I'd write my Congressman about this, but he's a democrat and probably busy trying to figure out how to vote for Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants without appearing to have actually voted for Amnesty for Illegal Aliens.
One of the by-products of the War on Terror and our Endless-But-Controlled-Freefall-Into-Third-World-Nation-Status, are the laws that were propagated to"secure" the validity of all forms of personal, government-issued identification in this country. The theory goes that if you just put enough bureaucracy and union workers in front of the problem, you make the act of obtaining visas, passports, drivers licenses, State-issued identification and Social Security cards that much more difficult for those who would use such things will evil in their hearts. They'll just give up, having worn themselves out bashing their heads against the brick wall of Government Union workers and Bureaucracy. With "secure" identification standards, and with stricter standards about how and to whom they're given, some Muzzie with an Explosives Fetish, or Itinerant Central-American gardener would find it much more difficult to "operate" within the United States without drawing the attention of the "Authorities".
Who, presumably, will better able to "defend" us against terrorists, and save "the taxpayer" tons of cash that would otherwise have been lost to illegals seeking social services on the Sunnier-Side-of-The-Border.
But, in practice, these sorts of measures do nothing of the sort. Instead, they hurt the Citizens of this country far more, and more and more of our "Freedoms" are denied us by well-intentioned-but-seriously-misguided Government. Congress, always, follows the same routine in the wake of a disaster (like 9/11 or the Invasion from the South): it slams the barn door shut after the horse has shit and run away, reshuffles the Org-chart, nails a few hides to the post, and then strengthens the iron grip of government bureaucracy. It then operates under the new assinine regime until the next convulsion of society requires they get denser and dumber.
What's my beef? You may ask.
I can't get a valid photo identification card. Something one increasingly requires in order to be gainfully employed in this country. Those documents represent permission to work in this country, facilitate travel, and stand as proof of American citizenship, or legal status.
It all began when I tried to get a job with the U.S. Government.
Because for the better part of five years I was a virtual shut-in, battling a variety of mental disorders, I had let what identification I used have lapse. This is, of course, my problem; it was my responsibility to see that they were up to date and valid, and I won't dodge that responsibility. So, in order to get this government job, all I had to do (because I passed the third-grade level Civil Service exam quite easily, with the highest mark) was to obtain new copies of my identification documents, and all would be hunky-dory.
But not so fast.
I tried to renew my U.S. Passport, but the State Department wants me to go through the entire routine (and pay the fees) again. Fair enough. However, they require valid photo identification; which I do not have. My expired passport, even though it has my picture on it and I've had one for a decade, is not valid for purposes of renewing the same document. I can show them a Birth Certificate (Issued by the City and State of New York, where I was born and have lived most of my life), a Social Security Card, and several proofs of address, but this is not enough; there's nothing with a photo on it. The U.S. Government won't even replace it's own document when the old one expires without that picture I.D. requirement.
I don't drive. Haven't for years. Not a practical activity when you live in New York City.And the one I do have does, in fact, have a picture of me on it...but that's expired, too, and therefore, also invalid. I called the State Department to see if there was anything else I could do, and was told that the supervisor in the local office did have the ability to issue a passport based on his/her discretion, and a notarized document stating I am Who I Am might help, but that didn't fly, either. State Department employees are loathe to even admit they have that discretion(assuming I even got correct information in the first place from the"Help Line"), because exercising independent thought can help you to lose your cushy government job.
And New York State was no better.
I didn't even bother trying to obtain a new driver's license (I don't own a car in any case), and instead applied for a New York State Photo Identification card, which, I'm told, will be a valid form of picture identification for the purposes of a) getting a new government job, and b) obtaining a new passport.
Same thing; I have a Birth certificate, Social Security Card, two proofs of address, but no valid photo I.D.. When the helpful Spanish-speaker at the Department of Motor Vehicles Information Line was told my sordid tale, he told me "Don't worry; just speak to the Manager or Supervisor at the desk, explain your plight, and they should be able to help you. They have the ability to issue the card under certain exigent circumstances under their own authority, and it sounds like they'll be able to help you".
Except they won't. Because while I can produce four (4) points of identification, I can't produce the required six (6). Even though I was born here, paid taxes here, lived here all my life, and don't look remotely like an Al'Qaeda or Speedy Gonzalez.
But the local DMV office will be glad to help you if you speak Russian, Two Kinds of Chinese, Hindu, Spanish, Swahili, Korean, Arabic or Creole. Those lines seem to fly at a brisk pace, and no one seems to be getting hassled.
Same thing with the local Unemployment Office -- or as they like to think of themselves because some bureaucrat with a flair for a turn of phrase instructed them to do so in The Memo, "The Employment Office". No picture identification, no help. Why not browse the "Job Board" (a bulletin board with recent job openings), it's right past the State-printed Employment Pamphlets for Spanish-Speakers on your Left. Oh, but they'll make you fill in a six-inch stack of forms anyway -- so you'll be "in the system".
A "system"that will never kick my name out for Employment because my file will be marked "insufficient identification", no doubt.
This is what an out-of-control government does to it's citizens when the same citizens cry for them to "do something" and then doesn't bother to examine or question the result.
In the meantime, I'm getting by (if you can call it that) on little "contract jobs" that I can hook up via acquaintances, and taking the odd-job here and there, but nothing permanent,and certainly nothing very remunerative. I want to work. I need to work. And if the lack of jobs wasn't already a major barrier, this gigantic-pustule-of-a-purple-hemorrhoid of a problem doesn't allow me to compete for what jobs might be available.
It seems as if the "War on Terror" and the process of "Securing the Borders" is taking a heavier toll on US than it does on terrorists and illegal aliens. I have little faith that any future government will take any steps to help remedy these issues, because it will still be largely made of the people who created this mess in the first place.
In the meantime, I'm going to brush up on my Spanish and perhaps sneak into Mexico to see if I can get a nice pool-cleaning job. Shold be easy since all the really good pool cleaners seem to be up here.
Friday, April 02, 2010
Anatomy of a Government Program...
Ever wonder how a Government Program gets started? I have (Hat-tip to the late Andy Rooney!). I've been giving the process some thought, and I think I have figured it out (bear with me, this gets complicated).
It usually begins when some twit writes a Letter to the Editor. She (it's usually a "She" ) has her tits in a knot because she's been inconvenienced by what used to be called "one of Life's little Turdburgers", and she's mightily upset. Some Congresscritter who needs to find a way to justify It's existence, hefty paycheck and exalted status, picks up on it, and then decides to"help" this poor, downtrodden citizen, because -- dammit -- America is just that sort of country and no one should be expected to suffer the indignities and consequences of simply being alive and clueless!
What follows is a comedy of earnest Congressional nonsense, which requires an expensive and expansive government "solution", which has unintended consequences which themselves require yet more expensive and expansive government "solutions". In the meantime, Life As it Was becomes a little bit harder, and your freedoms and choices are gradually reduced, while your pocket gets picked. The process repeats itself endlessly, as those who had good intentions but bad ideas struggle to remain one step ahead of their own stupidity.
An example:
Some nitwit in San Francisco (it's always some nitwit in San Francisco) tells the harrowing tale of how her little tyke was seriously injured in school, a result of his untied shoelaces. He tripped, bumped his little coconut, and wound up in the Emergency Room, where he was given stitches and his mother was given The Bill for $100.00. It's only $100.00 because her private insurance (her husband actually works for a living and can afford insurance for his family, a rarity considering everyone else is on ObamaCare) paid the other $400.00. However, that $100.00 is a financial hardship -- that money was earmarked for new, matching gold-plated-Second-bathroom-sink-designer-hot-and-cold-water-taps, you know -- and isn't a shame that in Modern America a family must sacrifice and make the dreadful choice between medical care for a child and a home improvement project that would have raised their resale value by several tens of dollars in a down real-estate market that has caused grave economic damage all over the country?
The ordeal has "shaken her faith in America"; apparently, the union teacher who witnessed the fall refused to help the boy because "it wasn't her job" to help him tie his shoes. The distraught Mother didn't even know her son couldn't tie his own shoes (after all, she gave birth to the little demon, how could she be expected to watch it and teach it anything, and besides, isn't this what the schools are for anyway?). She bemoans the fact that with "our busy lifestyles", that she doesn't have the time to teach her children to tie their shoes properly and hasn't got the "resources" to do this (usually because she's busy Facebooking and hand-printing more "Bush Lied, People Died" signs for her Code Pink rally), and "shouldn't something be done about this dangerous and expensive situation?"
Now, Nancy Pelosi reads the Letters to the Editor (or at least one of her Staff reads them for her) because she "needs to know what her constituents are thinking and saying". She picks up on this immediately. Why, who knew that children are being injured by defective shoelaces that come untied of their own accord? Who knew that the skill of knot-tying wasn't being taught in the Public Schools? After all, we teach our children about Anal Sex, Homosexual Marriage and Bestiality! Where is all the taxpayer money going?
Nancy (or rather, her Staff) does some quick research. They find a study done by the University of West Buttfuck on Fire Island, which concluded that 14-out-of-every-6 (liberal math always works this way) people will trip over untied shoelaces in the course of their lives,and suffer "serious" injury (defined as mild embarrassment, and momentary loss of equilibrium). The study is ironclad, unimpeachable -- Charlie Rangel funded it with an earmark stuffed into last year's Agriculture Bill, and the expenditure of taxpayer money must be justified, so it becomes the Bible of the Shoelace Injury Movement.
It also just so happens that another study by the Velcro Advocacy Board (located in Steny Hoyer's District, and funded by an earmark stuffed into a Pentagon Appropriations Bill), a Velcro-Industry Think-Tank, has determined that Velcro never comes unstuck once fastened, and that 743,000,000 Americans could be spared serious injury (defined as any situation likely to cause others to laugh at you) if only their shoelaces were replaced by sturdy Velcro.
The Congressional Black Caucus adds yet another study (funded by another earmark stuffed into a National Park's appropriation for the purpose of fighting forest fires by John Conyers) by a prominent "Black Cultural Organization" which states that Black children are more likely to be injured by untied shoelaces because Ghetto Culture deigns the tying of shoes to be "acting White". If you're going to address the critical problem of untied shoelaces, you must take the plight of Black shoelace-trippers into consideration. Its a Civil Rights Issue, you see.
So now, we have a real "emergency" on our hands! Untied shoelaces constitute a multi-pronged threat to civil society! They come untied, causing children to trip over them, resulting in injury and Emergency Room visits, which cost American families money. The Public Schools are woefully unprepared to teach our children about the dangers, causes and solutions to the threat of untied shoes. Parents are overwhelmed by the ordeal of having to teach the intricacies of the basic slipknot, and Black People are being forced to pay for shoelaces they don't even use! Why, it's a confluence of dilemmas that threatens the very fabric of American life; Public Safety, Health Care, Educational deficiency, Racial Inequality and Consumer Protection issues, all rolled up into one!
Nancy, Charlie, Steny and a few Squishy Republicans get together to "solve" this vital National Emergency, and to save their phoney-baloney jobs by a brilliant display of Law-writing.Their wheels start a'spinnin', Lobbysists drop off thick envelopes of cash, Keith Olbermann has apoplexy on (P)MSNBC, and Evil Republicans who Defend Big Shoelace are excoriated it the Press. What emerges is an absolute gem of Washington problem solving.
The Shoestring Initiative (or SHIT, because Washington loves catchy acronyms) is born.
SHIT requires that all shoemakers stop using shoelaces and makes provision that all shoes in future be secured snugly and comfortably by government-approved Velcro fasteners. Shoelaces will be completely outlawed by 2178, and where that is not practicable, replacement shoelaces will be heavily taxed (except the for the "exempted" ones produced by Union Labor in Louise Slaughter's District, which cost three times as much and break twice as often. That provision will be slipped into the next Homeland Security Bill, because the Evil Republicans in the Senate would vote it down, otherwise). Soon, the entire country will be surefooted and secure, their personal safety never again threatened by the danger of a deadly shoelace.
Five years later, the Zipper Institute of America (in Barney Frank's district) will announce the results of a new study (funded by another earmark slipped into a NASA appropriations bill, because Barney has been looking out for America's zippers forever) in which it has been discovered that Velcro is not very biodegradable, and will remain in landfills for the next 17-and-half Trillion years. American landfills will be full-to-the-brim with unrotting Velcro by 2764, an environmental disaster of epic proportions in the making -- which flies in the face of every U.N. Climate Change Treaty (none of which have never been ratified by the US Congress, but the issue is kept alive for political purposes). Something must be done!
So, the Congressbeasts go back to "work", and what emerges is the new VAGINA Act (Velcro and Garbage Dump Investigation and Neutralization Act). VAGINA requires that no shoe be made with Velcro after Christmas-three-years-ago, and imposes heavy taxes and fines on those still using it. Old shoes containing Velcro will be considered "assault weapons", and all Americans required to turn them in at their local police department (where they will receive a lovely JiffyLube gift certificate as an incentive. Inner city Welfare Recipients don't have cars, so they will be given an equivalent redeemable at their nearest Needle Exchange Program).
Furthermore, all Velcro shoe-fastening arrangements must be replaced by zippers designed to exacting, European standards, made of flimsy, bio-degradable materials, complete with bi-lingual instructions for illegal Spanish-speaking immigrants (that provision will be stuck in the back-end of next year's Inland Waterways Capital Improvement Bill, which no one bothers reading, anyway).
In the meantime, it will soon be discovered that 2,000,000,008 Americans (according the U.S. Census Bureau) will have lost the ability to tie knots of any sort whatsoever, a problem that will result in heavy loss of life to mountain climbers, S&M enthusiasts (many in Barney Frank's zipper-loving district), surgical patients, cowboys and those expecting to be rescued from burning buildings and other emergency situations by the local Fire Department. Just as Congress turns it's attention to this issue, the Feminazis will take the Boy Scouts to court, charging them with discrimination and patriarchal oppression of Womyn because they STILL insist on teaching young boys to tie knots in secret, male-dominated-crypto-fascist-Womyn-Bashing-Circles, while denying the same accommodation to little girls. They'll bash Sarah Palin as a Gun-toting-Right-Wing-Retarded-Baby-Making-Eco-Nazi for daring to defend the Boy Scouts and the Free-Enterprise rights of Big Velcro...and Haliburton... for good measure. Rachel Maddow will vow to shave her beard on national television in support of her "sisters".
But not to worry:Nancy, Steny, Charlie, Barney, Louise and a "Reaching-across-the-Aisle-in-Bi-Partisan-Fashion" John McCain will be Johnnys-on-the-Spot, proposing the solution to the "Knot-tying Gap" between the genders with the new Females United against the Clove-Hitch Knot Decree, or FUCKED Act.
And now you know just how it is that we all, eventually, get FUCKED.
It usually begins when some twit writes a Letter to the Editor. She (it's usually a "She" ) has her tits in a knot because she's been inconvenienced by what used to be called "one of Life's little Turdburgers", and she's mightily upset. Some Congresscritter who needs to find a way to justify It's existence, hefty paycheck and exalted status, picks up on it, and then decides to"help" this poor, downtrodden citizen, because -- dammit -- America is just that sort of country and no one should be expected to suffer the indignities and consequences of simply being alive and clueless!
What follows is a comedy of earnest Congressional nonsense, which requires an expensive and expansive government "solution", which has unintended consequences which themselves require yet more expensive and expansive government "solutions". In the meantime, Life As it Was becomes a little bit harder, and your freedoms and choices are gradually reduced, while your pocket gets picked. The process repeats itself endlessly, as those who had good intentions but bad ideas struggle to remain one step ahead of their own stupidity.
An example:
Some nitwit in San Francisco (it's always some nitwit in San Francisco) tells the harrowing tale of how her little tyke was seriously injured in school, a result of his untied shoelaces. He tripped, bumped his little coconut, and wound up in the Emergency Room, where he was given stitches and his mother was given The Bill for $100.00. It's only $100.00 because her private insurance (her husband actually works for a living and can afford insurance for his family, a rarity considering everyone else is on ObamaCare) paid the other $400.00. However, that $100.00 is a financial hardship -- that money was earmarked for new, matching gold-plated-Second-bathroom-sink-designer-hot-and-cold-water-taps, you know -- and isn't a shame that in Modern America a family must sacrifice and make the dreadful choice between medical care for a child and a home improvement project that would have raised their resale value by several tens of dollars in a down real-estate market that has caused grave economic damage all over the country?
The ordeal has "shaken her faith in America"; apparently, the union teacher who witnessed the fall refused to help the boy because "it wasn't her job" to help him tie his shoes. The distraught Mother didn't even know her son couldn't tie his own shoes (after all, she gave birth to the little demon, how could she be expected to watch it and teach it anything, and besides, isn't this what the schools are for anyway?). She bemoans the fact that with "our busy lifestyles", that she doesn't have the time to teach her children to tie their shoes properly and hasn't got the "resources" to do this (usually because she's busy Facebooking and hand-printing more "Bush Lied, People Died" signs for her Code Pink rally), and "shouldn't something be done about this dangerous and expensive situation?"
Now, Nancy Pelosi reads the Letters to the Editor (or at least one of her Staff reads them for her) because she "needs to know what her constituents are thinking and saying". She picks up on this immediately. Why, who knew that children are being injured by defective shoelaces that come untied of their own accord? Who knew that the skill of knot-tying wasn't being taught in the Public Schools? After all, we teach our children about Anal Sex, Homosexual Marriage and Bestiality! Where is all the taxpayer money going?
Nancy (or rather, her Staff) does some quick research. They find a study done by the University of West Buttfuck on Fire Island, which concluded that 14-out-of-every-6 (liberal math always works this way) people will trip over untied shoelaces in the course of their lives,and suffer "serious" injury (defined as mild embarrassment, and momentary loss of equilibrium). The study is ironclad, unimpeachable -- Charlie Rangel funded it with an earmark stuffed into last year's Agriculture Bill, and the expenditure of taxpayer money must be justified, so it becomes the Bible of the Shoelace Injury Movement.
It also just so happens that another study by the Velcro Advocacy Board (located in Steny Hoyer's District, and funded by an earmark stuffed into a Pentagon Appropriations Bill), a Velcro-Industry Think-Tank, has determined that Velcro never comes unstuck once fastened, and that 743,000,000 Americans could be spared serious injury (defined as any situation likely to cause others to laugh at you) if only their shoelaces were replaced by sturdy Velcro.
The Congressional Black Caucus adds yet another study (funded by another earmark stuffed into a National Park's appropriation for the purpose of fighting forest fires by John Conyers) by a prominent "Black Cultural Organization" which states that Black children are more likely to be injured by untied shoelaces because Ghetto Culture deigns the tying of shoes to be "acting White". If you're going to address the critical problem of untied shoelaces, you must take the plight of Black shoelace-trippers into consideration. Its a Civil Rights Issue, you see.
So now, we have a real "emergency" on our hands! Untied shoelaces constitute a multi-pronged threat to civil society! They come untied, causing children to trip over them, resulting in injury and Emergency Room visits, which cost American families money. The Public Schools are woefully unprepared to teach our children about the dangers, causes and solutions to the threat of untied shoes. Parents are overwhelmed by the ordeal of having to teach the intricacies of the basic slipknot, and Black People are being forced to pay for shoelaces they don't even use! Why, it's a confluence of dilemmas that threatens the very fabric of American life; Public Safety, Health Care, Educational deficiency, Racial Inequality and Consumer Protection issues, all rolled up into one!
Nancy, Charlie, Steny and a few Squishy Republicans get together to "solve" this vital National Emergency, and to save their phoney-baloney jobs by a brilliant display of Law-writing.Their wheels start a'spinnin', Lobbysists drop off thick envelopes of cash, Keith Olbermann has apoplexy on (P)MSNBC, and Evil Republicans who Defend Big Shoelace are excoriated it the Press. What emerges is an absolute gem of Washington problem solving.
The Shoestring Initiative (or SHIT, because Washington loves catchy acronyms) is born.
SHIT requires that all shoemakers stop using shoelaces and makes provision that all shoes in future be secured snugly and comfortably by government-approved Velcro fasteners. Shoelaces will be completely outlawed by 2178, and where that is not practicable, replacement shoelaces will be heavily taxed (except the for the "exempted" ones produced by Union Labor in Louise Slaughter's District, which cost three times as much and break twice as often. That provision will be slipped into the next Homeland Security Bill, because the Evil Republicans in the Senate would vote it down, otherwise). Soon, the entire country will be surefooted and secure, their personal safety never again threatened by the danger of a deadly shoelace.
Five years later, the Zipper Institute of America (in Barney Frank's district) will announce the results of a new study (funded by another earmark slipped into a NASA appropriations bill, because Barney has been looking out for America's zippers forever) in which it has been discovered that Velcro is not very biodegradable, and will remain in landfills for the next 17-and-half Trillion years. American landfills will be full-to-the-brim with unrotting Velcro by 2764, an environmental disaster of epic proportions in the making -- which flies in the face of every U.N. Climate Change Treaty (none of which have never been ratified by the US Congress, but the issue is kept alive for political purposes). Something must be done!
So, the Congressbeasts go back to "work", and what emerges is the new VAGINA Act (Velcro and Garbage Dump Investigation and Neutralization Act). VAGINA requires that no shoe be made with Velcro after Christmas-three-years-ago, and imposes heavy taxes and fines on those still using it. Old shoes containing Velcro will be considered "assault weapons", and all Americans required to turn them in at their local police department (where they will receive a lovely JiffyLube gift certificate as an incentive. Inner city Welfare Recipients don't have cars, so they will be given an equivalent redeemable at their nearest Needle Exchange Program).
Furthermore, all Velcro shoe-fastening arrangements must be replaced by zippers designed to exacting, European standards, made of flimsy, bio-degradable materials, complete with bi-lingual instructions for illegal Spanish-speaking immigrants (that provision will be stuck in the back-end of next year's Inland Waterways Capital Improvement Bill, which no one bothers reading, anyway).
In the meantime, it will soon be discovered that 2,000,000,008 Americans (according the U.S. Census Bureau) will have lost the ability to tie knots of any sort whatsoever, a problem that will result in heavy loss of life to mountain climbers, S&M enthusiasts (many in Barney Frank's zipper-loving district), surgical patients, cowboys and those expecting to be rescued from burning buildings and other emergency situations by the local Fire Department. Just as Congress turns it's attention to this issue, the Feminazis will take the Boy Scouts to court, charging them with discrimination and patriarchal oppression of Womyn because they STILL insist on teaching young boys to tie knots in secret, male-dominated-crypto-fascist-Womyn-Bashing-Circles, while denying the same accommodation to little girls. They'll bash Sarah Palin as a Gun-toting-Right-Wing-Retarded-Baby-Making-Eco-Nazi for daring to defend the Boy Scouts and the Free-Enterprise rights of Big Velcro...and Haliburton... for good measure. Rachel Maddow will vow to shave her beard on national television in support of her "sisters".
But not to worry:Nancy, Steny, Charlie, Barney, Louise and a "Reaching-across-the-Aisle-in-Bi-Partisan-Fashion" John McCain will be Johnnys-on-the-Spot, proposing the solution to the "Knot-tying Gap" between the genders with the new Females United against the Clove-Hitch Knot Decree, or FUCKED Act.
And now you know just how it is that we all, eventually, get FUCKED.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
OMG! Did I Do This???
Yesterday, I posted a screed about Michael Allegretti, a candidate for Congress here in New York City. I mentioned that Mr. Allegretti's commercial makes no mention of his party affiliation, and that even when asked directly, he categorized himself as "an independent, fiscal conservative" while dodging the question "Republican or Democrat?" entirely.
I don't consider the term "fiscal conservative" to be indicative of party affiliation, nor of Conservatism (of the Sean Hannity/Rush Limbaugh sort) at all. It is possible to be a fiscal conservative and still be a social liberal (see: Rudy Giuliani, Olympia Snowe, et. al.), although I guess what that formulation means is that you're a cheapskate with the public purse and favor lower taxes, but not necessarily decisive on the issues of Government bloat, Gay Rights, Affirmative action, and no friend of Gun Rights.
In God-Guns-And-Gay Conservative circles, this makes you a RINO (Republican in Name Only), if not Satan himself. Not that I particularly care about what those folks have to say; they often seem more concerned with the NEXT world, rather than this one, which makes them suspect in my mind -- even if I do agree with them on (most) core social values.
It was my assertion that by not making his affiliation clear, Mr. Allegretti was perhaps hiding something, or perhaps leaving the impression that he might have something to hide.
What a difference a day makes!
Mr. Allegretti's campaign commercial just aired not ten minutes ago. And guess what? The caption at the bottom of the screen now reads: "Michael Allegretti, REPUBLICAN for Congress".
His website, still makes no mention of his Republicanism, at least not on the homepage, where one might reasonably expect to find that sort of information.
Did I do this? Probably not; I'm of the mind that no one listens to me, anyway, so I figure maybe someone with far more influence also asked the question. Does this make any difference? Again, probably not, but it would seem to me that dishonesty (even of the unintentional omission sort) does have consequences. Especially in elections. See: Change You Can Believe In.
If Mr. Allegretti is a Republican, then he should come out and say so more often, and then take steps beyond just downgrading the democrats; show that you embrace the Republican platform, and not just the fiscal conservatism plank which is now the hip marketing meme for Right-of-Center stealth candidates in these days of Tea Parties and conservative backlash,and embrace your inner-R, Sir.
Just on the off-chance that I did, indeed, give you a gentle nudge, I shall be watching ever-more carefully, Sir.
I don't consider the term "fiscal conservative" to be indicative of party affiliation, nor of Conservatism (of the Sean Hannity/Rush Limbaugh sort) at all. It is possible to be a fiscal conservative and still be a social liberal (see: Rudy Giuliani, Olympia Snowe, et. al.), although I guess what that formulation means is that you're a cheapskate with the public purse and favor lower taxes, but not necessarily decisive on the issues of Government bloat, Gay Rights, Affirmative action, and no friend of Gun Rights.
In God-Guns-And-Gay Conservative circles, this makes you a RINO (Republican in Name Only), if not Satan himself. Not that I particularly care about what those folks have to say; they often seem more concerned with the NEXT world, rather than this one, which makes them suspect in my mind -- even if I do agree with them on (most) core social values.
It was my assertion that by not making his affiliation clear, Mr. Allegretti was perhaps hiding something, or perhaps leaving the impression that he might have something to hide.
What a difference a day makes!
Mr. Allegretti's campaign commercial just aired not ten minutes ago. And guess what? The caption at the bottom of the screen now reads: "Michael Allegretti, REPUBLICAN for Congress".
His website, still makes no mention of his Republicanism, at least not on the homepage, where one might reasonably expect to find that sort of information.
Did I do this? Probably not; I'm of the mind that no one listens to me, anyway, so I figure maybe someone with far more influence also asked the question. Does this make any difference? Again, probably not, but it would seem to me that dishonesty (even of the unintentional omission sort) does have consequences. Especially in elections. See: Change You Can Believe In.
If Mr. Allegretti is a Republican, then he should come out and say so more often, and then take steps beyond just downgrading the democrats; show that you embrace the Republican platform, and not just the fiscal conservatism plank which is now the hip marketing meme for Right-of-Center stealth candidates in these days of Tea Parties and conservative backlash,and embrace your inner-R, Sir.
Just on the off-chance that I did, indeed, give you a gentle nudge, I shall be watching ever-more carefully, Sir.
Reordering Society To Suit Your Insanity...
An oldie-but-goodie from Mark Steyn. This is what happens when free societies are forced to make ridiculous accomodations on behalf of someone else's insanity; you run out of sperm donors.
The Pacific: Utter Crap...
Professor Hanson writes today about the hullabaloo over Tom Hanks and his stupidity in hyping his latest World War II miniseries, The Pacific. The Perfessah basically calls Hanks an ignorant nimrod, only classily.
I have no issue with Tom Hanks; I think he's a fine actor, perhaps even one of the best in he world. I've enjoyed his movies, and probably will continue to do so for many years to come. Despite his political and social views, you should be able to recognize quality and talent, and appreciate it when you see it. Mr. Hank's problem is that he's unable to separate his personal politics from the actual history and so he winds up doing dumb things like calling his country "racist".
Having said that, The Pacific is, in my opinion, a stinking dogpile -- just another steaming turd layed by the Hanks/Spielberg team in a line of "Greatest Generation" films; Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, and now The Pacific, follow the same formula -- present a couple of individual morality plays set against the background of World War II, sprinkle in lots of video-game-quality violence, and if you can make it about real people -- the Men Who Were There -- then so much the better. The public relates more to Real People than they do stylized portrayals by metrosexual actors.
I think all of these movies stink for the simple reason that they don't actually educate anyone. They might tell people the story of Easy Company of the 506th, or they might introduce a new generation to heroes like John Bassilone, but they never quite put those stories in the proper context; these men fought, killed, often died, to save the world from a murderous tyranny, whether German or Japanese, propagated by wicked men compelled to cause violence, in part, because of a belief in their Racial and Cultural Superiority. You catch glimpses, but more often than not, the point of the movie seems to be to give Spielberg a chance to trot out his new-and-improved special effects.
Perhaps if Mr. Hanks had thought in terms of what the war was really about, about what The Enemy had done (the Holocaust, Rape of Nanking, Bataan Death March, and so forth) and had done some real research and written some of it into the script, the movies might be better for that additional layer or context. Band of Brothers has one episode devoted to the liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp, but the Camp and it's Horrors become a prop; what gets focused on is the soldier's emotions, evoked by the Camp itself. Perhaps if we'd had less "character study" and more "history" Mr. Hanks wouldn't be laboring under the misapprehension that it was America that was more racist than either Japanese of Nazi, or more unjust than it's enemies. He wouldn't believe that Americans have much of anything to apologize for.
The Japanese, Germans, and their Italian allies, started a war that perhaps cost 80 million people their lives (true figures will never be known), and in the following Cold War years of Communism, perhaps another 100 million perished. Amongst the prime motivators for their decision to go to war were deep racial prejudices and a desire to destroy and dispossess "The Other". Our current enemies, Islamic Terrorists, think in much the same ways as the Nazis and Japanese, Mr. Hanks -- Americans don't. They didn't then, and they don't now.
The Men portrayed in these films responded to an impulse that had no racist component to it at all; their Country had been attacked, and they had volunteered to fight and die for Her because they believed in the Cause of Her Defense. Nationalism. Patriotism. Not politics; not racism. Maybe one of these days, instead of trying to make money off history with bad movies, Mr.Hanks and Spielberg might actually read some history.
I have no issue with Tom Hanks; I think he's a fine actor, perhaps even one of the best in he world. I've enjoyed his movies, and probably will continue to do so for many years to come. Despite his political and social views, you should be able to recognize quality and talent, and appreciate it when you see it. Mr. Hank's problem is that he's unable to separate his personal politics from the actual history and so he winds up doing dumb things like calling his country "racist".
Having said that, The Pacific is, in my opinion, a stinking dogpile -- just another steaming turd layed by the Hanks/Spielberg team in a line of "Greatest Generation" films; Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, and now The Pacific, follow the same formula -- present a couple of individual morality plays set against the background of World War II, sprinkle in lots of video-game-quality violence, and if you can make it about real people -- the Men Who Were There -- then so much the better. The public relates more to Real People than they do stylized portrayals by metrosexual actors.
I think all of these movies stink for the simple reason that they don't actually educate anyone. They might tell people the story of Easy Company of the 506th, or they might introduce a new generation to heroes like John Bassilone, but they never quite put those stories in the proper context; these men fought, killed, often died, to save the world from a murderous tyranny, whether German or Japanese, propagated by wicked men compelled to cause violence, in part, because of a belief in their Racial and Cultural Superiority. You catch glimpses, but more often than not, the point of the movie seems to be to give Spielberg a chance to trot out his new-and-improved special effects.
Perhaps if Mr. Hanks had thought in terms of what the war was really about, about what The Enemy had done (the Holocaust, Rape of Nanking, Bataan Death March, and so forth) and had done some real research and written some of it into the script, the movies might be better for that additional layer or context. Band of Brothers has one episode devoted to the liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp, but the Camp and it's Horrors become a prop; what gets focused on is the soldier's emotions, evoked by the Camp itself. Perhaps if we'd had less "character study" and more "history" Mr. Hanks wouldn't be laboring under the misapprehension that it was America that was more racist than either Japanese of Nazi, or more unjust than it's enemies. He wouldn't believe that Americans have much of anything to apologize for.
The Japanese, Germans, and their Italian allies, started a war that perhaps cost 80 million people their lives (true figures will never be known), and in the following Cold War years of Communism, perhaps another 100 million perished. Amongst the prime motivators for their decision to go to war were deep racial prejudices and a desire to destroy and dispossess "The Other". Our current enemies, Islamic Terrorists, think in much the same ways as the Nazis and Japanese, Mr. Hanks -- Americans don't. They didn't then, and they don't now.
The Men portrayed in these films responded to an impulse that had no racist component to it at all; their Country had been attacked, and they had volunteered to fight and die for Her because they believed in the Cause of Her Defense. Nationalism. Patriotism. Not politics; not racism. Maybe one of these days, instead of trying to make money off history with bad movies, Mr.Hanks and Spielberg might actually read some history.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
About Jennifer Griffin...
I'm not sure how many people know or remember Jennifer Griffin, who used to be the FoxNews Middle Eastern correspondent for many years. Recently, she was diagnosed with something called Triple Negative Breast Cancer, a rare form of cancer that strikes about 10% of all women with breast cancer.
I wasn't aware that Jennifer had cancer. I wondered what had happened to her. She was a very good reporter, I always thought. And cute. Until I watched Greta Van Sustern this evening, I had just figured she'd moved on, or maybe settled down or something. Anyway, I found the interview she did with Greta this evening quite brave and inspiring. And even though at the best of times I'm a heartless prick, I was rather impressed, and a little moved, by her interview this evening. I think maybe it was her kids; I'm a sucker for kids.
Jennifer Griffin has a blog here on Blogger. You should make an effort to stop in and see what she has to say about her cancer and treatment, and maybe, just learn a lesson or two about how to face something this horrible with a little class and dignity, and whole lot of courage.
Get well, Jennifer.
UPDATE: Fixed the link.
I wasn't aware that Jennifer had cancer. I wondered what had happened to her. She was a very good reporter, I always thought. And cute. Until I watched Greta Van Sustern this evening, I had just figured she'd moved on, or maybe settled down or something. Anyway, I found the interview she did with Greta this evening quite brave and inspiring. And even though at the best of times I'm a heartless prick, I was rather impressed, and a little moved, by her interview this evening. I think maybe it was her kids; I'm a sucker for kids.
Jennifer Griffin has a blog here on Blogger. You should make an effort to stop in and see what she has to say about her cancer and treatment, and maybe, just learn a lesson or two about how to face something this horrible with a little class and dignity, and whole lot of courage.
Get well, Jennifer.
UPDATE: Fixed the link.
My Boyfriend Thinks All My Behavior Changes Are Caused by PMS...
Well, duuuuuh! That's like the first rule of relationships, Babe; Every man knows this. When you become a bit of a bitch -- and we didn't do anything obvious -- it MUST be PMS. A woman writes Dear Prudie over at Slate about her boyfriend's fascination with her Aunt Flo. and the problems this causes in their "relationship".
She complains that "he keeps a journal" taking careful notes of her moods and how they coincide with her cycles. This is not just absolutely fucking sick, it's bordering on "lock that Boy Up!" insanity. This is something so incredibly personal, so obviously painful and so utterly embarassing, that...she asked for help -- on the Internet --from a fake advice columnist at Slate!
Yes, you should get some really useful, expert advice there! Don't you have any girlfriends you can talk to? A mother? Personally, I'm convinced that 90% of the things you see written in these "advice columns" is pure fiction, and this just about reaches that level, but still strains at the boundaries of credibility. But, for the sake of argument, let's say it was a real cry for help. What advice does Dear Prudie offer? Basically, it can be summed up thusly:
"Hey, even though keeping a journal on your period is a pretty douchey manuever which makes me wonder about his sanity -- and perhaps your safety -- just be happy he's not out fucking everyone else...Like Tiger Woods..."
Why, that's exactly what that woman, assuming she was real, needed to hear! I can't for the life of me figure out why more people don't ask Prudie for advice; she's so good at it!
I have a better solution for you, Miss (assuming that you're real, and by some remote chance you find this);
Dump the dickhead and find a nicer man. Or become a lesbian. Whatever. Just stop writing advice columnists seeking help with a relationship that is so obviously unhealthy. Get him out of your life, change your locks, and inform the authorities about the Guy With the Menstruation Fetish.
Do anything -- except ask for advice from Dear Prudie.
She complains that "he keeps a journal" taking careful notes of her moods and how they coincide with her cycles. This is not just absolutely fucking sick, it's bordering on "lock that Boy Up!" insanity. This is something so incredibly personal, so obviously painful and so utterly embarassing, that...she asked for help -- on the Internet --from a fake advice columnist at Slate!
Yes, you should get some really useful, expert advice there! Don't you have any girlfriends you can talk to? A mother? Personally, I'm convinced that 90% of the things you see written in these "advice columns" is pure fiction, and this just about reaches that level, but still strains at the boundaries of credibility. But, for the sake of argument, let's say it was a real cry for help. What advice does Dear Prudie offer? Basically, it can be summed up thusly:
"Hey, even though keeping a journal on your period is a pretty douchey manuever which makes me wonder about his sanity -- and perhaps your safety -- just be happy he's not out fucking everyone else...Like Tiger Woods..."
Why, that's exactly what that woman, assuming she was real, needed to hear! I can't for the life of me figure out why more people don't ask Prudie for advice; she's so good at it!
I have a better solution for you, Miss (assuming that you're real, and by some remote chance you find this);
Dump the dickhead and find a nicer man. Or become a lesbian. Whatever. Just stop writing advice columnists seeking help with a relationship that is so obviously unhealthy. Get him out of your life, change your locks, and inform the authorities about the Guy With the Menstruation Fetish.
Do anything -- except ask for advice from Dear Prudie.
You Know, This Might Be Why More People Don't Vote...
There is a commercial running in my neck of the woods, these days. A nicely-dressed young man, filmed in extreme close-up so that he's nothing but a gigantic head-and-tie shot, tells you that He's Michael Allegretti, and he's running for Congress form New York's 13th District (Staten Island and South Brooklyn). The commercial is poorly done; it's not very informative, all you get is that Allegretti isn't a democrat, and it's on three times an hour. About the only good thing you can say about it is that he at least hints that democrats might be slightly less-attractive than influenza.
You can see the commercial at Allegretti's website. Just hang about a second, and the video will pop up on ya...along with a request for cash.
I have some problems with this sort of political advertising, because it's obviously contrived.
Allegretti bemoans the "out of control" democrats in Washington, but never says what his own party affiliation is. Not even on his website. In the first reference vis-a-vis party affiliation I could find, Allegretti describes himself in the New York Post as "an independent fiscal conservative". My, if that isn't purposely vague for a reason, I don't know what is! It's brilliant marketing, at least: he hits all the right buzzwords -- independent, fiscal conservative. He avoids any references to either the Republican or Tea Parties -- but it's not exactly clear if he's a Republican, Libertarian, or more likely, Rich Opportunist. It's almost as if you might be hiding something.
I've begun to notice a trend in political advertising here in recent years. There is a tendency in New York for many political candidates to not even make a mention of their political party affiliations, if they can avoid it. You don't see it mentioned on the television commercials, on the websites, on the campaign posters or literature -- you have to do some research to find out "R" or "D" -- and now I'm beginning to wonder if this might not be a common occurrence elsewhere; hiding your party affiliation on purpose. If anyone has seen some political advertising for a candidate lately, please let me know if they're all hiding their party affiliation now.
Incidentally, both Allegretti and democrat Michael Grimm (trying to mount a primary challenge to Congressbeast Mike McMahon) are taking great pains to make sure you know that neither is part of the Party machine (either party), and neither of them likes to use the words "Republican" or "Democrat", unless they can do so to denigrate the current political culture while making certain the words aren't applied to themselves. They are taking Populist stands and talking the Populist talk, but both are amateurish. They don't look believable when they play Populist, and you get the idea it's all a fantasy -- or a scam. This must be that new-and-improved brand of politics we've been hearing all about; shout loudly, look like a regular Joe, hit all the buzzwords in the interview, say nothing that might hurt you,or worse, inform someone, or even pin you to a position.
Would I vote for Mr. Allegretti? Based on his website, not really. Based on a crappy commercial and a campaign persona that seems tailor made by the best political advertising folks money can buy (Mr. Allegretti's family owns one of the largest Fuel Oil delivery companies in New York State), and a guy who claims he's not one of those "Washington" types, but trumpets all of his political accomplishments; He one of those guys who organizes political dinners, symposiums and gabfests, and even boasts what's probably intended to be a hint of an endorsement from Tony Blair -- the former LIBERAL Prime Minister of Britain. Like that matters to New Yorkers?
Oh, and he says New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg likes him, too. That pretty much takes you off my 10,000,000 Best Friend's List, Pal. Any Friend of Bloomberg's is an Enemy of the People.
Anyways, Allegretti is running against Micheal McMahon, the anal-retentive democrat who was tapped in an emergency election after Vito Fossella got himself caught with a Baby Mamma and a DUI. McMahon has accomplished but one thing; he said "NO" to ObamaCare, which is pretty much what this entire Island said to it. He may have the smell of "democrat" stuck to him, but he at least has the distinction of being brave enough to stand up to Nancy, Harry and Barack. I still wouldn't vote for him, either, as right about now "Democrat" comes in on my list just after "Cross-dressing Nazis" and just before "AIDS-carrying Pedophiles" on my list of "People I'd Really, Really Love To Invite to My Fondue Party".
The other candidate is a guy named Micheal Grimm, and unfortunately, he's a democrat, too. He's a veteran, though, so at least he gets some brownies for that, but when given a choice between Democrat, Democrat, Some Guy Who Thinks He's Really Slick, and Ebola, I'm taking the Ebola -- it's the best choice on the menu..
I'll be looking out to see if either democrat identifies himself as such, especially the guy who served in Iraq, because I have a feeling that while he's trying to strike the Populist tone of "for the Working Man", he'll probably only attract the usual crowd of democrat fringe elements -- the people who are STILL fighting over the War in Iraq -- and he won't accomplish anything except to split the dimwit vote in the primary.
We have a Tea Party here on Staten Island, and I've even popped over to their blog (it's here on Blogger) a few times to see what's going on. But I shan't join it, if only because they guy who posts on it sounds as if he's always in great pain....or maybe he just really has to pee really, really badly. All the time. Like he's constantly in one of those dreams where you're sliding down a banister naked, and it suddenly turns into a razor blade...and there's a vat of lemon juice and Tabasco sauce at the bottom of the stairs, just waiting for you. I swear, that man's sphincter is probably puckered so tight that he might need a colostomy bag. You can check it out, if you like, but I usually ignore anything they have to say -- even if I agree with it. I just don't like HOW he says it. It's like he's menstrual or something.
Anyways, there's going to be a primary here in Staten Island on the dem side, and then a general election in November, to see which of these three idiots gets to be our next Congresscritter. I'm so excited I could shit. Not really -- I'm apathetic for the following reason; at this point in history, when the People of this Country have an enormous opportunity to truly change the way this government does business (by tossing all the bums out, and demand that the Constitution be enforced and respected), our local political parties produce this line up of losers, or, they allow rich boys with an apparent aversion to honesty about their political leanings to buy their way onto ballots.
These are our choices:
The Democrat who was only elected because his Republican Predecessor was an adulterer and a drunk.
The Democrat unknown who won't tell you who he is, besides "I'm a Veteran!".
A Walking Television Commercial who can't be honest about his true political affiliations, and counts tyrants amongst his friends.
Between the three of them, we should be able to find one who'll be capable of turning Staten Island into the New Atlantis.
You can see the commercial at Allegretti's website. Just hang about a second, and the video will pop up on ya...along with a request for cash.
I have some problems with this sort of political advertising, because it's obviously contrived.
Allegretti bemoans the "out of control" democrats in Washington, but never says what his own party affiliation is. Not even on his website. In the first reference vis-a-vis party affiliation I could find, Allegretti describes himself in the New York Post as "an independent fiscal conservative". My, if that isn't purposely vague for a reason, I don't know what is! It's brilliant marketing, at least: he hits all the right buzzwords -- independent, fiscal conservative. He avoids any references to either the Republican or Tea Parties -- but it's not exactly clear if he's a Republican, Libertarian, or more likely, Rich Opportunist. It's almost as if you might be hiding something.
I've begun to notice a trend in political advertising here in recent years. There is a tendency in New York for many political candidates to not even make a mention of their political party affiliations, if they can avoid it. You don't see it mentioned on the television commercials, on the websites, on the campaign posters or literature -- you have to do some research to find out "R" or "D" -- and now I'm beginning to wonder if this might not be a common occurrence elsewhere; hiding your party affiliation on purpose. If anyone has seen some political advertising for a candidate lately, please let me know if they're all hiding their party affiliation now.
Incidentally, both Allegretti and democrat Michael Grimm (trying to mount a primary challenge to Congressbeast Mike McMahon) are taking great pains to make sure you know that neither is part of the Party machine (either party), and neither of them likes to use the words "Republican" or "Democrat", unless they can do so to denigrate the current political culture while making certain the words aren't applied to themselves. They are taking Populist stands and talking the Populist talk, but both are amateurish. They don't look believable when they play Populist, and you get the idea it's all a fantasy -- or a scam. This must be that new-and-improved brand of politics we've been hearing all about; shout loudly, look like a regular Joe, hit all the buzzwords in the interview, say nothing that might hurt you,or worse, inform someone, or even pin you to a position.
Would I vote for Mr. Allegretti? Based on his website, not really. Based on a crappy commercial and a campaign persona that seems tailor made by the best political advertising folks money can buy (Mr. Allegretti's family owns one of the largest Fuel Oil delivery companies in New York State), and a guy who claims he's not one of those "Washington" types, but trumpets all of his political accomplishments; He one of those guys who organizes political dinners, symposiums and gabfests, and even boasts what's probably intended to be a hint of an endorsement from Tony Blair -- the former LIBERAL Prime Minister of Britain. Like that matters to New Yorkers?
Oh, and he says New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg likes him, too. That pretty much takes you off my 10,000,000 Best Friend's List, Pal. Any Friend of Bloomberg's is an Enemy of the People.
Anyways, Allegretti is running against Micheal McMahon, the anal-retentive democrat who was tapped in an emergency election after Vito Fossella got himself caught with a Baby Mamma and a DUI. McMahon has accomplished but one thing; he said "NO" to ObamaCare, which is pretty much what this entire Island said to it. He may have the smell of "democrat" stuck to him, but he at least has the distinction of being brave enough to stand up to Nancy, Harry and Barack. I still wouldn't vote for him, either, as right about now "Democrat" comes in on my list just after "Cross-dressing Nazis" and just before "AIDS-carrying Pedophiles" on my list of "People I'd Really, Really Love To Invite to My Fondue Party".
The other candidate is a guy named Micheal Grimm, and unfortunately, he's a democrat, too. He's a veteran, though, so at least he gets some brownies for that, but when given a choice between Democrat, Democrat, Some Guy Who Thinks He's Really Slick, and Ebola, I'm taking the Ebola -- it's the best choice on the menu..
I'll be looking out to see if either democrat identifies himself as such, especially the guy who served in Iraq, because I have a feeling that while he's trying to strike the Populist tone of "for the Working Man", he'll probably only attract the usual crowd of democrat fringe elements -- the people who are STILL fighting over the War in Iraq -- and he won't accomplish anything except to split the dimwit vote in the primary.
We have a Tea Party here on Staten Island, and I've even popped over to their blog (it's here on Blogger) a few times to see what's going on. But I shan't join it, if only because they guy who posts on it sounds as if he's always in great pain....or maybe he just really has to pee really, really badly. All the time. Like he's constantly in one of those dreams where you're sliding down a banister naked, and it suddenly turns into a razor blade...and there's a vat of lemon juice and Tabasco sauce at the bottom of the stairs, just waiting for you. I swear, that man's sphincter is probably puckered so tight that he might need a colostomy bag. You can check it out, if you like, but I usually ignore anything they have to say -- even if I agree with it. I just don't like HOW he says it. It's like he's menstrual or something.
Anyways, there's going to be a primary here in Staten Island on the dem side, and then a general election in November, to see which of these three idiots gets to be our next Congresscritter. I'm so excited I could shit. Not really -- I'm apathetic for the following reason; at this point in history, when the People of this Country have an enormous opportunity to truly change the way this government does business (by tossing all the bums out, and demand that the Constitution be enforced and respected), our local political parties produce this line up of losers, or, they allow rich boys with an apparent aversion to honesty about their political leanings to buy their way onto ballots.
These are our choices:
The Democrat who was only elected because his Republican Predecessor was an adulterer and a drunk.
The Democrat unknown who won't tell you who he is, besides "I'm a Veteran!".
A Walking Television Commercial who can't be honest about his true political affiliations, and counts tyrants amongst his friends.
Between the three of them, we should be able to find one who'll be capable of turning Staten Island into the New Atlantis.
Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing...
Obama was just on TV (FoxNews). Again. Standing in front of an F/18 (it makes him look much more manly -- especially after he snuck into and out of Afghanistan in the middle of the night like a thief earlier this week), and starts talking about Biofuels. The F/A -18 has been specially modified to fly on biofuels...we think. Who says you can't be environMENTALly conscious when killing what liberals (small 'l' intentional) insist are innocent Muslims driven to the extreme of terrorism by the evil cabal of Big Oil, McDonald's and Srhubby McBushHitler??
He then goes on to say that the United States has "less than 2% of the World's Known Oil Reserves", but we're going to drill for them anyway in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, because we need to become energy independent. Places that two years ago were off-limits because we needed to "grow the Green Economy" and because "it's not worth the investment, doesn't solve our energy problems, and will contribute to global warming."
Two years later, the priorities seem to have changed.
The Green Energy Initiative that was supposed to create sixteen bazillion jobs only creates them in China. The Green Cornucopia that was to bring us unlimited energy instead brings us next-to-nothing nothing at prices that cannot be maintained. The threat of Global Warming, brought into question by the fact that the scientists and international bureaucrats who supposedly "study the phenomenon" are probably lying to us and doctoring their data to support outlandish claims and investments in their continuing "research" -- and even-more outlandish regulation and taxation.
And Obama gets his (death-) wish and accomplishes the passage of a "Health" "Care" "Reform" that is mostly-unfunded mandates that can only be realized by massive tax increases that the public is likely to revolt over.
Now, Obama's taking up the banner and fulfilling the evil Wishes of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Fascists, and shouting "Drill, Baby, Drill!" -- but still trying to disguise it as part of a Green Energy Initiative and as a matter of National Security -- by standing in front of a "modified" fighter-bomber? Why, the juxtaposition of political opportunism set against the cynicism of trying topaint your politicaloppoents as right-wing-extremist-whackos almost looks too painful to be real.
You have to be a complete and utter asshole to miss all that symbolism. You'd have to be Stevie Wonder not to see through it in a second.
Obama wants Cap-and-Trade policies that will, the Other Side insists, "solve" the "problem" of "Global Warming". But, Obama needs cash. Cold, hard, dollah-dollah-moolah, Baby, and tilting at windmills (literally) and depending on solar panels hasn't panned out quite the way He anticipated. It apparently isn;t so easy to blow Sunshine up people's asses when there's only so much to go around. Obama needs what on Wall Street we used to refer to as "an additional revenue stream",and what's known in political circles as "a pivot" so as not to be seen as ignoring the Americanpeople, and to convince them that he's really not a died-in-the-wool-Castro-Loving Commie Crapweasel.
Obama offers the molasses; we're going to open up drilling and exploitation of home-grown resources that have been off-limits for decades. Conservatives/Republicans/Tea-Fascists should be happy -- and lulled into a false sense of security. Then he feeds us the Sulphur: the money gained from the sale of drilling rights, the taxes collected on gasoline, electricity and by-products created with that all that new oil and the soon-to-return spectre of Windfall Profits Taxes, will then go into funding ObamaCare -- and might even be used to fund even worse liberal (small 'l' intentional) excesses. Some of us will get a job, some of us might have that appendectomy paid for eight years from now. As long as all that happens (He assumes), we're not supposed to notice that Obama basically became a Conservative overnight, caved to the pressure of public opinion, and tossed his Leftie friends over the railing on the issue of enslaving us all in the name of Mother Gaia (the New Communism), turning himself into a liar and opportunist in the process.
In the meantime, maybe a few tens of thousands of Americans might be put back to work, which will be trumpeted as evidence of an economic "miracle" by (P)MSNBC and their ilk (in a country in which 10 million are "officially" unemployed, and the true total might be closer to 17 million). We're supposed to be grateful for any economic growth we get out of this President, no matter how mediocre and infinitesimal.
David Copperfield on his best day couldn't pull this one off, and neither can Barack Obama. Mostly because he doesn't have any credibility anymore, and partly because like George C. Scott in "Patton", "You magnificent Bastard, I'VE READ YOUR BOOK!".
King Priam, the doomed monarch of Troy is supposed to have remarked upon the discovery of hte Trojan Horse "I fear the Greeks, even when they come bearing gifts...". But no one listened to him, and Troy was taken by deceit and the inhabitants slaughtered.
I fear the post-racial, post-partisan President who does nothing but harp on race and practice naked partisanship when He comes bearing gifts, too.
He then goes on to say that the United States has "less than 2% of the World's Known Oil Reserves", but we're going to drill for them anyway in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, because we need to become energy independent. Places that two years ago were off-limits because we needed to "grow the Green Economy" and because "it's not worth the investment, doesn't solve our energy problems, and will contribute to global warming."
Two years later, the priorities seem to have changed.
The Green Energy Initiative that was supposed to create sixteen bazillion jobs only creates them in China. The Green Cornucopia that was to bring us unlimited energy instead brings us next-to-nothing nothing at prices that cannot be maintained. The threat of Global Warming, brought into question by the fact that the scientists and international bureaucrats who supposedly "study the phenomenon" are probably lying to us and doctoring their data to support outlandish claims and investments in their continuing "research" -- and even-more outlandish regulation and taxation.
And Obama gets his (death-) wish and accomplishes the passage of a "Health" "Care" "Reform" that is mostly-unfunded mandates that can only be realized by massive tax increases that the public is likely to revolt over.
Now, Obama's taking up the banner and fulfilling the evil Wishes of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Fascists, and shouting "Drill, Baby, Drill!" -- but still trying to disguise it as part of a Green Energy Initiative and as a matter of National Security -- by standing in front of a "modified" fighter-bomber? Why, the juxtaposition of political opportunism set against the cynicism of trying topaint your politicaloppoents as right-wing-extremist-whackos almost looks too painful to be real.
You have to be a complete and utter asshole to miss all that symbolism. You'd have to be Stevie Wonder not to see through it in a second.
Obama wants Cap-and-Trade policies that will, the Other Side insists, "solve" the "problem" of "Global Warming". But, Obama needs cash. Cold, hard, dollah-dollah-moolah, Baby, and tilting at windmills (literally) and depending on solar panels hasn't panned out quite the way He anticipated. It apparently isn;t so easy to blow Sunshine up people's asses when there's only so much to go around. Obama needs what on Wall Street we used to refer to as "an additional revenue stream",and what's known in political circles as "a pivot" so as not to be seen as ignoring the Americanpeople, and to convince them that he's really not a died-in-the-wool-Castro-Loving Commie Crapweasel.
Obama offers the molasses; we're going to open up drilling and exploitation of home-grown resources that have been off-limits for decades. Conservatives/Republicans/Tea-Fascists should be happy -- and lulled into a false sense of security. Then he feeds us the Sulphur: the money gained from the sale of drilling rights, the taxes collected on gasoline, electricity and by-products created with that all that new oil and the soon-to-return spectre of Windfall Profits Taxes, will then go into funding ObamaCare -- and might even be used to fund even worse liberal (small 'l' intentional) excesses. Some of us will get a job, some of us might have that appendectomy paid for eight years from now. As long as all that happens (He assumes), we're not supposed to notice that Obama basically became a Conservative overnight, caved to the pressure of public opinion, and tossed his Leftie friends over the railing on the issue of enslaving us all in the name of Mother Gaia (the New Communism), turning himself into a liar and opportunist in the process.
In the meantime, maybe a few tens of thousands of Americans might be put back to work, which will be trumpeted as evidence of an economic "miracle" by (P)MSNBC and their ilk (in a country in which 10 million are "officially" unemployed, and the true total might be closer to 17 million). We're supposed to be grateful for any economic growth we get out of this President, no matter how mediocre and infinitesimal.
David Copperfield on his best day couldn't pull this one off, and neither can Barack Obama. Mostly because he doesn't have any credibility anymore, and partly because like George C. Scott in "Patton", "You magnificent Bastard, I'VE READ YOUR BOOK!".
King Priam, the doomed monarch of Troy is supposed to have remarked upon the discovery of hte Trojan Horse "I fear the Greeks, even when they come bearing gifts...". But no one listened to him, and Troy was taken by deceit and the inhabitants slaughtered.
I fear the post-racial, post-partisan President who does nothing but harp on race and practice naked partisanship when He comes bearing gifts, too.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Cyber Bullies...
More on the sad and sickening case of Phoebe Prince, the poor girl who hung herself this past January after months of unrelenting cyber-stalking, and physical, verbal and mental abuse at the hands of her classmates.
Even if the video does come from (P)MSNBC, and is probably a cleaned-up version of events, three issues are becoming clearer with every passing day:
1. Phoebe's primary tormentors were girls. Particularly girls who were jealous of her, and that it might have been a girl that got dumped that began this whole sorry process. Hell hath no fury like a menstrual, hormonal teenager scorned, and all that. I expect to hear negatively from my female readers for saying this, but it's very possible that women are perhaps the more vicious sex. Men may be brutal, they might fight to kill, but Women fight to wound. And we're not talking cuts, scrapes and abrasions, we're talking psychic wounds. Deep ones. And when one woman is targeted by a group of women, it's like watching a school of sharks tear at a wounded baby seal.
Just because these girls were teenagers, an presumably unsophisticated, doesn't change that dynamic. Just ask Sarah Palin what her "feminist" counterparts have to say about her -- and her daughters and handicapped son -- on a daily basis.
I routinely see little groups of young girls in the neighborhood here who remind me of Nazis with Lip Gloss. They're every bit as crude, rough, nasty and vulgar as the boys are -- they certainly fight each other in the street as if they are -- and I'm beginning to get the impression that this has now become the norm, and despite what "the experts" might have to say, it's my opinion that nowadays, girls are just much more aggressive than they ever have been.
2. One of the unintended consequences of modern technology is that these girls had the ability, thanks to the Internet, Cell phones and Social Networking sites, to kick this girl's ass, sully her name, and torture her in public 24/7/365. There was no respite; the pressure was unrelenting. Even in the dark of night, a rumor spread in a chat room, a picture posted online, is now available to anyone 24-hours a day. This girl was not only be humiliated within her peer group, and even within her community, she was being hunted, tortured and humiliated all over the world.
How the hell to do you hide from something like that? Where do you go to get a break? Even if you don;t fight back, I can imagine she had a mailbox full of hate mail and obnoxious comments from complete strangers; because the Internet encourages every jerkoff who can type to get in on the act. I hear from them almost everyday, and I actually ask for it, I even relish getting that sort of e-mail. But I'm a 42-year old man who's survived some pretty nasty shit so that he doesn't have a fear of anything anymore. Do you think a 15 year-old girl wants that kind of attention, or is wired the same way so as to withstand it?
3. No one with any kind of authority -- let alone anything approaching decency -- seemed prepared to do much of anything. The parents of the tormentors, the school authorities, the Police, apparently didn't do a whole lot to help this poor girl. The pillars of our society are steady being eroded so that no one respects the word of a Principal, the Cop on the Beat, and certain not one's Parents, anymore.
I blame the lack of Corporal Punishment and the fact that the current generation of parents were raised by people who gave a shit about their "feelings" and "self-esteem", but neglected to teach them right from wrong. When I grew up, no one cared what I thought; I was a kid, it was my job to take orders...for my own good, see?
The end result of this stinking amalgam of stupidity, technology and no respect is a dead teen aged-girl -- anguished, afraid, isolated, unprotected -- and ultimately found hanging in her closet by a younger sister.
I can promise you that none of the teenagers possibly connected with her death probably feels in the least way responsible for what's happened. I can promise you that a few probably feel justified in what they did. Because they inhabit a world that doesn't even resemble the teen-aged world I grew up in, the one where actions still had consequences. Most of that feeling of non-responsibility will be due to the fact that that they're all idiots; only stupid people do the things this bunch is accused of doing, and nowadays most teenagers haven't got the same sense found in a retarded Cocker Spaniel. They certainly aren't being taught anything in school, let alone Civic Virtue or Morality. But the primary cause will be Bad Parenting.
These kids don't have parents; they have Sperm Donors and Rent-a-Wombs, who's primary responsibility seems will be to feed the fucking thing until it's 18 -- and then kick it out of the house -- all the time praying that it doesn't do anything stupid to either embarrass you, or cost you money. When that, invariably, happens, then the little bastard they never discipline, say two cross words to, or punish in any meaningful way for their transgressions suddenly becomes the perfect child "Never been any trouble before. An absolute angel. I can't understand what made her do this. She was probably "pressured" into it by the other girls, uh-huh...". You really haven't a clue as to what your children are up to when they're not in your sight, do you? Real parents would know what they did, they would have raised their children with a sense of right and wrong, a moral code and a sense of decency. Good Parents teach their children to be compassionate individuals -- capable of imagining what it's like to be on the receiving end.
Bad parents raise murderers.
These weren't "children"; this was a pack of hyenas. And that's an insult to hyenas, because what a hyena does at least serves some ultimate purpose.
If there were truly any justice in this world, and these girls were in fact ever convicted of causing Phoebe Prince's death, then they'd be found hanging inside a closet, too. Instead, what's probably going to happen is that Justice will be restrained by Psychology, and some PhD who couldn't get a real job will explain that these children were psychologically-incapable of realizing they were doing something wrong, and too dumb to foresee the ultimate end their actions might entail. The State of Massachusetts will spend another slab of money on "anti-bullying" programs, there will be more cyber-protection laws put in place, and then another girl will found dead, the victim of unrelenting bullying in both this world and in the virtual world of cyberspace.
Because the problem is not The Law, and it's not Psychology; it's the kids and their lousy parents. If these kids aren't torturing each other until one feels the only way out is suicide, they're plotting Columbine-type events -- and their parents are always the last to know.
No one will stop this nonsense until punishment, real and proportionate justice, free of the stain of pap Psychology, is dealt out very, very publicly, and very, very painfully. It's the only way to restore a sense of responsibility back into this culture.
UPDATE: It was pointed out to me that Phoebe committed suicide in January, not this past weekend. It was only nationally-reported this past weekend. That mistake is mine, and has been corrected.
Even if the video does come from (P)MSNBC, and is probably a cleaned-up version of events, three issues are becoming clearer with every passing day:
1. Phoebe's primary tormentors were girls. Particularly girls who were jealous of her, and that it might have been a girl that got dumped that began this whole sorry process. Hell hath no fury like a menstrual, hormonal teenager scorned, and all that. I expect to hear negatively from my female readers for saying this, but it's very possible that women are perhaps the more vicious sex. Men may be brutal, they might fight to kill, but Women fight to wound. And we're not talking cuts, scrapes and abrasions, we're talking psychic wounds. Deep ones. And when one woman is targeted by a group of women, it's like watching a school of sharks tear at a wounded baby seal.
Just because these girls were teenagers, an presumably unsophisticated, doesn't change that dynamic. Just ask Sarah Palin what her "feminist" counterparts have to say about her -- and her daughters and handicapped son -- on a daily basis.
I routinely see little groups of young girls in the neighborhood here who remind me of Nazis with Lip Gloss. They're every bit as crude, rough, nasty and vulgar as the boys are -- they certainly fight each other in the street as if they are -- and I'm beginning to get the impression that this has now become the norm, and despite what "the experts" might have to say, it's my opinion that nowadays, girls are just much more aggressive than they ever have been.
2. One of the unintended consequences of modern technology is that these girls had the ability, thanks to the Internet, Cell phones and Social Networking sites, to kick this girl's ass, sully her name, and torture her in public 24/7/365. There was no respite; the pressure was unrelenting. Even in the dark of night, a rumor spread in a chat room, a picture posted online, is now available to anyone 24-hours a day. This girl was not only be humiliated within her peer group, and even within her community, she was being hunted, tortured and humiliated all over the world.
How the hell to do you hide from something like that? Where do you go to get a break? Even if you don;t fight back, I can imagine she had a mailbox full of hate mail and obnoxious comments from complete strangers; because the Internet encourages every jerkoff who can type to get in on the act. I hear from them almost everyday, and I actually ask for it, I even relish getting that sort of e-mail. But I'm a 42-year old man who's survived some pretty nasty shit so that he doesn't have a fear of anything anymore. Do you think a 15 year-old girl wants that kind of attention, or is wired the same way so as to withstand it?
3. No one with any kind of authority -- let alone anything approaching decency -- seemed prepared to do much of anything. The parents of the tormentors, the school authorities, the Police, apparently didn't do a whole lot to help this poor girl. The pillars of our society are steady being eroded so that no one respects the word of a Principal, the Cop on the Beat, and certain not one's Parents, anymore.
I blame the lack of Corporal Punishment and the fact that the current generation of parents were raised by people who gave a shit about their "feelings" and "self-esteem", but neglected to teach them right from wrong. When I grew up, no one cared what I thought; I was a kid, it was my job to take orders...for my own good, see?
The end result of this stinking amalgam of stupidity, technology and no respect is a dead teen aged-girl -- anguished, afraid, isolated, unprotected -- and ultimately found hanging in her closet by a younger sister.
I can promise you that none of the teenagers possibly connected with her death probably feels in the least way responsible for what's happened. I can promise you that a few probably feel justified in what they did. Because they inhabit a world that doesn't even resemble the teen-aged world I grew up in, the one where actions still had consequences. Most of that feeling of non-responsibility will be due to the fact that that they're all idiots; only stupid people do the things this bunch is accused of doing, and nowadays most teenagers haven't got the same sense found in a retarded Cocker Spaniel. They certainly aren't being taught anything in school, let alone Civic Virtue or Morality. But the primary cause will be Bad Parenting.
These kids don't have parents; they have Sperm Donors and Rent-a-Wombs, who's primary responsibility seems will be to feed the fucking thing until it's 18 -- and then kick it out of the house -- all the time praying that it doesn't do anything stupid to either embarrass you, or cost you money. When that, invariably, happens, then the little bastard they never discipline, say two cross words to, or punish in any meaningful way for their transgressions suddenly becomes the perfect child "Never been any trouble before. An absolute angel. I can't understand what made her do this. She was probably "pressured" into it by the other girls, uh-huh...". You really haven't a clue as to what your children are up to when they're not in your sight, do you? Real parents would know what they did, they would have raised their children with a sense of right and wrong, a moral code and a sense of decency. Good Parents teach their children to be compassionate individuals -- capable of imagining what it's like to be on the receiving end.
Bad parents raise murderers.
These weren't "children"; this was a pack of hyenas. And that's an insult to hyenas, because what a hyena does at least serves some ultimate purpose.
If there were truly any justice in this world, and these girls were in fact ever convicted of causing Phoebe Prince's death, then they'd be found hanging inside a closet, too. Instead, what's probably going to happen is that Justice will be restrained by Psychology, and some PhD who couldn't get a real job will explain that these children were psychologically-incapable of realizing they were doing something wrong, and too dumb to foresee the ultimate end their actions might entail. The State of Massachusetts will spend another slab of money on "anti-bullying" programs, there will be more cyber-protection laws put in place, and then another girl will found dead, the victim of unrelenting bullying in both this world and in the virtual world of cyberspace.
Because the problem is not The Law, and it's not Psychology; it's the kids and their lousy parents. If these kids aren't torturing each other until one feels the only way out is suicide, they're plotting Columbine-type events -- and their parents are always the last to know.
No one will stop this nonsense until punishment, real and proportionate justice, free of the stain of pap Psychology, is dealt out very, very publicly, and very, very painfully. It's the only way to restore a sense of responsibility back into this culture.
UPDATE: It was pointed out to me that Phoebe committed suicide in January, not this past weekend. It was only nationally-reported this past weekend. That mistake is mine, and has been corrected.
You Gotta LOVE English Newspapers...
That is Peaches Geldoff, daughter of Bob. If you've forgotten who Bob Geldoff is (or if you didn't know), he's the man who turned one extremely mediocre and obscure song into a career and a knighthood.
Bob Geldoff is the former lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, who starred as "Pink" in Pink Floyd's "The Wall", and who now earns his living off the suffering of dead Africans disguised as "caring". He and Bono has special places reserved for them in the Infernal Regions, I'm certain.
Anyways, about Peaches...
I'd never heard of her before this.
Now, what's funny about this whole, sordid story is the manufactured drama. It's almost as if they hired her knowing that one day they'd fire her, and splash it all over the papers. It's almost too good a tale NOT to have been manufactured. And it's not really a good idea to have an underwear model who's covered in tats; it's distracting. Upon seeing that picture, I was drawn (so to speak) to the ink -- not the undies --and especially-drawn to that Whore Marker that runs up her thigh and side, and I find myself wondering just what it was that lurked beneath (in terms of the tattoo, not the other stuff!) the waistband. There's a portion of tat visible on the other side. Who's looking at the undies? And who decided that this is the sort of woman who represents "the average" whom, I suspect, are the ones who actually buy this crap? The Average Woman I know doesn't have tattoos, nor does her appearance suggest filthy, knee-knocker liaisons in the alley out back -- and then back to the dance floor.
Peaches fairly screams "Treat me like dirt...", only in sexy underwear. She looks more like the spokes model for gonorrhea.
I know nothing about ladies' underwear. Don''t really want to know, either. Never had one of those supposedly-all-men-have-it fetishes for lingerie, either. You spend all that time getting gussied up, complete with cables and girders, and I'm only going to do my level-best to get it off you as quickly as I can. But, it would seem to me that if you're going to sell ladies undergarments, you should probably avoid the tattooed chicks, especially the ones with a heroin habit.
This smells so badly of "set-up", though, that it's hard to take it seriously. I can just see some corporate executive's thought process in action:
"...tsk, tsk, tsk, our spokesmodel is a drug addict with sexy pictures someplace? Oh, Dear Me! That soooo Paris Hilton, so...last decade.... No, no, no, just won't do...fire her, George.... no wait....Make certain you dig up those racy photos of her, and get them printed in the newspapers, and THEN you may fire her. Make a big show of it, will you Old Boy? Make sure it makes a splash.... all the papers and those entertainment programs the proles watch, get it on first on the BBC Newscast...all free publicity, you know! The girl? Who cares? Find another. Should be a million like her in London alone...I say, see if you can't get a Muslim one this time, so as to make a bigger controversy when she turns out to have a raging drug habit, and a secret rendezvous that took place in front of 40 video cameras, will you? There's a good man..."
(H/T FiveFeetofFury)
This Just In: Something You Already Knew Ten Years Ago Reported as "News"...
Ricky Martin is gay.
I would have said that anyone who could use the line "Her hair is the color Mocha..." was pretty much standing atop the tallest building in Gayville, shouting "I'm Queee-eeer! Come Get me, you Sexy Poo-stabbers!".
The only things missing were the feather boa and the martini glass. Any man who can dance that well, and obviously spends that much time and pays that much detail to his appearance, is so obviously gay that it's hard to figure out how anyone missed it.
This reminds me so much of a man I used to know who was so gay that other gay men shook their heads in disbelief about just how gay he was -- they used to refer to him either as "Scary Gay...", or on more than one occasion "Capitol Gay". Capitol Gay? Yes, "gay" in capitol letters; G-A-Y. Only "Tim" (not his real name) was laboring under the misapprehension that no one knew that he was a "secret" Rump Ranger.
I had worked with "Tim" for nearly a decade, when he finally "Came Out" during, of all things, Diversity Class. I guess he was so moved by the experience that he had finally decided to come clean, or more likely, he was just marking his territory as an oppressed minority.
Anyways, he was quite proud of himself at the time, but that pride quickly turned to disappointment when we all told him "No Shit, Tim!". The impeccable dress, the always-shining-like-a mirror shoes, the perfect hair, the lisp, the skipping through the hallways, singing torch songs in the Men's Room, it was all a dead giveaway.
"Tim" was crushed; he thought his little tidbit of news would have caused a stir (in the vein of Oscar Wilde's famous dictum "There is only thing worse than being talked about, and that is NOT being talked about...), and would have made him an office celebrity. Instead, life went on much as it had for the ten years prior. Much of "Tim's" spirit had been crushed by the fact that no one gave a shit about how gay he was, and not long after, he quit for greener pastures (the last I heard of him, he was running a pet grooming boutique on Long Island).
I don't know what any of that has to do with Ricky Martin, and just like the "news" that he's a flamer, I could really care less. I just find it funny that people can consider themselves shocked and surprised when the evidence was always on display, and that this somehow is "news".
I would have said that anyone who could use the line "Her hair is the color Mocha..." was pretty much standing atop the tallest building in Gayville, shouting "I'm Queee-eeer! Come Get me, you Sexy Poo-stabbers!".
The only things missing were the feather boa and the martini glass. Any man who can dance that well, and obviously spends that much time and pays that much detail to his appearance, is so obviously gay that it's hard to figure out how anyone missed it.
This reminds me so much of a man I used to know who was so gay that other gay men shook their heads in disbelief about just how gay he was -- they used to refer to him either as "Scary Gay...", or on more than one occasion "Capitol Gay". Capitol Gay? Yes, "gay" in capitol letters; G-A-Y. Only "Tim" (not his real name) was laboring under the misapprehension that no one knew that he was a "secret" Rump Ranger.
I had worked with "Tim" for nearly a decade, when he finally "Came Out" during, of all things, Diversity Class. I guess he was so moved by the experience that he had finally decided to come clean, or more likely, he was just marking his territory as an oppressed minority.
Anyways, he was quite proud of himself at the time, but that pride quickly turned to disappointment when we all told him "No Shit, Tim!". The impeccable dress, the always-shining-like-a mirror shoes, the perfect hair, the lisp, the skipping through the hallways, singing torch songs in the Men's Room, it was all a dead giveaway.
"Tim" was crushed; he thought his little tidbit of news would have caused a stir (in the vein of Oscar Wilde's famous dictum "There is only thing worse than being talked about, and that is NOT being talked about...), and would have made him an office celebrity. Instead, life went on much as it had for the ten years prior. Much of "Tim's" spirit had been crushed by the fact that no one gave a shit about how gay he was, and not long after, he quit for greener pastures (the last I heard of him, he was running a pet grooming boutique on Long Island).
I don't know what any of that has to do with Ricky Martin, and just like the "news" that he's a flamer, I could really care less. I just find it funny that people can consider themselves shocked and surprised when the evidence was always on display, and that this somehow is "news".
I Wonder What's In Barack Obama's Report?
I saw a TV advertisement recently for a company offering online background checks (I won't provide a link, or name them because I think their service is disgusting and wide open to abuse). Simply stop by their website, drop a credit card number on 'em, and you'll be able to find out if your boyfriend is a convicted pedophile or not. Of if that prospective employee has a history of drug use. Maybe you wish to know if your future father-in-law was ever caught inflagrante delicto with a three-legged poodle, a half-pound of ground pork, and a jackhammer. In fact, you can use this service to find out if someone is a Deadbeat Dad, on a Terrorist Watch List, was ever cited for speeding, littering or spitting on the sidewalk, and their financial status.
Why, that sounds like a great service to have access to, doesn't it? It could save you an awful lot of trouble (or give you the means to get even with your enemies, real and perceived), and if you really need to make certain about that woman sharing your bed, or that cute guy who just asked you out -- or even your hairdresser, dogwalker or podiatrist, should you have nagging doubts about them -- then why not? I mean, peace of mind and all that, right?
The commercial in question made a great show of letting women (specifically) know that there's a lot of cads out there (no shit; they do the same with all the burglar alarm commercials). If you were a devotee of Lifetime television (Where I saw the ad, loooong story) then you already knew there's only two kinds of men in the world; the homicidal/polygamist/sadistic/serial-wife-killer/abuser/rapist and the pussywhipped limpdick who's subservient to ultra-powerful, career-woman wife. The sort who would eat a mile of her shit just to get the chance to sniff at her asshole.The commercial is pretty much aimed at those women -- the paranoid, brain-dead kooks who live and die by the Movie of the Week. The ones who think that all male/female relationships cleave close to the way they're portrayed on TV, who can't separate the fantasy of television from reality. They believe that a rapist lurks about every corner, and that every man is out to "get" her; the service is presented as a valuable tool that no woman who wants to avoid being raped/ripped off/murdered/disappeared/mistreated/disrespected/dumped for a younger model should be without.
Nothing like a little fear-mongering to drive up sales, is there? Besides, if you are the kind of person who really is this paranoid, then you're probably pretty lonely in any case, so the chances of a new boyfriend/girlfriend being a masher -- the chances of there being a new boyfriend/girlfriend AT ALL -- are pretty low.You're either the type that's building a bunker in your basement, or others just notice the crazy in you and give you a wide berth. Get used to it.
Naturally, I can see men using this service, too. And some of them might actually be stalkers -- or like a great many of the women who will use this service, petty idiots with an irrational axes to grind -- who are basically being given a valuable tool. Then there's the racist who doesn't want to hire minorities (more likely to be the Minority who Won't Hire Whitey) so he goes out and uses the reports he pays for hoping they've had even minor brushes with the Law in order to justify not hiring them.
Of course, it never occurs to anyone who would do this that if they're using the service to get the goods on their potential friends and employees, then it stands to reason that someone's doing it to them, too. And judging from the parade of morons who routinely show up on shows like Judge Judy, Judge Jeannine, Judge Alex, Judge Karen, etc, etc. (no wonder crime rates are so high; all the fucking Judges are on TV!), I can just see an endless line of mouth-breathing morons running into courtrooms all over the country with similar reports offered by similar websites, submitting them as "evidence" of the "defendant's character". If aliens landed today, and if they formed a profile of mankind by monitoring our "Courtroom Shows" they'd come to the realization that about 75% of us couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight, and look like we were a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong. They'd probably come to the conclusion that no intelligent life was here, and just for good measure, they'd better destroy the planet before we pollute the galaxy. You have to ask yourself a few questions about this sort of thing: What standards are there? What are the criteria under which this information is handed out? What guarantees do you have the information is accurate? What happens if someone is injured by information on that report? Are such reports admissible in a court, or to deny employment, and under what criteria?
What happens if you're the victim of identity theft? What if this service actually helps a criminal to steal your identity?
I'm thinking of the day when someone is denied a job because of a 15 year old pot bust when they were 18. What happens when someone is wrongly put on a Sex Offender List because the information on those reports was abused by someone looking to get even with them? What happens when someone's marriage is destroyed by that information? Why should such information be so easy to get and be available to anyone without your permission in the first place?
Way back in the Dark Ages the Anglo-Saxon Kings of England commissioned a detailed study of their kingdom, to include all the people in it, their professions, their possessions and their holdings, right down to the last sheep and cooking pot. It was called the Domesday Book (Doomsday Book), and whenever the King needed to raise some taxes or take some land from one noble to give it to another, they consulted The Book. It was used to tax, and to punish. The King knew who could afford his new taxes and how much they could afford to pay, but he could also use the information in that book to take from one noble and to give to another, and thus, everyone had a reason to be very, very loyal to His Majesty.
Nowadays, thanks to the magic of computerized data collection and storage (the process is known as Data Warehousing), we have a much more extensive Domesday Book; not only is your financial life available to anyone willing to pay for the records, but now almost every aspect of your PERSONAL life is an open book to anyone who'll cough up the $49.95. Since we live in a culture in which there are no boundaries, and absolutely no common sense, let alone respect for others, we're probably all in for a lot of trouble from now on because someone has just made your life available to a legion of doofuses ranging from the "Simply Curious" to the "Criminally Insane" now can gain access to your personal info.
If I ever hear anyone complain about their "Right to Privacy" being violated again, I'll shoot them. You violate your own right to privacy (such as it is) every day when you fill in online surveys, surf the web, use a debit card or join the local gym. You were stamped and numbered the day you were born, and you've complied with every request for information from the time you registered to school to every job application you ever filled out. And someone's gone to the trouble of collecting that data; they've been collecting it for decades. Now, someone, even complete strangers, can pay for the privilege of violating what shreds of privacy you have left for a fee...and somehow this can be peddled to you as a virtue that can save your life.
It'll get worse when the government decides that it shouldn't have to pay for that information -- if it doesn't have most of it already -- (never put past your government to make a small fortune by selling the information it has about you to anyone who wants it) and simply starts issuing warrants or subpoenas for it. And you just know that some of them will be based upon the flimsiest of pretenses, but some brain-dead judge will allow it anyway.
One more Civil Liberty lost thanks to the confluence of technology, stupidity and complacency.
This country is soooo screwed.
Why, that sounds like a great service to have access to, doesn't it? It could save you an awful lot of trouble (or give you the means to get even with your enemies, real and perceived), and if you really need to make certain about that woman sharing your bed, or that cute guy who just asked you out -- or even your hairdresser, dogwalker or podiatrist, should you have nagging doubts about them -- then why not? I mean, peace of mind and all that, right?
The commercial in question made a great show of letting women (specifically) know that there's a lot of cads out there (no shit; they do the same with all the burglar alarm commercials). If you were a devotee of Lifetime television (Where I saw the ad, loooong story) then you already knew there's only two kinds of men in the world; the homicidal/polygamist/sadistic/serial-wife-killer/abuser/rapist and the pussywhipped limpdick who's subservient to ultra-powerful, career-woman wife. The sort who would eat a mile of her shit just to get the chance to sniff at her asshole.The commercial is pretty much aimed at those women -- the paranoid, brain-dead kooks who live and die by the Movie of the Week. The ones who think that all male/female relationships cleave close to the way they're portrayed on TV, who can't separate the fantasy of television from reality. They believe that a rapist lurks about every corner, and that every man is out to "get" her; the service is presented as a valuable tool that no woman who wants to avoid being raped/ripped off/murdered/disappeared/mistreated/disrespected/dumped for a younger model should be without.
Nothing like a little fear-mongering to drive up sales, is there? Besides, if you are the kind of person who really is this paranoid, then you're probably pretty lonely in any case, so the chances of a new boyfriend/girlfriend being a masher -- the chances of there being a new boyfriend/girlfriend AT ALL -- are pretty low.You're either the type that's building a bunker in your basement, or others just notice the crazy in you and give you a wide berth. Get used to it.
Naturally, I can see men using this service, too. And some of them might actually be stalkers -- or like a great many of the women who will use this service, petty idiots with an irrational axes to grind -- who are basically being given a valuable tool. Then there's the racist who doesn't want to hire minorities (more likely to be the Minority who Won't Hire Whitey) so he goes out and uses the reports he pays for hoping they've had even minor brushes with the Law in order to justify not hiring them.
Of course, it never occurs to anyone who would do this that if they're using the service to get the goods on their potential friends and employees, then it stands to reason that someone's doing it to them, too. And judging from the parade of morons who routinely show up on shows like Judge Judy, Judge Jeannine, Judge Alex, Judge Karen, etc, etc. (no wonder crime rates are so high; all the fucking Judges are on TV!), I can just see an endless line of mouth-breathing morons running into courtrooms all over the country with similar reports offered by similar websites, submitting them as "evidence" of the "defendant's character". If aliens landed today, and if they formed a profile of mankind by monitoring our "Courtroom Shows" they'd come to the realization that about 75% of us couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight, and look like we were a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong. They'd probably come to the conclusion that no intelligent life was here, and just for good measure, they'd better destroy the planet before we pollute the galaxy. You have to ask yourself a few questions about this sort of thing: What standards are there? What are the criteria under which this information is handed out? What guarantees do you have the information is accurate? What happens if someone is injured by information on that report? Are such reports admissible in a court, or to deny employment, and under what criteria?
What happens if you're the victim of identity theft? What if this service actually helps a criminal to steal your identity?
I'm thinking of the day when someone is denied a job because of a 15 year old pot bust when they were 18. What happens when someone is wrongly put on a Sex Offender List because the information on those reports was abused by someone looking to get even with them? What happens when someone's marriage is destroyed by that information? Why should such information be so easy to get and be available to anyone without your permission in the first place?
Way back in the Dark Ages the Anglo-Saxon Kings of England commissioned a detailed study of their kingdom, to include all the people in it, their professions, their possessions and their holdings, right down to the last sheep and cooking pot. It was called the Domesday Book (Doomsday Book), and whenever the King needed to raise some taxes or take some land from one noble to give it to another, they consulted The Book. It was used to tax, and to punish. The King knew who could afford his new taxes and how much they could afford to pay, but he could also use the information in that book to take from one noble and to give to another, and thus, everyone had a reason to be very, very loyal to His Majesty.
Nowadays, thanks to the magic of computerized data collection and storage (the process is known as Data Warehousing), we have a much more extensive Domesday Book; not only is your financial life available to anyone willing to pay for the records, but now almost every aspect of your PERSONAL life is an open book to anyone who'll cough up the $49.95. Since we live in a culture in which there are no boundaries, and absolutely no common sense, let alone respect for others, we're probably all in for a lot of trouble from now on because someone has just made your life available to a legion of doofuses ranging from the "Simply Curious" to the "Criminally Insane" now can gain access to your personal info.
If I ever hear anyone complain about their "Right to Privacy" being violated again, I'll shoot them. You violate your own right to privacy (such as it is) every day when you fill in online surveys, surf the web, use a debit card or join the local gym. You were stamped and numbered the day you were born, and you've complied with every request for information from the time you registered to school to every job application you ever filled out. And someone's gone to the trouble of collecting that data; they've been collecting it for decades. Now, someone, even complete strangers, can pay for the privilege of violating what shreds of privacy you have left for a fee...and somehow this can be peddled to you as a virtue that can save your life.
It'll get worse when the government decides that it shouldn't have to pay for that information -- if it doesn't have most of it already -- (never put past your government to make a small fortune by selling the information it has about you to anyone who wants it) and simply starts issuing warrants or subpoenas for it. And you just know that some of them will be based upon the flimsiest of pretenses, but some brain-dead judge will allow it anyway.
One more Civil Liberty lost thanks to the confluence of technology, stupidity and complacency.
This country is soooo screwed.
Monday, March 29, 2010
I Will Be Quite Busy This Afternoon...
So blogging will be virtually non-existant for the remainder of the day. However, that's no reason for you to not surf through some of the of fascinating and wonderful places this Internet thing has to offer.
So, here's a short list of Lunatic-recommeded sites you might wish to stop and sniff:
The Closet Conservative (wish her a happy Passover, please!)
The Daily Caller
Victor Davis Hanson
The Weekly Standard
American Thinker
Lucianne.com
So, here's a short list of Lunatic-recommeded sites you might wish to stop and sniff:
The Closet Conservative (wish her a happy Passover, please!)
The Daily Caller
Victor Davis Hanson
The Weekly Standard
American Thinker
Lucianne.com
Your Children Suck...
For all the parents out there who believe that Your Little Angels are well-behaved. law-abiding, perfectly capable of establishing their own reasonable boundaries, and of making their own, well-informed and reasonable decisions:
You are not a parent. You just donated the gametes. You seriously have no clear idea of what your children do when they're out of your line of sight, do you?
Last night, a small crowd of Bubble-gum Gansgtas ran through my neighborhood, overturning garbage cans, kicking dents into people's cars, making a God-awful racket and being absolute assholes. I would hazard to guess that this group of about 8-10 13 yr-old boys had a good reason to be roaming the streets at 11:30 on a Sunday night, and engaging in such activities (maybe it was a homework assignment?), but I couldn't get the opportunity to find out when they visited my house to attempt pouring the contents of my neighbor's garbage cans into my shrubbery, because they ran like little girls (a few even screaming!) when I caught them in the act. You can't get a cop to do anything about it because, well, 11:30 on Sunday night is just before they change shifts at Dunkin' Donuts, and when you knock on your neighbor's door to tell her her son is a Barbarian, she gets defensive and tells you to mind your own fuckin' business.
This minor-but-common-around-here complaint, of course, pales in comparison to this one:
9 Teens Charged with Bullying Teen Who Killed Herself After Rape
I guess some of you really have no clue about what your children are up to. So long as no one calls you to complain about anything, and the school you warehouse them in for 8 hours a day isn't calling you, and you can keep them quiet with their little electronic doo-dads so that they aren't up your ass all day, then everything is hunky-fucking-dory, isn't it?
Stories like this aren't a rarity, sadly. This is the third or fourth suicide (and another young girl, too) under similar circumstances that I'm reading about in the last year, or so. What the fuck are these kids doing to each other, and where are their parents?
It's obvious their parents are nowhere to be found. There's obviously little supervision, and little guidance from Sperm Donor and The Woman Who Carried It Around for Nine Months, and the schools are full of union hacks who are more concerned with the Holy Grail of tenure than they are with helping to create decent human beings. Where are the cops? Where are the social services people? Where is the Church? Did this poor girl have absolutely no options available to her at all, or are we going to eventually find out that she was failed by everyone, which sadly, is far too often the case?
To (many) of you parents out there: your children are Huns. Rein them in before we have more suicides, or worse, before they're plotting the execution of their classmates and the destruction of their school with explosives. When that happens, you can bet the first words out of the parent's mouths are always "I had no idea that Johnny was thinking about this! I can't understand why he would do a thing like this...."
He thinks that way because you let him, and because you never listen to anything he has to say -- unless it costs you money or inconveniences you. He does these things because you don't care about what he does; you don't ask how he is, and you certainly don't involve yourself in his life so as to not crush his precious self-esteem. And so long as no one breaks your balls about it, everyone's happy, right?
Predictably, because you failed in your responsibility as a parent, property gets damaged, neighborhoods are terrorized, communities become less safe and civil -- and then someone winds up dead.
We know where this road leads. So, do us all a favor and put your little sacks of raging testosterone and porn-stars-in-training on a leash, or better yet, teach them some fucking manners and restraint. Save a life.
Update: They're probably watching their friend's mothers stripping-- when they aren't screwing their teachers-- I guess.
You are not a parent. You just donated the gametes. You seriously have no clear idea of what your children do when they're out of your line of sight, do you?
Last night, a small crowd of Bubble-gum Gansgtas ran through my neighborhood, overturning garbage cans, kicking dents into people's cars, making a God-awful racket and being absolute assholes. I would hazard to guess that this group of about 8-10 13 yr-old boys had a good reason to be roaming the streets at 11:30 on a Sunday night, and engaging in such activities (maybe it was a homework assignment?), but I couldn't get the opportunity to find out when they visited my house to attempt pouring the contents of my neighbor's garbage cans into my shrubbery, because they ran like little girls (a few even screaming!) when I caught them in the act. You can't get a cop to do anything about it because, well, 11:30 on Sunday night is just before they change shifts at Dunkin' Donuts, and when you knock on your neighbor's door to tell her her son is a Barbarian, she gets defensive and tells you to mind your own fuckin' business.
This minor-but-common-around-here complaint, of course, pales in comparison to this one:
9 Teens Charged with Bullying Teen Who Killed Herself After Rape
I guess some of you really have no clue about what your children are up to. So long as no one calls you to complain about anything, and the school you warehouse them in for 8 hours a day isn't calling you, and you can keep them quiet with their little electronic doo-dads so that they aren't up your ass all day, then everything is hunky-fucking-dory, isn't it?
Stories like this aren't a rarity, sadly. This is the third or fourth suicide (and another young girl, too) under similar circumstances that I'm reading about in the last year, or so. What the fuck are these kids doing to each other, and where are their parents?
It's obvious their parents are nowhere to be found. There's obviously little supervision, and little guidance from Sperm Donor and The Woman Who Carried It Around for Nine Months, and the schools are full of union hacks who are more concerned with the Holy Grail of tenure than they are with helping to create decent human beings. Where are the cops? Where are the social services people? Where is the Church? Did this poor girl have absolutely no options available to her at all, or are we going to eventually find out that she was failed by everyone, which sadly, is far too often the case?
To (many) of you parents out there: your children are Huns. Rein them in before we have more suicides, or worse, before they're plotting the execution of their classmates and the destruction of their school with explosives. When that happens, you can bet the first words out of the parent's mouths are always "I had no idea that Johnny was thinking about this! I can't understand why he would do a thing like this...."
He thinks that way because you let him, and because you never listen to anything he has to say -- unless it costs you money or inconveniences you. He does these things because you don't care about what he does; you don't ask how he is, and you certainly don't involve yourself in his life so as to not crush his precious self-esteem. And so long as no one breaks your balls about it, everyone's happy, right?
Predictably, because you failed in your responsibility as a parent, property gets damaged, neighborhoods are terrorized, communities become less safe and civil -- and then someone winds up dead.
We know where this road leads. So, do us all a favor and put your little sacks of raging testosterone and porn-stars-in-training on a leash, or better yet, teach them some fucking manners and restraint. Save a life.
Update: They're probably watching their friend's mothers stripping-- when they aren't screwing their teachers-- I guess.
Terrorism in Moscow..
Two women, believed to be members of a Chechen group known as the Black Widows of Chechnya, strapped explosives on, walked into the Moscow subway system, and in the station below the former-KGB Headquarters -- and blew themselves up.
The death toll, so far, is 38. With 65 others wounded.
We can argue about the validity of the Russian invasion of Chechnya all day long. It was naked imperialism, a purely defensive move, or made as part of a plan to reassert Russian control over ethnic minorities and lost territories. Whatever. I don't know enough about the history here to make a judgement on those subjects.
However, the response of the Chechens is something I can and will make a judgement on.
Chechen retaliation for Russian re-conquest have taken the forms of taking an entire elementary school hostage in Beslan, resulting in the deaths of 300people -- half of them children -- from gunshot wounds and explosives. The taking of a Moscow theatre which led to the deaths of over 100 people trapped within by toxic gas. And now, we have people being blown up on public transport (I guess Chechens can't afford plane tickets, or perhaps the Russians do the right thing and keep Islamic folk off airplanes, huh?).
I understand the dynamic of a smaller force, unable to confront it's enemy directly, turning to irregular methods of warfare. But this is not to say that many of those methods are the same as terrorism, which is a specific tactic, more psychological than military.
Unless you're a Muslim -- which many Chechens are. Then terrorism is your preferred method of warfare, and it's aimed not at the troops (they might shoot back and kill you, you know! How am I supposed to be a Brave Warrior of Allah if I can't run away?), but at unarmed people, often defenseless people, taken unawares:
Children
Movie-goers
People riding subway trains
I don't think you're gathering any sympathy for your cause, worthy or not, Chechens and Black Widows. I might even hazard a guess that you're about to get one rammed right up your wazoo, if the Russkies still operate in the same ways they have for the last 100 years. There's going to be a whole lot more Black Widows of Chechnya, and there should be: the fewer Muslims, and even better, fewer Muslims who believe terrorism is legitimate political and military activity, and the easier the rest of the world may rest.
Yeah, I know; some people who read that will say "That's cruel and it's racist and it's disgusting..." but I could give a shit. First of all, "Muslim" is not a race. If the time ever came when you were faced by a gun or bomb-wielding fanatic, I can promise you that your Politically Correct Pieties will not protect you when that lunatic wants you dead. You don't earn any brownie points for kissing Muzzie backside and acquiring a taste for cous-cous and goat. Islam is a disease that causes people to blow themselves up and take as many innocent bystanders as they can with them -- and then excuses it as a moral and religious imperative. It is indiscriminate in it's violence, and can excuse even the worst behaviors so long as they are directed against "The Infidel" -- a list which grows longer by the day, as Muslims discover even more people they wish to dispossess and enslave.
If that isn't cruel and disgusting, then I don't know what is.
Moscow is not innocent in all of this; for many years it supported terrorist groups, many of the Arab and Muslim, as weapons to be used against the West or to spread communist ideology. Sometimes, you reap what you sow. Good luck to the Russians in their task of trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
There's gonna be a lot of dead Chechens soon.
The death toll, so far, is 38. With 65 others wounded.
We can argue about the validity of the Russian invasion of Chechnya all day long. It was naked imperialism, a purely defensive move, or made as part of a plan to reassert Russian control over ethnic minorities and lost territories. Whatever. I don't know enough about the history here to make a judgement on those subjects.
However, the response of the Chechens is something I can and will make a judgement on.
Chechen retaliation for Russian re-conquest have taken the forms of taking an entire elementary school hostage in Beslan, resulting in the deaths of 300people -- half of them children -- from gunshot wounds and explosives. The taking of a Moscow theatre which led to the deaths of over 100 people trapped within by toxic gas. And now, we have people being blown up on public transport (I guess Chechens can't afford plane tickets, or perhaps the Russians do the right thing and keep Islamic folk off airplanes, huh?).
I understand the dynamic of a smaller force, unable to confront it's enemy directly, turning to irregular methods of warfare. But this is not to say that many of those methods are the same as terrorism, which is a specific tactic, more psychological than military.
Unless you're a Muslim -- which many Chechens are. Then terrorism is your preferred method of warfare, and it's aimed not at the troops (they might shoot back and kill you, you know! How am I supposed to be a Brave Warrior of Allah if I can't run away?), but at unarmed people, often defenseless people, taken unawares:
Children
Movie-goers
People riding subway trains
I don't think you're gathering any sympathy for your cause, worthy or not, Chechens and Black Widows. I might even hazard a guess that you're about to get one rammed right up your wazoo, if the Russkies still operate in the same ways they have for the last 100 years. There's going to be a whole lot more Black Widows of Chechnya, and there should be: the fewer Muslims, and even better, fewer Muslims who believe terrorism is legitimate political and military activity, and the easier the rest of the world may rest.
Yeah, I know; some people who read that will say "That's cruel and it's racist and it's disgusting..." but I could give a shit. First of all, "Muslim" is not a race. If the time ever came when you were faced by a gun or bomb-wielding fanatic, I can promise you that your Politically Correct Pieties will not protect you when that lunatic wants you dead. You don't earn any brownie points for kissing Muzzie backside and acquiring a taste for cous-cous and goat. Islam is a disease that causes people to blow themselves up and take as many innocent bystanders as they can with them -- and then excuses it as a moral and religious imperative. It is indiscriminate in it's violence, and can excuse even the worst behaviors so long as they are directed against "The Infidel" -- a list which grows longer by the day, as Muslims discover even more people they wish to dispossess and enslave.
If that isn't cruel and disgusting, then I don't know what is.
Moscow is not innocent in all of this; for many years it supported terrorist groups, many of the Arab and Muslim, as weapons to be used against the West or to spread communist ideology. Sometimes, you reap what you sow. Good luck to the Russians in their task of trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
There's gonna be a lot of dead Chechens soon.
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