though you had six months of savings that have run out and now can't pay your bills, it's all your fault now because you're poor.  You should have planned better and gotten an advanced education.  Oh wait, you did that and have the student loans to prove it.

What the heck is wrong with us that we must make ourselves feel better by demeaning those who can't fight back? The poor pay into the system in many ways (including the regressive sales tax) and then society determines that this isn't enough and that they aren't contributing as much as they should even though it's all they have.  And then have the audacity to say that the poor should work harder and pull themselves up by their bootstraps when all they have are flip-flops.  How messed up is that?

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The Other Side Of The Argument

I received this email from someone I didn't think I was ever going to hear from again and who I thought was fairly liberal so they must have sent me this knowing that I would have to comment. My thoughts are the ones in parentheses.

This is TOO good! (Not really, it's a pretty sad state of affairs.)

5 million of our older Americans have not signed up yet for their Medicare Part D, drug plan------they are old and confused.(Once again, not really. The plans are the ones confused and in the long run do nothing to help the elderly afford the medicines that they need but can't afford because the rent is due and food prices have gone up tremendously.) We are NOT going to grant them an extension.  (Yup, because that's how we roll, only the IRS has extensions.)

However, 25 million illegal aliens (according to Native Indians that number is closer to 300 million) are in our country and we are going to allow (who died and crowned us king?) them to stay (just like our ancestors), protest (the First Amendment applies to everyone or are we going to have to show our papers every time we speak?), procreate (Can we say hypocritical? For a biblical nation some people certainly do like to cherry pick what parts they want to use and when), receive support monies (mainly from nonprofits, churches and other people who think that trying to help someone change their life for the better is important and until recently that place was America. Besides, have you ever tried to jump through all the hoops to get those monies? It isn't for the faint of heart and the documentation required is pretty extensive), attend schools (isn't educating the young a good thing? They wouldn't need government money to support them in adulthood because they would have jobs and could pay taxes), avoid paying income taxes (no they don't, taxes are taken out of their paychecks just like yours and mine, they just can't file for refunds at the end of the year because theye might get caught. Which means that they pay more taxes than some who were born here), have our teachers take 300 hours of ESL (English as a Second Language) training at our expense, etc. (The world country is becoming more diverse by the minute. Many professions have to take continuing education classes. Why not teachers? Or are only English speaking people and their children allowed to emigrate here?)

WE MUST REALLY DISLIKE OUR OLD PEOPLE...... OR WE MUST REALLY LOVE TACOS!!! (Now we get to the heart of the problem. Yes, we do disrespect our old people, ever since the sixties being old has been synonymous with useless. And we do love our tacos, burritos, falafels, french fries, chow mein, fried rice, goulash, lasagna, etc. Or do you mean that only Hispanics are illegal aliens?)

If it ticks you off, pass it on!! (Oh it did that but not the way I'm sure you it was meant.) Don't forget to pay your taxes......(unless you're rich or a corporation) 12 million illegal aliens are depending on you. (I'm confused. Which is it, 25 or 12 million? Or is that the only objection are to those of Hispanic descent?)

Well, that was fun.

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Why, Why, Why?

Unflipping believable.  Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and newspapers have whole sections of them.   With job losses mounting and state budgets collapsing, the moron Clark S. Judge (doesn't he read his own paper or have access to the same data?) lets loose with this brilliant statement. 

The analogy with the Depression is wrong; the current downturn may be all but over; and doing too much, not too little, is the real danger.

Anybody, anybody, who thinks that the financial devastation is almost over is not dealing with a full deck and should go back to whatever cubbyhole they crawled out of until they pick up a little common sense.

I don't care if banks do business with each other, they have been using their depositors money to make money for themselves for years, but I do care whether or not they do business with companies that employ Americans.  If I don't have an income, how are tax cuts going to help me pay my bills, put a roof over my head or food in my stomach?  The Republicans in California are so crazy that they are willing to enact a budget that screws over their own constituents and benefits the rich, liberal Democrats they hate the most just so they can say that they cut taxes.

Why is it ok for banks and Wall Street to get bailed out when it was their greed that helped to cause this mess but it isn't ok to help people like me who are suffering because of their bad judgment?  Why is cutting taxes for those who don't need it more important than rebuilding our infrastructure before it completely falls apart?  Or down?  Why is it so important for Republicans to enlarge the class of people known as poor?  Why is it so difficult for those in Washington to understand that the average Joe (not Joe the Plumber) is hurting mightily and needs help now, as in today, not some mysterious future trickle down effect that isn't going to happen just like the last trickle down effect didn't happen.

Could it be that they consider us serfs, existing only to satisfy their whims and wishes?  Did the election results teach them nothing?  And whining that reporters aren't doing their jobs, how is that news?  They didn't do their job for the last eight years, why start with something so important as the impending financial ruin of our country?

Financial terrorism is what Republicans are practicing.  And getting away with it.

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Rich, Bitch And Snitch

Now even the rich are whining.  Three pages worth and it's hard to read without realizing how clueless some people are.  I understand the principle, but it's hard for me to feel much sympathy since even they admit that they can afford to live there.

That's tough to do when you live in a place where the board of the country club recently approved a plan to spend $60 million in upgrades. That has caused some tenants, like Goodwin, whose annual expenses run to $80,000 for a 720-square-foot, or 67-square-meter, home, to put his property up for sale.

"It was a grandiose program that went directly into the eye of the storm," he said. "I used to be rich and by American standards, I still am. But now it is a time for people like me to hunker down."

I can almost hear tiny violins in the background.

Is Gaza like the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation?  Professor Levine offers a multitude of reasons why they are similar and one on why they are not and determines that they are not the same because not a high percentage of enough Palestinians have been killed.  Not that Mr. Levine cared when the 200,000 Rwandans were dying but they are useful now.  And here all this time I thought I was good at rationalizing anything.  Politicide, genocide, they're two sides of the same coin.  Either way it falls the Palestinians will never have anything but a below third rate status and the world will continue to watch and do nothing except say "stop that." Until it's too late.

Speaking of rationalizing, Kathleen Pender thinks the job cuts announced this month should be put into perspective.  That it isn't really that bad when you look at the percentages.  Maybe she should sit outside some of the major retailers and see how full the parking lots and the baskets that come out of them, aren't.

Two weeks after a fellow officer shot an unarmed, handcuffed, lying face down on the cement, man in the back the story is that the victim was trying to kick him in the nuts so that's why he hit him in the head and then had him in the position so his fellow officer could use what he now swears he thought was his taser to shoot a man who was already subdued.   They are trying this case in the media and just like with rape victims they are trying to use the victim's past against them.  And the cop who did the shooting has been granted bail.  It might be $3 million but it still brings to mind an interesting question.  Why do cops get granted bail at all?  If I committed murder I wouldn't be granted bail and neither would anyone else I know.  Being rich has its advantages also, just ask Phil Spector.  Yup, she walked in the door of his mansion where she had never been before, grabbed his gun and committed suicide.  Next thing you know I'll be believing in fairy godmothers.

So Michael Phelps likes to get stoned when he isn't competing.  There is nothing wrong with that since in no way is pot a performance enhancing drug, but you shouldn't let people take photos of you hitting the bong.  And to the person who did it for the money, shame on you!

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It's All About The Benjamins, Again

As the axe continues to fall on Californians, the suggestions for stopping the line to the chopping block become more ridiculous and dangerous at the same time.  While crossing guards earn minimum wage, what they contribute is vitally important.  Both mom (wish I could find the picture of her on the front of the Lompoc Record shepherding kids across the street in a really bad rainstorm) and I have held the job and we can both tell you stories of how dangerous it is.  If cities can put in cameras to catch red light runners in downtown areas, what makes them think that people don't run stop signs around schools?  Most people treat crosswalks like they're yellow lights.

I watched you very carefully. Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.

As the economy continues its death spiral it's nice to know that today's "upper class" are more determined to protect themselves than they are in helping the economy to survive.  I'm sure that tax cuts will solve anything, they've done so well so far haven't they?  Yes, I know the AMT is not a fair tax at the moment, but one of the comments was priceless.

"We are witnessing the beginning of the end of the private sector in this country as we know it "

Thank God for that. I can't take anymore Exxon Mobile record profits and 18 billion dollar bonus payouts while paying several dollars for apples.

What I find interesting in this whole mess is is that while most of the homes in the 9th Ward had been paid off for generations, Katrina ensured that those families became renters or homeless by way of a mismanaged disaster of a major city, homelessness has generously been extended to the middle class everywhere by way of foreclosures and job losses.  After you've been laid off I guess it doesn't really matter if your company closed or shipped the jobs offshore.  Either way, a large part of the tax base disappears.  It's so much fun watching everyone rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, isn't it?  Most of those companies that thought they were making money by closing factories in the United States ended up closing themselves.   Duh!  Chinese Medicine refers to that as running on evil qi.

Umm, I hated Bush but I am in no way euphoric about Obama.  All things considered, there is no way that Obama can do a worse job than Bush did.  He doesn't have a surplus to lose, he can't start any more wars until the military is replenished and he's not a babbling about nonexistent WMDs like the village idiot.  Other than that the only skills I see from Obama so far have been a good deal of luck and having the right people help him out.  Which actually gives him the same start Bush had, except for the difference in IQ and that will probably keep Obama from doing as much harm as his predecessor.

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1055 Dead, The Majority Were Not Soldiers

I am not an anti-Semite.  Some of my best friends are Jewish, (I've always wanted to use some line just like that), but what I am is anti war.  I don't care  how you dress it up, when you invade another country and the kill rate is 40% women and children as collateral damage, that's not antisemitism and it certainly isn't pikuach nefesh, that's an attempt at genocide.  White phosphorus bombs?  After the napalm photo from Vietnam there is no excuse for using such weapons.  Against any one, including the UN.  But the part in the Bible about turning the other cheek must be in the New Testament and only apply to people who really believe in Jesus' teachings.  Wars don't demonstrate who's right or wrong, but who's left standing.  In other words, history is written by the winners.

Palestine had democratic elections as the world demanded and they mistakenly elected a party the powers that rule the world didn't approve of, therefore that party isn't legitimate and it's okay to indiscriminately kill people until they change their evil ways.  Too bad the world didn't use that same logic against, Bush, Mugabe or Chavez. Chavez at the moment is relatively insulated against being invaded by the US in its pursuit for oil so the rich don't have to change their lifestyle.  And to Elizabeth Wurtzel, all I have to say is waah, waah, waah.  You can't dress up killing civilians on a regular basis and not be compared to a regime that did the same.  Behave like an advanced human instead of an angry monkey and maybe "normal" people might think you have a valid point.

But to communicate with anyone I think of as right-minded (and left-leaning) in any other part of the world is to experience the purest antisemitism since the Nazi era. In fact, in Europe right now, it is de rigueur to liken the current regime in Israel with the Nazi party, and to view the experience of the Palestinians as a form of ethnic cleansing. Hamas and Hezbollah are thought by the French and British to be social welfare organizations, and Israel is viewed as a terrorist state. Here, we honor the linguistic discoveries of Noam Chomsky and otherwise experience him as a quaintly brilliant crank, but in the bookstores in London there are entire sections devoted to his political thought – and he is read as if the distinctions between Leninist and Trotskyite philosophy had genuine consequence in today's world.

And if you don't want to go to Europe because of the negative feelings towards Americans since the Iraq war, imagine how angry Europeans are right now with this even larger injustice building in their back yard.  Perhaps, just maybe, God should have chosen the Jewish homeland and not some politicians from Great Britain and the United States who didn't think about the results of displacing the Palestinians who had lived there for thousands of years since God kicked the Jewish people out the last time for disrespecting his rules. Or whatever reason God determined they should wander homeless.

Any way you look at it, killing children only breeds more generational hatred and hasn't there been enough of that in the world?  And please tell me that the goal was not to have Osama been Forgotten to declare a holy war over Gaza.  2012 will be here soon enough.

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Monday, Just Makes You Want To Crawl Back Into Bed

If you could only hear my Snidely Whiplash (check this site if you love plays on words) impersonation this morning.  I was in fine form after reading that one itsy bitsy line slipped into the bailout bill for the billionaires.

As in I told you so.  Yesterday.  I didn't to mention the lack of jobs because it wasn't necessary.  How can you have a job if your boss is unemployed or all the companies in the area have either gone bankrupt, moved to another country or the founders died and the family took the money and ran?

This would be funny if it wasn't so doggone stupid.  And how was it missed for so long? 
The same way everything else over the last eight years was missed until it was so obvious that every blind man knew it was a white elephant in the room.  At the very least it was because it was determined to be somebody else's problem.  The victim, name known now as Obama. instead of the real perpetrators.)   It's the only way the almost never right can live with themselves.  Mattresses are going to look mighty attractive soon.

Looking for a job in California?  Don't look here unless you want to know which ones are laying off workers at the year's end.  If the CSAA in Elk Grove is laying off 346 workers, does that mean they are closing the office?  And then the list disappeared.  You don't think they're hiding anything do you?

Of, God I will pray, I will plead, I will grovel, I will even begin to believe in smiting one's enemies if you would please, please make these people go away.  Preferably with their vile (appalling, bad, base, coarse, contemptible, corrupt, debased, degenerate, depraved, despicable, dirty, disgraceful, disgusting, evil, filthy, foul, horrid, humiliating, ignoble, immoral, impure, iniquitous, loathsome, low, mean, miserable, nasty, nauseating, nefarious, noxious, perverted, repellent, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, shocking, sickening, sinful, sleazy*, stinking*, ugly, vicious, vulgar, wicked, worthless, wretched) wishes unfulfilled. Resorted to using a thesaurus, because I couldn't come up with enough words to express the disgust I felt upon reading the article, much less them using their Lord's name in vain. I seem to remember that is also a sin, one that even comes before murder or having sex with someone else's wife. And I think we can tell they completely missed the one about false witness.

In the Woo Hoo! not surprised position.  Net neutrality, more smoke drifting past the on the part I sit on.  Too bad it's the kind of smoke that leaves ashes in its wake instead of the kind that leaves stashes fondly remembered.

Know what happens when no one lives in foreclosed homes and has to live in a tent city?  Oh well, at least the cleaning bill goes down.

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Wow, That's Weird

My blog went from 18 hits a day to over 400 hits a day.  Thank you.  Now if I only knew what I had done right.

Gee, I'll bet he's scared.  Not.  After the first death sentence, the others don't mean a thing.  It's sort of like being hung, drawn and quartered.  After you'be been hung, the rest is just to embarass family and friends and give some measure of revenge to those watching.  The dead is guy is just that.  Dead.

This should have been posted yesterday, but I forgot to push that public button again.  After almost four years of blogging you would think I understood that.

Tuesday Twofer

All righty then.  Don't be shy, tell us what you really think.  This guy should get to the point and say what he really means instead of tiptoeing around the subject.  I think, but I'm not absolutely sure, that he didn't like the movie.

Flailing like a dying fish out of water and eventually smelling just as fetid, Four Christmases is stiflingly unfunny. It’s rotten mistletoe over a condemned homestead’s archway. In fact, it’s such an unbridled waste, such a horrifyingly amalgamation of inept attempted laughs that you wonder what the capable cast was thinking during the filming of certain scenes. Did Favreau and Vaughn really believe the WWE-inspired physical comedy ‘smackdown’ was going to elicit anything other than groans? Was seeing Steenburgen in full Jesus freak mode (alongside a scruffy looking Dwight Yoakim as her pastor beau) supposed to be a legitimate reason to laugh. Does referring to Witherspoon’s character as “Cootie Kate” make the sequence silly, or just stupid? And how far can the whole “kids are craven and evil” thing be pushed before it borders on abuse…for all involved?

Typical.  The California GOP continues to ensure that the state hurtles towards insolvency while they hide their head in the sand and pretend that tax cuts will solve the state deficit.  It isn't enough that the poor, blind and disabled are having their benefits cut, the GOP wants more.  Heaven forbid that they should take a pay cut or reinstate a vehicle license fee that Californians paid for years when times were good, the budget must be balanced by cutting or eliminating services to those in need.  How crazy are these morons?  In San Diego they voted against a tax to increase firefighting capabilities right after some of the worst fires that the city had known.  Next year they'll be crying and moaning about their houses burning down and how inadequate their fire departments are.

Oops, five hours later I realize I forgot to push the publish button.

Almost Having Fun

Better late than never.  This is what happens when legislatures rush to push through a bill without considering the consequences.  Not everyone is a good parent and just because you can have a baby doesn't mean that you are emotionally or financially capable of handling the responsibility.  Meanwhile, the kids who have been abandoned have to live the rest of their lives knowing that their parents didn't want them.

OMG!  Talk about creating a need where one shouldn't exist.  Lift and separate those manboobs.  Now men can wear bras to go along with all the other women's products that have been co opted in recent years.  I'm afraid to see what they will think of next.

Speaking of bras, Nipplegate is on its way to the Supreme Court.  It's nice to know that with all the wrongdoing that has occurred over the last eight years that the Supremes are finally going to tackle something important to us as a nation.  Boobies! 

What do my dogs say about me?  I have a purebred black pug and a terrier chihuahua mix.  Hmm, I must be slightly demented, have a good sense of humor, love food and like to chase my tail for no good reason.  Sounds about right.

Big Brass Blog

I Am Sorrow

Seven years and two wars later and they are going to try new efforts to find the forgotten one.  I will be almost amazed when they find Osama bin Laden just before the election.  There will be celebrations, ticker tape confetti and dancing in the street.  News anchors will have tears of joy in their eyes and all but a few of us will realize that this could have been accomplished seven years ago, but they didn't need the political capital then.  The American people are easily mesmerized by shiny objects and artificial intelligence, aren't they?

Speaking of War Games, mom and I were watching War Games: The Dead Code and I wondered why they didn't bring back John Wood as the original Dr. Stephen Falken. John was responsible for uttering one of my favorite lines as the Bishop of Aquila (there were a few) in one of my favorite movies.  Ladyhawke, one of the most romantic action movies ever made.  I heartily recommend it.  Alfred Molina has a bit part, one just a little bigger than his part in Raiders of the Lost Ark. These lines came straight from the Bishop's mouth right after he watches his mistress dance and Marquet gives his report.

We live in difficult times Marquet.  The famine has prevented the people from paying their proper tribute to the Church.  I raise their taxes only to be told there is nothing left for me to tax.  Imagine.

Gee, that sounds just like today except the church has been traded for corporations. 

Wow, I just found out I could watch a movie and blog at the same time.  I really should explore more of the capabilities of my Mac.  Speaking of which, even though I can't pay for rent or gas, I want the new iTouch.

Obviously, I am a true American.

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McCain, Put A Sock In It

There seems to be some sort of brouhaha over Obama using the line "lipstick on a pig" and that it's a sexist remark.  Since when?  I myself have used it several times, one of which was as a title to a post.  Of course I was talking about the forgotten war in Iraq.  Then there are these photos that have been floating around the web for years and nobody complained that they were sexist when Hillary was the target.  .

 Or how about this one of our ignominious President?

Why do Republicans always want things both ways?  Oh yeah, I forgot.  It's okay if you are a Republican.  Otherwise known as IOKIYAR for short.  What a bunch of crybabies.  And McCain is way too old to be playing these infantile games. 

On the other hand, people do regress into childhood as their brains deteriorate and dementia sets in.

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