Separation of Church andc Logic...
Lots of sturm und drang this year about Nativity scenes and menorrahs, and I'll be damned if I know just what drives people to make such a stink over them.
Not only are some Americans (and you know who you are!) up in arms over religious displays, but the phenomena is spreading: in Italy, the Pope is decrying the destruction of Western Culture while Italian schoolchildren sing Christmas songs that don't even have the words "Christ" or "Jesus" in them anymore. They replace the offensive words with anything that rhymes, but which makes no sense in context.
In other parts of Europe, Christ has been dead for so long, it's doubtful that a second resurrection on television accompanied by a cash gift to every citizen on the continent will bring back anything resembling belief. Or maybe just tolerance.
And perhaps that's the point of this little screed. It's about tolerance, or the lack of it. We all make gargantuan efforts in or daily lives to be "inclusive", to be "fair", to be "inoffensive". I submit that when you try to do these things you very often wind up being uninclusive, unfair and very offensive. The reason being that once you have made an effort to bend to the will of a single dissenter, that dissenter makes it his or her life's work to ensuring you bend until you snap. Failure to continue bending will get you scorn, it will tar you witht he epithet of "hater" and eventually, gets you sued somewhere. The benders have become captive to the will of the bend-ees and simply for the sake of appearances.
Some will tell you that it's only right that we take into account the religious sensibilities of others who may not believe the same things we do. Granted, that's a valid point. By why is it that while I'm being religiously sensitive, the Muslim, the Jew, the Atheist, the Buddhist down the block, are not expected to return the courtesy? I single these religions out as an example, not to imply that I have an issue with them (well, except for Islam).
The argument is always framed as being one of tolerance for others. However, it's never about tolerance. It's about the imposition of personal tastes and group will upon a majority, in such a way that could never be done by the normal machinations of society (i.e. by law or government process), but by emotion. We've seen such manipulation of emotions in various aspects of American life before: the fight for Civil Rights, Affirmative Action, the War on Poverty, the Great Society and the New Deal. We've seen the Communists and Nazis manipulate fear, envy and ignorance for the sake of political power. In this day and age we see other fringes of society do the same thing. The only difference is now they're trading on embarrasment. Let's face it: in today's society it's embarrassing to be singled out as a racist, sexist or anti-Jew or any host of other politically correct no-nos. This is only right, but it's taken to extremes by a whole class of people whose only reason for living is to be offended. That's the real danger here; the permanently panty-bunched.
The argument is almost always couched in constitutional or legal terms, which is supposed to mask the true intent of the fly in the ointment, as if the flimsy smokescreen of "protecting everyone's rights" is supposed to cover the stench. The First Amendment is probably the most-frequently-abused section of the Constitution. That old anti-establishment clause is perverted way beyond it's meaning, or intent, to allow all sorts of stupid things to enter into the American landscape. When the first Congress wrote the words "Congress shall enact no law" they should have stopped right there. But in this case, a little application of common sense would get the very people who these sorts of things are aimed at a little angry, and thus, energized to defend their rights aganist those who see them rather as "anti-rights". The purpose of the Anti-Establishment clause was not to ban religion from public life, but rather to prevent one religion being set up as a prerequiste for the enjoyment of other rights in our society. It's a direct result of the formation of the Church of England under Henry VIII. In Henry's time, if you did not follow the King's Version of the religion, the state religion, you were hunted down, hounded, called a traitor for your divided loyalties, and ultimately, drawn and quartered in the Tower of London. Sort of like what happens in Iran. In Olde England, the keys to the Kingdom depended on bended knee to an institution perverted by a monarch for his own selfish ends. The Founders of this country wanted to make sure there were as few obstacles as possible to the enjoyment of personal liberties. The only things they asked in return was that succeeding generations be responsible and logical. Instead, there are those amongst us who have decided that the Anti-Establisment Clause actually bans religion form the public life, which it doesn't. How one is supposed to have Freedom of Religion while having his religious beliefs attacked in public is something I have never been able to wrap my tiny mind around. It also follows, of course, that the Anti-Establishment Clause also allows you to be free from professing any religious beliefs at all, and that's fine too. That's a personal choice (on I made after 12 years of Catholic schools), but it doesn't mean you have the right to ban religion, in any form, for the sake of your sensibilities to the detriment of other people's sensibilities. That, in effect, is communism. The wonderful thing abot living in a Republic like ours is that the will of the minority is protected, it's given an equal voice. It's when that voice begins to scream in high-pitched tones, like a herd of stuck pigs, dragging things into courtrooms where they don't belong, engaging in vandalism, and running roughshod over the rights of others that it becomes a problem. This is a problem because it won't stop at religion. It almost never stops at religion. Once the "other side" succeed in subverting one freedom to better suit it's tastes, it attacks the rest, encouraged by success. Today it's the display of a privately-funded nativity scene, tomorrow it's the Pledge of Alliegance, or the right to own a gun or the ability to keep your phone calls and e-mail private. Principles must always be defended, but in this day and age, many of us would rather surrender our principles for the sake of how others perceive us. That's just plain wrong.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Big Brother is Watching You...
I have discovered a very interesting phenomenon in the last few weeks. We are being watched in the privacy of our own homes, only those doing the watching don't do so behind the aegis of the Fed'ral Gubmint --- they are telemarketers.
I screen my calls. I have the caller ID feature on my phone as well. I do so because I'm very often a sucker for a good sales pitch. Thanks to phone-based telemarketers I have subscriptions to magazines I hardly ever read, but will be paying for for many a year. I can't tell you how many times I've almost fallen for the free-vacation-if-you-come-look-at-our-timeshare-situation-in-Florida routine. I'm kinda weak-kneed when confronted by something like this. I don't know what it is, but it's something I'm gonna have to stop. Perhaps more therapy?
Anyway, what I've noticed is that if i use the phone after I've gotten and ignored a call from one of these folks, my phone invariably rings several minutes later, and they're back. They know when I'm home and they know when I'm using my phone. There's supposed to be some new phone service (I think it's *38 or something), that automatically redials a busy number every so often.
If the Government of the United States did this, the ACLU would be filing lawsuits from sea to shining sea. If the CIA was doing this we'd have Congressional hearings. Because private business is doing it, we hear nary a word.
The worst offenders are the bill collectors. The second worst are those seeking donations to save the spotted-three-finned-tuna or something like it. The most unconscionable offenders are universities seeking to drum up support for protests against everything from the bomb to transgendered automony for the Indians of the Amazon.
Politicians have used this service as wel, since I got four calls (count 'em) from Bill Clinton on Election Day, urgin me to vote for both John Kerry and Erskine Bowles. I wouldn't have voted for either one if you threatened to cut my scrotum off at the base. With a rusty sheep shear.
For all of you who considered John Ashcroft the biggest threat to privacy rights and personal security, I offer you this to think about. At least Ashcroft and his blakshirts were never calling me every 15 minutes, interupting my own phone calls with call waiting signals, and forcing me to pay the phone company for a feature I really could do without, just to ask for a donation to the cause celebre of the week.
I have discovered a very interesting phenomenon in the last few weeks. We are being watched in the privacy of our own homes, only those doing the watching don't do so behind the aegis of the Fed'ral Gubmint --- they are telemarketers.
I screen my calls. I have the caller ID feature on my phone as well. I do so because I'm very often a sucker for a good sales pitch. Thanks to phone-based telemarketers I have subscriptions to magazines I hardly ever read, but will be paying for for many a year. I can't tell you how many times I've almost fallen for the free-vacation-if-you-come-look-at-our-timeshare-situation-in-Florida routine. I'm kinda weak-kneed when confronted by something like this. I don't know what it is, but it's something I'm gonna have to stop. Perhaps more therapy?
Anyway, what I've noticed is that if i use the phone after I've gotten and ignored a call from one of these folks, my phone invariably rings several minutes later, and they're back. They know when I'm home and they know when I'm using my phone. There's supposed to be some new phone service (I think it's *38 or something), that automatically redials a busy number every so often.
If the Government of the United States did this, the ACLU would be filing lawsuits from sea to shining sea. If the CIA was doing this we'd have Congressional hearings. Because private business is doing it, we hear nary a word.
The worst offenders are the bill collectors. The second worst are those seeking donations to save the spotted-three-finned-tuna or something like it. The most unconscionable offenders are universities seeking to drum up support for protests against everything from the bomb to transgendered automony for the Indians of the Amazon.
Politicians have used this service as wel, since I got four calls (count 'em) from Bill Clinton on Election Day, urgin me to vote for both John Kerry and Erskine Bowles. I wouldn't have voted for either one if you threatened to cut my scrotum off at the base. With a rusty sheep shear.
For all of you who considered John Ashcroft the biggest threat to privacy rights and personal security, I offer you this to think about. At least Ashcroft and his blakshirts were never calling me every 15 minutes, interupting my own phone calls with call waiting signals, and forcing me to pay the phone company for a feature I really could do without, just to ask for a donation to the cause celebre of the week.
And while I'm at it...
Saw a report today (sorry, no link!) that scientists in Germany have been able to harvest adult stem cells from human fat tissue. According to this story, the stem cells were used to help a little girl with severe head injuries (if I recall, she had multiple fractures). I think this adds yet another argument against unbridled abortion on demand --- one of the arguments for abortion is that stem cells could be harvested from the aborted children. This would seem to indicate that not all stem cells need to come from the results of abortion.
It was a pretty weak argument to make in the first place, sez me. To begin with, there is not one laboratory on the planet doing anything that can be considered research with fetal stem cells, but if you ask the proponents, they will tell you all the wonderful, if theorhetical, things fetal stem cells will be able to do. We'll be able to cure scabies, enable the regeneration of lost limbs, fly and perhaps even bend spoons mentally like Uri Geller, if only fetal stem cells are available for research. The argument, thus, is that some must die that others may have a better quality of life, and perhaps live themselves.
But quality of life is the key phrase. Those that support fetal stem cell research are not so much interested in actually curing disease or improving the lot of humans on this sorry planet. Instead, they are more interested in ensuring AIDS victims can continue the disguting practices that gave them the disease in the first place or somesuch, for example, and still justify the killling of the unborn. Again, we have the premise that the individual must be protected from personal responsibility and consequence.
Apparently, in their minds, you can justify killing someone if someone else manages to benefit from it. This is the same reasoning that allowed the Nazis to kill Jews for their gold teeth.
What this report, if true, demonstrates is that the stem cells don't necessarily have to come from an aborted fetus. It also reinforces the notion that all of this is still experimental and in the theorhetical stage and that we should not leap to conclusions as to what cells are used or where they come from.
Saw a report today (sorry, no link!) that scientists in Germany have been able to harvest adult stem cells from human fat tissue. According to this story, the stem cells were used to help a little girl with severe head injuries (if I recall, she had multiple fractures). I think this adds yet another argument against unbridled abortion on demand --- one of the arguments for abortion is that stem cells could be harvested from the aborted children. This would seem to indicate that not all stem cells need to come from the results of abortion.
It was a pretty weak argument to make in the first place, sez me. To begin with, there is not one laboratory on the planet doing anything that can be considered research with fetal stem cells, but if you ask the proponents, they will tell you all the wonderful, if theorhetical, things fetal stem cells will be able to do. We'll be able to cure scabies, enable the regeneration of lost limbs, fly and perhaps even bend spoons mentally like Uri Geller, if only fetal stem cells are available for research. The argument, thus, is that some must die that others may have a better quality of life, and perhaps live themselves.
But quality of life is the key phrase. Those that support fetal stem cell research are not so much interested in actually curing disease or improving the lot of humans on this sorry planet. Instead, they are more interested in ensuring AIDS victims can continue the disguting practices that gave them the disease in the first place or somesuch, for example, and still justify the killling of the unborn. Again, we have the premise that the individual must be protected from personal responsibility and consequence.
Apparently, in their minds, you can justify killing someone if someone else manages to benefit from it. This is the same reasoning that allowed the Nazis to kill Jews for their gold teeth.
What this report, if true, demonstrates is that the stem cells don't necessarily have to come from an aborted fetus. It also reinforces the notion that all of this is still experimental and in the theorhetical stage and that we should not leap to conclusions as to what cells are used or where they come from.
Friday, December 17, 2004
How do you explain this, NARAL?
I normally don't think much about abortion, but recently, I've been thinking a lot about it. The impetus for this expenditure of brain cells has been some of the items reported in the nes as of late.
First, there is the Scott Peterson verdict. The State of California has seen fit to sentence Scott to death (okay, the jury did) for the murder of his wife and his unborn son. The court, probably because it was in the prosecutor's interest to think so, established that an unborn child is in fact a human being. We can wrangle over the infamous "24 week rule" and all sorts of other stuff, but in the end, an unborn child was considered a human being for the purposes of bringing criminal charges against his killer.
The second impetus was the case, plastered all over the news today, of a 23-year old Missouri woman, brutally murdered, who's killers took the time and effort to remove her unborn baby from her womb --- and then fled with it. As of 5:30 this evening, reports are circulating that the child has been found alive.
Which brings me to why I'm thinking of abortion.
To a supporter of abortion rights, neither COnnor Peterson nor this other unfortunate child from Missouri would be considered a person. Why? Because they hadn't been born yet. Yet the state, or more directly, the people of the state, do in fact consider the unborn as people, not as a mass of undelivered cells. The fact that a murder charge was brought in the death of one, and a multi-state manhunt was launched for the recovery of the other, pretty much proves it, if you ask me.
It's a known fact that surgery can be performed on a fetus in the womb, prior to it's birth, to correct brth defects. Gene therapy can be used on a developing baby before it takes it first breath. Doctors routinely prescribe medications to pregnan women on behalf of their unborn children. If this doesn't prove, once and for all, that the unborn are people, I don't know what does.
But NARAL, and others like them, don't see things that way. In their world, a fetus is an appendage until it is capable of sustaining the minimum life activities on it's own: breathing, crying, blinking, and for all we know, splitting atoms. To NARAL and it's ilk, a baby is not a baby until you can dress it in non-gender-specific clothing and send it off to a three-day seminar on the societal problems faced by Lesbian Six-toed Beastiality afficianados.
Why is this?
Part of it is ideology. This ideology states that women will always be releagted to teh scrap heap of history because the bearing of children and the responsibility of a family will always prevent her from reaching her fullest potential. This is the logic behind the "Equal Rights Amendment" and the (in-)famous "Glass Ceiling". Taking care of children is incompatible with the drive for success, whether in business, government, academia or NASACR, according to this bunch.
The second part is the old bugaboo of all liberal-inspired nonsense: the avoidance of personal responsibility. In this regard, abrotion, no matter how early, how late or how disgusting, is viewed merely as a means of birth control of the last resort. The other methods of birth control available (the pill, prophylactics, surgery, abstinance) are never ever discussed as anything but a male responsibility or as poor substitutes for abortion. With the exception of the pill, the responsibility for birth control should always land squarely upon the male, with a woman insisting on other methods merely as a failsafe. Until the failsafe fails. Then a woman must have the penultimate method available for dodging responsibility: killing her children. The poin tis not whether or not we're talking about a person or potential person, but whether the woman can avoid her responsibility and the attendant pain in the ass it entails.
We could argue semantics all day, which is what the proponents of unfettered abortion do, but when you come down to it, a baby is a baby, whether you choose to call it such or refer to it as a mere cluster of cells.
But when you read about things like this, it has to make you shake your head.
I normally don't think much about abortion, but recently, I've been thinking a lot about it. The impetus for this expenditure of brain cells has been some of the items reported in the nes as of late.
First, there is the Scott Peterson verdict. The State of California has seen fit to sentence Scott to death (okay, the jury did) for the murder of his wife and his unborn son. The court, probably because it was in the prosecutor's interest to think so, established that an unborn child is in fact a human being. We can wrangle over the infamous "24 week rule" and all sorts of other stuff, but in the end, an unborn child was considered a human being for the purposes of bringing criminal charges against his killer.
The second impetus was the case, plastered all over the news today, of a 23-year old Missouri woman, brutally murdered, who's killers took the time and effort to remove her unborn baby from her womb --- and then fled with it. As of 5:30 this evening, reports are circulating that the child has been found alive.
Which brings me to why I'm thinking of abortion.
To a supporter of abortion rights, neither COnnor Peterson nor this other unfortunate child from Missouri would be considered a person. Why? Because they hadn't been born yet. Yet the state, or more directly, the people of the state, do in fact consider the unborn as people, not as a mass of undelivered cells. The fact that a murder charge was brought in the death of one, and a multi-state manhunt was launched for the recovery of the other, pretty much proves it, if you ask me.
It's a known fact that surgery can be performed on a fetus in the womb, prior to it's birth, to correct brth defects. Gene therapy can be used on a developing baby before it takes it first breath. Doctors routinely prescribe medications to pregnan women on behalf of their unborn children. If this doesn't prove, once and for all, that the unborn are people, I don't know what does.
But NARAL, and others like them, don't see things that way. In their world, a fetus is an appendage until it is capable of sustaining the minimum life activities on it's own: breathing, crying, blinking, and for all we know, splitting atoms. To NARAL and it's ilk, a baby is not a baby until you can dress it in non-gender-specific clothing and send it off to a three-day seminar on the societal problems faced by Lesbian Six-toed Beastiality afficianados.
Why is this?
Part of it is ideology. This ideology states that women will always be releagted to teh scrap heap of history because the bearing of children and the responsibility of a family will always prevent her from reaching her fullest potential. This is the logic behind the "Equal Rights Amendment" and the (in-)famous "Glass Ceiling". Taking care of children is incompatible with the drive for success, whether in business, government, academia or NASACR, according to this bunch.
The second part is the old bugaboo of all liberal-inspired nonsense: the avoidance of personal responsibility. In this regard, abrotion, no matter how early, how late or how disgusting, is viewed merely as a means of birth control of the last resort. The other methods of birth control available (the pill, prophylactics, surgery, abstinance) are never ever discussed as anything but a male responsibility or as poor substitutes for abortion. With the exception of the pill, the responsibility for birth control should always land squarely upon the male, with a woman insisting on other methods merely as a failsafe. Until the failsafe fails. Then a woman must have the penultimate method available for dodging responsibility: killing her children. The poin tis not whether or not we're talking about a person or potential person, but whether the woman can avoid her responsibility and the attendant pain in the ass it entails.
We could argue semantics all day, which is what the proponents of unfettered abortion do, but when you come down to it, a baby is a baby, whether you choose to call it such or refer to it as a mere cluster of cells.
But when you read about things like this, it has to make you shake your head.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Scott's Frying...Finally...
It's about time, too. I feel as if two years of my life has been wasted by the constant news coverage of the Peterson Trial. Yes, it was a heinous crime. Certainly, it was the stuff of a made-for-TV drama but Scott-and-Laci nearly 24 hours a day maes your head spin.
I'll tell you this much about showcase trials in California; they continue to get weirder and weirder by the day. The prosecution takes six months to lay out their case. The defense calls 39 charater witnesses to beg for Scott's life in the penalty phase. Lawyers offer outlandish theories about who else might have wanted Laci dead, throwing out every conceivable conspiracy tale, regardless of how ridiculous. Laci is killed by a Satanic cult. Laci has a tragic industrial combine accident, Laci spontaneously combusted. Mark Geragos, Scott's lawyer, should be ashamed to show his face in public.
I haven't seen anything this ridiculous since OJ, and with the Robert Blake trial coming up soon, it will probably get loonier. Why is that in California, it seems, we can't have a staright-forward murder trial? The juries, once they actually get to have their say, seem to come back incredibly quickly with their verdicts (I believe 4 hours for OJ, 6 for Scott), but the lawyers engage in constant drama, there are twists and turns that would bedazzle the most verteran Hollywood screenwriter --- bloody gloves, mistresses taping phone calls, dogs as potential witnesses, concrete experts, blood spatter experts, leather-shrinkage experts. It's enough to make your head spin. I mean, who in their right mind studies the properties of shrinking leather? Jurors drop out under mysterious circumstances. Who's writing a book in the juror's box? Who's holding things up playing Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men? What the heck is the judge doing? Greta Van Susteren has 1 hour of face time to fill every night, let's split legal hairs for six months.
If you ask me, and I know you didn't but this is my blog (so there!), it's another example of the deification of the American lawyer that is to blame. Somehow, we in this country have elevated to lofty heights, men and women whose only talents in clude semantics, active imaginations, and ultimately, manipulation of a set of rules that might as well be written in Sanskrit for all the clarity and conciseness that the lawyers themselves put into them. We expect them to be superhuman folks, the defenders of justice, the guardians of this sacred scroll called The Law. In the end, they become actors in a melodrama that your typical American considers entertainment.
Two people are dead. One was a pregnant woman and the other was an unborn child who never took his first breath. You can't get more defenseless victims anyplace else except perhaps Afghanistan. You have a defendant who appears to be so psychopathic that he barely shows emotion when day after day, for six months, he's portrayed as an in human monster who deliberately plotted their deaths and constructed a conspiracy so flimsy that even a democrat could see through it. And then the lawyers waste everyone's time in front of the cameras, acting their parts on the public stage.
This case was simple: pregnant woman disappears, her husband has a mistress, mistress is told the wife is dead before she goes missing, the husband buys a boat, the husband sets up a concrete anchor factory in his garage, the boat is full of concrete residue, the bodies are found exactly where the husband claims to be fishing, the husband makes an attempt to alter his appearance and tries to flee in a car obtained under dubious circumstances with a load of cash and his golf clubs (gotta take the sticks, dude!). The husband has motive, he has the means, he has the opportunity, and ultimately, he's sloppy and gets caught. This was a one week trial, if you ask me.
But that would make boring television. Gotta have that courtroom drama, since Fear Factor is already old hat.
If this trial teaches us anything it is that evil constinues to exist. The killing of your wife and child, for whatever reason, is evil. The attempts by your legal counsel to do everything possible, including lying, cheating, obscuring the obvious, demonizing the victims, is evil. The legal system, as it stands today, is broken. It's no longer a symbol of American civilization when it becomes a tiny stage play in front of cameras being watched by millions across the globe.
Scott Peterson, in a perfect world, would have already been fried five months ago. It was obvious that long ago just who was responsible for the deaths of Laci and Connor. But, we must be entertained, the lawyers must preen and strut for the cameras, the talking heads must have something to cackle about, and in the end, something that is a pillar of American life, our justice system, becomes little more than the Roman Arena.
To Laci and Connor, I say requiesat in pacem. To Scott Peterson, I hope that Hell has a special spot reserved for you where your torment will be eternal. Perhaps, ultimately, Scott could become Bill Clinton's roommate in the Netherworld. To everyone else who watched this thing with the same sort of intensity that a scientist would apply to finding a cure to cancer, who congregated at the courthouse holding daily vigils, to the idiots who went there only to get their face on television (the famous Lookie Lou's), you all disgust me.
Let's put a little sanity back into the process of dispensing justice, shall we?
It's about time, too. I feel as if two years of my life has been wasted by the constant news coverage of the Peterson Trial. Yes, it was a heinous crime. Certainly, it was the stuff of a made-for-TV drama but Scott-and-Laci nearly 24 hours a day maes your head spin.
I'll tell you this much about showcase trials in California; they continue to get weirder and weirder by the day. The prosecution takes six months to lay out their case. The defense calls 39 charater witnesses to beg for Scott's life in the penalty phase. Lawyers offer outlandish theories about who else might have wanted Laci dead, throwing out every conceivable conspiracy tale, regardless of how ridiculous. Laci is killed by a Satanic cult. Laci has a tragic industrial combine accident, Laci spontaneously combusted. Mark Geragos, Scott's lawyer, should be ashamed to show his face in public.
I haven't seen anything this ridiculous since OJ, and with the Robert Blake trial coming up soon, it will probably get loonier. Why is that in California, it seems, we can't have a staright-forward murder trial? The juries, once they actually get to have their say, seem to come back incredibly quickly with their verdicts (I believe 4 hours for OJ, 6 for Scott), but the lawyers engage in constant drama, there are twists and turns that would bedazzle the most verteran Hollywood screenwriter --- bloody gloves, mistresses taping phone calls, dogs as potential witnesses, concrete experts, blood spatter experts, leather-shrinkage experts. It's enough to make your head spin. I mean, who in their right mind studies the properties of shrinking leather? Jurors drop out under mysterious circumstances. Who's writing a book in the juror's box? Who's holding things up playing Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men? What the heck is the judge doing? Greta Van Susteren has 1 hour of face time to fill every night, let's split legal hairs for six months.
If you ask me, and I know you didn't but this is my blog (so there!), it's another example of the deification of the American lawyer that is to blame. Somehow, we in this country have elevated to lofty heights, men and women whose only talents in clude semantics, active imaginations, and ultimately, manipulation of a set of rules that might as well be written in Sanskrit for all the clarity and conciseness that the lawyers themselves put into them. We expect them to be superhuman folks, the defenders of justice, the guardians of this sacred scroll called The Law. In the end, they become actors in a melodrama that your typical American considers entertainment.
Two people are dead. One was a pregnant woman and the other was an unborn child who never took his first breath. You can't get more defenseless victims anyplace else except perhaps Afghanistan. You have a defendant who appears to be so psychopathic that he barely shows emotion when day after day, for six months, he's portrayed as an in human monster who deliberately plotted their deaths and constructed a conspiracy so flimsy that even a democrat could see through it. And then the lawyers waste everyone's time in front of the cameras, acting their parts on the public stage.
This case was simple: pregnant woman disappears, her husband has a mistress, mistress is told the wife is dead before she goes missing, the husband buys a boat, the husband sets up a concrete anchor factory in his garage, the boat is full of concrete residue, the bodies are found exactly where the husband claims to be fishing, the husband makes an attempt to alter his appearance and tries to flee in a car obtained under dubious circumstances with a load of cash and his golf clubs (gotta take the sticks, dude!). The husband has motive, he has the means, he has the opportunity, and ultimately, he's sloppy and gets caught. This was a one week trial, if you ask me.
But that would make boring television. Gotta have that courtroom drama, since Fear Factor is already old hat.
If this trial teaches us anything it is that evil constinues to exist. The killing of your wife and child, for whatever reason, is evil. The attempts by your legal counsel to do everything possible, including lying, cheating, obscuring the obvious, demonizing the victims, is evil. The legal system, as it stands today, is broken. It's no longer a symbol of American civilization when it becomes a tiny stage play in front of cameras being watched by millions across the globe.
Scott Peterson, in a perfect world, would have already been fried five months ago. It was obvious that long ago just who was responsible for the deaths of Laci and Connor. But, we must be entertained, the lawyers must preen and strut for the cameras, the talking heads must have something to cackle about, and in the end, something that is a pillar of American life, our justice system, becomes little more than the Roman Arena.
To Laci and Connor, I say requiesat in pacem. To Scott Peterson, I hope that Hell has a special spot reserved for you where your torment will be eternal. Perhaps, ultimately, Scott could become Bill Clinton's roommate in the Netherworld. To everyone else who watched this thing with the same sort of intensity that a scientist would apply to finding a cure to cancer, who congregated at the courthouse holding daily vigils, to the idiots who went there only to get their face on television (the famous Lookie Lou's), you all disgust me.
Let's put a little sanity back into the process of dispensing justice, shall we?
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Free Markets and Slavery...
Just something that floated across the rancid residue that used to be gray matter, but now that I live in the South, you sometimes cannot but help and think about slavery. Yeah, I know, it no longer exists and not every southerner owned slaves, etc, etc. But, the outward symbols are still here. The Confederate flag, for example, is flown proudly here, not as a symbol of a repressive system but as matter of regional and personal heritage. Some of the old plantations still exist, although they've mostly been converted to other uses: museums, wedding halls, antique shops, meeting houses, etc.
Now normally, I wouldn't care about something like that, except in the historical sense as an interesting period in history. As far as I'm concerned, the War of Northern Aggression (as they call it here) ended quite a long time ago, and after Emancipation Proclimations, Constitutional Amendments, Civil Rights and Voting Acts and a host of affirmative action programs, slavery is well and truly dead.
But you can't help thinking about it when you walk around here.
It's my contention that the Civil War need never have been fought. The Industrial Revolution was already reducing the need for massive numbers of brute laborers every day during that period. It would have been a matter of time before technology had made the business of planting and cultivating cotton ridiculously cheap, and reduced the prices for raw cotton. Thsi would have made the keeping of large numbers of slaves a more expensive proposition, and slavery would have ended as soon as it became apparent. The problem then would have been what to do about several million otherwise-unwanted, and now unwatched, blacks in the South.
Abraham Lincoln, that paragon of virtue (so we've been led to believe) had a solution: deport the slaves. He advocated sending them to Mexico, whioch would have probably started the plague of illegal Mexican immigration in 1870 instead of 1970. That assumes that Mexico wanted them. That assumes that the slaves would have wanted to leave. That assumes quite a lot.
So, I began thinking; what would have happened if several million people, formerly slaves, living under constant surveilance, tied to the land and having no legal standing, were suddenly left to their own devices. I believe one of two things would have happened: there would have been genocide or the slaves would have to be controlled in some other way.
Enter the Federal Government.
In the modern world, many blacks in this country live on a different kind of plantation, where they are kept under surveilance, kept at a level of bare subsistence, left mostly uneducated, and most, have little or no legal standing despite the laws designed to correct that. The problem is that while the Federal Government helped set up the New Plantation, with welfare, Medicaid, Foood Stamps augmenting a host of state-run welfare programs, blacks themselves do the rest.
Parents don't look after their children (a phenomenon not stricly limited to the black commuity), the schools have become warehouses, a babysitter of last resort. Two million black males are sitting in prisons all across the country. Out-of-Wedlock birth is a commonplace situation. Addictions of all kinds run rampant. Two-parent households barely exist. Speaking English and learning how to add and subtract are derided as "being white". Rap "music" substitutes for anything approaching litterature or art. These are the mental bars of the black prison system. A system that is mostly self-imposed.
I began to think of this when I happened upon a bunch of black folks around here whose behavior was bordering on that of a lowland gorilla. There was no display of manners. Cursing was the normal speech pattern. There wasn't even a display of any redeeming quality that could be called "polite" or "classy". Children ran rampant. Husbands (more likely "my baby's daddy" type companions) yelled and demeaned their women and children, complete with filthy words, in public. They dress in a way that is remiscent of Wal-Mart having blown up: bright, gaudy colors, clothes (especially pants) that do not fit, shirts and jackets emblazoned with the name of some top-flight designer (and sneakers to match), and here they are, arguing over the price of the food at McDonald's.
It started with someone asking why they couldn'ty get the 99 cent two cheeseburger deal with fries and a drink for the same price as the "Value Meal". Probably because there is not a "two cheeseburger Value Meal" offered. They way it was ordered, it was ordered as individual items.
This started a typical display of ghetto angst: the audible muttering that is intended for everyone to hear. The deriding of the poor cashier (herself black) who had tried to be patient, had tried to explain basic mathematics and economics, but still got called a "f*uckin' bee-atch. The comical hand-on-hip, bobbing-and-weaving-in-yo-face rehtoric that would even pass for logical discourse at a convention of democrats. The put-upon-I'm-a-po'-oppressed-country-niggah attitude put on display to cover the fact that someone tried to scam openly and got caught, publiclly indicating the stupidity on display. The mess, purposely, left on the table for someone else to clean up.
It wouldn't have been so schocking to me, after all I'm a New Yorker, except that this group of people seemed to be four generations strong. There was a grandmother, a set of ersatz-parents, the teenagers and their illicit progeny. And right there, I was presented with a microcosm of what Southern Rebels might have been faced with in 1860; we could give them their freedom, we could try to make amends with money, we could try to even the score with the law. But there would still be several million people not-far-removed from their tribal, uncivilized ways, running wild.
No wonder Southerners opted to fight.
The passage of time has not changed very many things. I know that the bunch I saw was NOT representative of all blacks, so please, don't complain. But from my experience, it's a pretty accurate snapshot.
Just something that floated across the rancid residue that used to be gray matter, but now that I live in the South, you sometimes cannot but help and think about slavery. Yeah, I know, it no longer exists and not every southerner owned slaves, etc, etc. But, the outward symbols are still here. The Confederate flag, for example, is flown proudly here, not as a symbol of a repressive system but as matter of regional and personal heritage. Some of the old plantations still exist, although they've mostly been converted to other uses: museums, wedding halls, antique shops, meeting houses, etc.
Now normally, I wouldn't care about something like that, except in the historical sense as an interesting period in history. As far as I'm concerned, the War of Northern Aggression (as they call it here) ended quite a long time ago, and after Emancipation Proclimations, Constitutional Amendments, Civil Rights and Voting Acts and a host of affirmative action programs, slavery is well and truly dead.
But you can't help thinking about it when you walk around here.
It's my contention that the Civil War need never have been fought. The Industrial Revolution was already reducing the need for massive numbers of brute laborers every day during that period. It would have been a matter of time before technology had made the business of planting and cultivating cotton ridiculously cheap, and reduced the prices for raw cotton. Thsi would have made the keeping of large numbers of slaves a more expensive proposition, and slavery would have ended as soon as it became apparent. The problem then would have been what to do about several million otherwise-unwanted, and now unwatched, blacks in the South.
Abraham Lincoln, that paragon of virtue (so we've been led to believe) had a solution: deport the slaves. He advocated sending them to Mexico, whioch would have probably started the plague of illegal Mexican immigration in 1870 instead of 1970. That assumes that Mexico wanted them. That assumes that the slaves would have wanted to leave. That assumes quite a lot.
So, I began thinking; what would have happened if several million people, formerly slaves, living under constant surveilance, tied to the land and having no legal standing, were suddenly left to their own devices. I believe one of two things would have happened: there would have been genocide or the slaves would have to be controlled in some other way.
Enter the Federal Government.
In the modern world, many blacks in this country live on a different kind of plantation, where they are kept under surveilance, kept at a level of bare subsistence, left mostly uneducated, and most, have little or no legal standing despite the laws designed to correct that. The problem is that while the Federal Government helped set up the New Plantation, with welfare, Medicaid, Foood Stamps augmenting a host of state-run welfare programs, blacks themselves do the rest.
Parents don't look after their children (a phenomenon not stricly limited to the black commuity), the schools have become warehouses, a babysitter of last resort. Two million black males are sitting in prisons all across the country. Out-of-Wedlock birth is a commonplace situation. Addictions of all kinds run rampant. Two-parent households barely exist. Speaking English and learning how to add and subtract are derided as "being white". Rap "music" substitutes for anything approaching litterature or art. These are the mental bars of the black prison system. A system that is mostly self-imposed.
I began to think of this when I happened upon a bunch of black folks around here whose behavior was bordering on that of a lowland gorilla. There was no display of manners. Cursing was the normal speech pattern. There wasn't even a display of any redeeming quality that could be called "polite" or "classy". Children ran rampant. Husbands (more likely "my baby's daddy" type companions) yelled and demeaned their women and children, complete with filthy words, in public. They dress in a way that is remiscent of Wal-Mart having blown up: bright, gaudy colors, clothes (especially pants) that do not fit, shirts and jackets emblazoned with the name of some top-flight designer (and sneakers to match), and here they are, arguing over the price of the food at McDonald's.
It started with someone asking why they couldn'ty get the 99 cent two cheeseburger deal with fries and a drink for the same price as the "Value Meal". Probably because there is not a "two cheeseburger Value Meal" offered. They way it was ordered, it was ordered as individual items.
This started a typical display of ghetto angst: the audible muttering that is intended for everyone to hear. The deriding of the poor cashier (herself black) who had tried to be patient, had tried to explain basic mathematics and economics, but still got called a "f*uckin' bee-atch. The comical hand-on-hip, bobbing-and-weaving-in-yo-face rehtoric that would even pass for logical discourse at a convention of democrats. The put-upon-I'm-a-po'-oppressed-country-niggah attitude put on display to cover the fact that someone tried to scam openly and got caught, publiclly indicating the stupidity on display. The mess, purposely, left on the table for someone else to clean up.
It wouldn't have been so schocking to me, after all I'm a New Yorker, except that this group of people seemed to be four generations strong. There was a grandmother, a set of ersatz-parents, the teenagers and their illicit progeny. And right there, I was presented with a microcosm of what Southern Rebels might have been faced with in 1860; we could give them their freedom, we could try to make amends with money, we could try to even the score with the law. But there would still be several million people not-far-removed from their tribal, uncivilized ways, running wild.
No wonder Southerners opted to fight.
The passage of time has not changed very many things. I know that the bunch I saw was NOT representative of all blacks, so please, don't complain. But from my experience, it's a pretty accurate snapshot.
The Citi Never Sleeps, Part 2...
Poor Citibank. Beseiged by the federal government, shareholders seeking their lost wealth and bombers in Argentina. I would sit here, biting my nails in fright, if I wasn't so damn happy about not working there anymore.
Last month, two Citibank branc offices in Buenos Aires were bombed, one successfully, on not. Today, another possible explosive device was found in another Argentine Citi branch. It seems Citi has done something that makes people angry.
If i had to guess, it probably goes back to 2000 or 2001 (memory fails here) when Citibank announced that Argentina was going to default on 800 or 900 million dollars worth of loans extended by Citi. Mind you, this was back in the day when brokerage houses and banks had more money than good sense, and lending money to a South American country not thatfar removed from almost-Nazi-like rule via military junta must have sounded like a good idea. Then again, Citi pumped a billion dollars into Russia, as well. Then again, Citi fronted Enron and Global Crossing and probably another hundred scams we've never heard of.
Normally, I would consider that the bombers themselves were totally to blame, being unprincipled psychopaths without the sense to pour piss out of a boot, with instructions on the heel. But in this case, when a business starts having explosives delivered, you have to start thinking about just why.
Pure speculation on my part, but I would startthinking about the Argentine government or ex-government types being involved, although I have no proof. They certainly have a panopoly of reasons for doing so. On the other hand, there is an incredible anti-Globalization movement in existance all across the planet, most of it based on socialist-style victimization rhetoric, and lord knows, South Americans respond to that kind of thing. So who knows?
I do happen to know that Citi has other problems that management doesn't even know about, and I would bet, even care about. Talking with some of the people I used to work with, it seems as if they have been scattered ott he four winds, with staff being relocated all over the country. Some go willingly, more often than not, most don't. From what I get from my sources, Citi is not only bestet from without, it's beset from within. It's not a stretch to begin thinking of an employee in Atlanta, or New York, or Los Angeles, bringing the next explosive device to a Citi office. I don;t advocate it, but damn, if it wouldn't be poetic justice.
Justice because what used to be an honorable trademark business in the United States has been pulled down by small-minded individuals who inhabit corner offices, and who cannot see beyond their own wallets. These ignoramuses flot the rules, they steal, they lie and they cheat, and at the end of the day, the protect each other and expect the shareholders to eat the losses just to stay in business. Normally, I am a staunch supporter of free markets and unfettered capitalism, at least until I see what happens when irresponsible people are at the helm. Citi (and it's not the only corporation in this boat) is just too large, to complex and, ultimately, too institutionally corrupt to continue as is. It was once a bank, and now it's a bank, brokerage house, insurance company, credit card company, mortgage broker, and probably 70 other things I don't know about.
Perhaps it's time someone took them down a notch or two. I don't think it should be done by the government or even by terrorists. It should be done by the people who really matter -- the customers and the shareholders. They can always take their business elsewhere and, believe me, that hurts more than any bomb or Federal indictment.
Poor Citibank. Beseiged by the federal government, shareholders seeking their lost wealth and bombers in Argentina. I would sit here, biting my nails in fright, if I wasn't so damn happy about not working there anymore.
Last month, two Citibank branc offices in Buenos Aires were bombed, one successfully, on not. Today, another possible explosive device was found in another Argentine Citi branch. It seems Citi has done something that makes people angry.
If i had to guess, it probably goes back to 2000 or 2001 (memory fails here) when Citibank announced that Argentina was going to default on 800 or 900 million dollars worth of loans extended by Citi. Mind you, this was back in the day when brokerage houses and banks had more money than good sense, and lending money to a South American country not thatfar removed from almost-Nazi-like rule via military junta must have sounded like a good idea. Then again, Citi pumped a billion dollars into Russia, as well. Then again, Citi fronted Enron and Global Crossing and probably another hundred scams we've never heard of.
Normally, I would consider that the bombers themselves were totally to blame, being unprincipled psychopaths without the sense to pour piss out of a boot, with instructions on the heel. But in this case, when a business starts having explosives delivered, you have to start thinking about just why.
Pure speculation on my part, but I would startthinking about the Argentine government or ex-government types being involved, although I have no proof. They certainly have a panopoly of reasons for doing so. On the other hand, there is an incredible anti-Globalization movement in existance all across the planet, most of it based on socialist-style victimization rhetoric, and lord knows, South Americans respond to that kind of thing. So who knows?
I do happen to know that Citi has other problems that management doesn't even know about, and I would bet, even care about. Talking with some of the people I used to work with, it seems as if they have been scattered ott he four winds, with staff being relocated all over the country. Some go willingly, more often than not, most don't. From what I get from my sources, Citi is not only bestet from without, it's beset from within. It's not a stretch to begin thinking of an employee in Atlanta, or New York, or Los Angeles, bringing the next explosive device to a Citi office. I don;t advocate it, but damn, if it wouldn't be poetic justice.
Justice because what used to be an honorable trademark business in the United States has been pulled down by small-minded individuals who inhabit corner offices, and who cannot see beyond their own wallets. These ignoramuses flot the rules, they steal, they lie and they cheat, and at the end of the day, the protect each other and expect the shareholders to eat the losses just to stay in business. Normally, I am a staunch supporter of free markets and unfettered capitalism, at least until I see what happens when irresponsible people are at the helm. Citi (and it's not the only corporation in this boat) is just too large, to complex and, ultimately, too institutionally corrupt to continue as is. It was once a bank, and now it's a bank, brokerage house, insurance company, credit card company, mortgage broker, and probably 70 other things I don't know about.
Perhaps it's time someone took them down a notch or two. I don't think it should be done by the government or even by terrorists. It should be done by the people who really matter -- the customers and the shareholders. They can always take their business elsewhere and, believe me, that hurts more than any bomb or Federal indictment.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Job-Hunting in the New/Old South...
I've been looking for something approaching regular employment recently here in Charlotte, and I'm convinced, convinced mind you, that the 21st Century still has not reached certain parts of the South.
Maybe it's just me, and perhaps I'm not acquainted yet with every southern ritual and custom (to be fair, "perhaps" is the wrong word), but one would think that the process of applying for a job would be pretty straightforward; someone has a job to offer, people apply for it, the prospective employer interviews qualified people for it and decides which one to hire. Seems simple enough to me, but apparently that is not the way things actually work.
Yesterday I had an appointment with an "employment specialist" here in Charlotte. The "employment specialist" in question is a former Yankee too, and she explained to me the sometimes maddening, almost-glacial pace with which these searches are typically conducted. She also filled me in on the finer points of networking here in the south, which when it comes to employment, seems more like a courtship than it does a straightforward business proposition.
Apparently, it is not enough to be qualified. It is not enough to be competent and to have a wealth of experience in your field. One must play a certain game here, first to get noticed, and secondly to inch ever-closer to the Holy Grail of full-time employment in someplace other than Wal-Mart. It's been said that job seeking is not so much what you know as who you know, and never was it more true than here in the south.
The way this has been explained to me is that an individual seeking employment must make an effort to bring himself to the attention of the who's who of the local business community, making contacts and then playing a "scratch-my-back/I'll-scratch-yours" game which might, might, get your foot in the door. An applicant must be willing to do things such as attend local job fairs solely for the purpose of meeting people, not necessarily applying for jobs. One must never show too much eagerness in the pursuit of a position, as it is considered rude and pushy. Above all, one must make a pilgrimage to those that hold the keys to the castle , rather than the other way around, whch is how it works up north. Membership in clubs is recommended in order to try and ingratiate yourself to a prospective employer. Having belonged to a fraternity, for example, at one of the bastions of Southern education (UNC, NC State, Auburn, Clemson, etc) is considered a major plus.
In other words, find the right people, kiss the right asses, and perhaps you might get an opportunity out of it. You may have all of the qualifications. You may run rings around the people presently doing the job now. But without the dance, the ritual, if you will, you will get nowhere. Talent and intelligence only count for something after you've stroked the proper egos.
Unfortunately, I'm not one to play these kinds of games and I wonder just how much I'm going to suffer for it. I don't like bending knees, kow-towing or getting involved in politics and popularity contests. I like to work. Well, I don't really like to work, I just like the paycheck. Unfortunately, work is part of the bargain.
Running down the list of things I've been advised to do, it suddenly struck me that if I have to do all the work, what the hell do I need an "employment specialist" for, and how the hell do they stay in business? They're obviously not placing very many candidates by themselves if the candidate has to do all the work, correct? It also struck me that it sounds like something I'd always heard about, but didn't quite believe existed. For lack of a better term, I'll refer to it as the Redneck Brotherhood.
It appears that the purpose of this secret organization is to keep the "wrong kind of people" out of the employment market. What kind of people are the "wrong kind"? That's a good question. If I had to guess, it would probably be pushy, loud-mouthed Yankees who don't play by their rules and who need to be brought down a few pegs before they're tossed a bone. I swear (I should say "I swannee", as they say here) this is the first time in my life that I've ever walked into a personnel agency and had an "employment specialist" tell me that they can't hook me up with a job, or even give me any contacts, but they can tell me where else to look for one. This conversation consisted of 30 minutes about the ritual, 30 minutes of bullshitting about how Southerners know nothing about pizza and bagels, and 30 minutes of rolling off a list of other "employment specialists" that can do a better job. However, they did ask me to fill in 600 pages of forms, including tax forms and a personality test, just in case they might be able to get me temporary work.
Incredibly strange. The job market in New York may have been a jungle, but it was at least an intelligible jungle.
Many years ago people complained about the "Old Boys Network" and how it kept folks on the outside looking in. I never really saw much of it in New York, and didn't actually believe it still existed anymore, except maybe in the very upper, upper reaches of the corporate world, which I will never reach and never had any desire to join. Here, in the 21st century south, not only does it exist, it thrives, and the old bonds of school, class and nepotism are no longer as strong as is the bond of having been born (anywhere) in the former Confederacy.
It probably won't be long before another transplanted Yankee decides to pester his Congresscritter to introduce a bill identifying "geographical origin" as a new classification of discrimination, to join "race, sex, color, religion, disability and sexual preferance".
I've been looking for something approaching regular employment recently here in Charlotte, and I'm convinced, convinced mind you, that the 21st Century still has not reached certain parts of the South.
Maybe it's just me, and perhaps I'm not acquainted yet with every southern ritual and custom (to be fair, "perhaps" is the wrong word), but one would think that the process of applying for a job would be pretty straightforward; someone has a job to offer, people apply for it, the prospective employer interviews qualified people for it and decides which one to hire. Seems simple enough to me, but apparently that is not the way things actually work.
Yesterday I had an appointment with an "employment specialist" here in Charlotte. The "employment specialist" in question is a former Yankee too, and she explained to me the sometimes maddening, almost-glacial pace with which these searches are typically conducted. She also filled me in on the finer points of networking here in the south, which when it comes to employment, seems more like a courtship than it does a straightforward business proposition.
Apparently, it is not enough to be qualified. It is not enough to be competent and to have a wealth of experience in your field. One must play a certain game here, first to get noticed, and secondly to inch ever-closer to the Holy Grail of full-time employment in someplace other than Wal-Mart. It's been said that job seeking is not so much what you know as who you know, and never was it more true than here in the south.
The way this has been explained to me is that an individual seeking employment must make an effort to bring himself to the attention of the who's who of the local business community, making contacts and then playing a "scratch-my-back/I'll-scratch-yours" game which might, might, get your foot in the door. An applicant must be willing to do things such as attend local job fairs solely for the purpose of meeting people, not necessarily applying for jobs. One must never show too much eagerness in the pursuit of a position, as it is considered rude and pushy. Above all, one must make a pilgrimage to those that hold the keys to the castle , rather than the other way around, whch is how it works up north. Membership in clubs is recommended in order to try and ingratiate yourself to a prospective employer. Having belonged to a fraternity, for example, at one of the bastions of Southern education (UNC, NC State, Auburn, Clemson, etc) is considered a major plus.
In other words, find the right people, kiss the right asses, and perhaps you might get an opportunity out of it. You may have all of the qualifications. You may run rings around the people presently doing the job now. But without the dance, the ritual, if you will, you will get nowhere. Talent and intelligence only count for something after you've stroked the proper egos.
Unfortunately, I'm not one to play these kinds of games and I wonder just how much I'm going to suffer for it. I don't like bending knees, kow-towing or getting involved in politics and popularity contests. I like to work. Well, I don't really like to work, I just like the paycheck. Unfortunately, work is part of the bargain.
Running down the list of things I've been advised to do, it suddenly struck me that if I have to do all the work, what the hell do I need an "employment specialist" for, and how the hell do they stay in business? They're obviously not placing very many candidates by themselves if the candidate has to do all the work, correct? It also struck me that it sounds like something I'd always heard about, but didn't quite believe existed. For lack of a better term, I'll refer to it as the Redneck Brotherhood.
It appears that the purpose of this secret organization is to keep the "wrong kind of people" out of the employment market. What kind of people are the "wrong kind"? That's a good question. If I had to guess, it would probably be pushy, loud-mouthed Yankees who don't play by their rules and who need to be brought down a few pegs before they're tossed a bone. I swear (I should say "I swannee", as they say here) this is the first time in my life that I've ever walked into a personnel agency and had an "employment specialist" tell me that they can't hook me up with a job, or even give me any contacts, but they can tell me where else to look for one. This conversation consisted of 30 minutes about the ritual, 30 minutes of bullshitting about how Southerners know nothing about pizza and bagels, and 30 minutes of rolling off a list of other "employment specialists" that can do a better job. However, they did ask me to fill in 600 pages of forms, including tax forms and a personality test, just in case they might be able to get me temporary work.
Incredibly strange. The job market in New York may have been a jungle, but it was at least an intelligible jungle.
Many years ago people complained about the "Old Boys Network" and how it kept folks on the outside looking in. I never really saw much of it in New York, and didn't actually believe it still existed anymore, except maybe in the very upper, upper reaches of the corporate world, which I will never reach and never had any desire to join. Here, in the 21st century south, not only does it exist, it thrives, and the old bonds of school, class and nepotism are no longer as strong as is the bond of having been born (anywhere) in the former Confederacy.
It probably won't be long before another transplanted Yankee decides to pester his Congresscritter to introduce a bill identifying "geographical origin" as a new classification of discrimination, to join "race, sex, color, religion, disability and sexual preferance".
Sunday, December 05, 2004
The Citi Never Sleeps...
My old employer, Citigroup, has been back in the news as of late. The latest lawsuit (you almost never hear anything positive about Citi, only about the lawsuits) arises from investors peeved about the actions of Jack Grubman (con-man extraordinaire) and his use of the ratings system to prop up AT&T , then run by a Citigroup board member, Michael Armstrong. The suit alleges that Grubman purposely gave AT&T a higher-then-deserved rating in order to allow Citi to obtain a lucrative contract with AT&T. In return, Grubman got the help of Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill in getting Grubman's kids into a ritzy pre-school program. Investors got stuck with stock, held or bought on Citi's recommendation, that was hardly worth the paper it was printed on.
My own personal thoughts on what passes for responsible management at Citi have been somewhat well documented here. I believe it to be a den of thieves, and when I hear something like this (I had heard about it three or four years ago), I'm not terribly surprised. This is par for the course; the old-boy network once again taking care of each other, with money and favors changing hands. The old nod-and-a-handshake method of business has never actually gone away, and probably never will.
I've gotten a few missives, queries and questions from various places about what I know went on at Citi, or more specifically, at it's Salomon, Smith-Barney subsidiary, where I was employed as a system's programmer, back in the day. I cannot tell anyone what actually happened in the boardroom, in the excutive dining room or in the executive suites. That was not my territory. I can only talk about what had filtered down to my area vis-a-vis management practices and the perceptions those practices created amongst the rank and file.
I never liked what was going on. Still, I held my nose and soldiered on for 11 years --- I had a job to do, and bills to pay, just like anyone else, and I was doing okay, despite the stress and the sick feelings I got everytime I walked through the front door at 390 Greenwich Street. Agita, like the three martini breakfast and the fully-staffed, on-site cardiac unit, is a staple of life on Wall Street.
So is greed. So is the stupidity engendered by greed. The short-sightedness that elevates the making of a dollar to the top of the list and the application of etics and common sense to the bottom of the trash heap. I've seen the greed and stupidity first hand, and after a while, the lines between where one starts and the other ends becomes awfully blurred. But it amazes me, to this day, how people with expensive educations from the finest Ivy League business schools can continue to be so incredibly stupid.
Jack Grubman was not poor. Jack Grubman could have afforded to send his children to any damn pre-school in the world, but he HAD to have the one at the 92nd Street Y. It wasn't just a better pre-school program, it was a status symbol. If the suckers had to be fleeced in order for that to happen, and the firm benefitted from some extra business at the same time, then so be it.
You see a lot of this on Wall Street.
I spent 18 years of my life in the financial industry, never on the trading floor, always in the system's areas, but you can't help but see this kind of thing happening all the time. In the end, the stupidity always revolves around three bsaic tenets:
1. Acquisition.
2. Status.
3. Arrogance.
Acquisition in the go-go 80's revolved around who could rake in the most money for the firm. Who had the better house or car, and who belonged to what clubs. It still does. One only need look at Dennis Kozlowski and Ken Lay, with the gazillion homes in Vail, the $18,000 umbrella stands and the art collects to see it. Back then, these guys would have actually done something productive in order to enjoy these perks. Nowadays, they just borrow the money from the firm, with no intention of ever paying it back, and leaving the investors on the hook for it. Acquisition in the 90's went far beyond the worst excesses of the 80's, in my opinion. Having the mansions, the yachts, the Bentleys and the memberships was no longer enough -- now they had to acquire even more mundane things, like the right pre-school, provided the proper patina of status was attached to it as well.
Status has always been a problem. You will find very few brokers on the street that don't have a "drop your pants and grab your yardstick" mentality. The big earners always got the better perks, and in the age of mass media, the better press. Your status nowadays revolves around how many magazine covers and Wall Street Journal profiles you happen to be seen or mentioned in. No one labors anonymously anymore, except the cubicle slaves who actually make it all possible. Still, the title of Lord of the Jungle not only revolves around how much you've acquired, but how much face time you get on television. About the only thing better than a multi-million dollar bonus was five good minutes in front of Maria Bartolomo, Stuart Varney or Neil Cavuto. If i had to guess, this need for exposure as well as riches reinforces an impression of the high rollers that I had formed very early on in my career: these guys probably all have small penises and have been compensating for it with wealth. Money, as they say, is a wonderful aphrodesiac.
As for arrogance, you couldn't be a market mover without it. You have to have a killer mentality and a swagger if you hope to get anywhere. Very often, that smugness, that swagger, that overconfidence, is vital to success. No one wants to do business with someone who hedges, who covers his behind or who second-guesses himself, even when he's dead wrong. These guys would rather go down in flames than to admit to making a mistake. Mistakes are for other people -- other people get blamed for them, other people are held responsible for them and ultimately, other people get fired for them. I can't tell you how many of these guys I've seen in my day who actually believe that if they yell enough, become intimidating enough, then nothing becomes impossible. I saw so much of it on September 11th, 2001 that it made me want to leave the industry for good. Nothing like watching the CIO of the compnay you work for pound a table demanding things that now lay at the bottom of a smoking pile of rubble, because he said so, and despite all logic indicating it can never be done. They become so arrogant that bringing the dead back to life becomes merely a matter of thundering and sending the peasants into a frenzy of activity.
At the end of the day, it's not Citi that does these things or is stocked to the brim with this kind of character. Every firm has them, regardless of the business they're in, and not all of them get caught. But occasionally, one does, and when that happens, the rest of the firm is caught due to the increased scrutiny the original sin brings. It's when the full force of daylight is brought to bear on the happenings of once-closed boardrooms that we begin to see just what fools these folks are. They have everything, and it's never enough. They have the power to affect the world's financial and political systems, and it's still not enough. The egos expand until they fill the four corners of the universe, and then they demand a bigger universe.
The probelm with the Jack Grubmans of this world is that, eventually, their egos become so inflated that they believe they will never get caught. Grubman got caught because he couldn't stop bragging about getting his kids into that school (it was an internal e-mail, for the love of Pete!), and that he was sufficiently in control of the company apparatus that he could manipulate all he wanted from the writing, issuing and filing of the reports, right down to side-stepping the compliance and legal departments, and that he could then use his knowledge of where the bodies were buried to protect his own behind. He forgot about the investors, many of whom would have lost enough money to notice, and who would begin to ask questions. He forgot about the press, whch back then was his friend, but which changes stripes as soon as blood hits the water. He did very well, for a while, escaping with a $32 million "severance package". That escape is merely momentary, apparently.
Want to know how this is all going to end?
Jack Grubman will be convicted of something, pay the requiste fines, avoid jail and become a "silent consultant" someplace else, raking in big bucks. Sandy Weill will retire (rumored to be coming for at least 10 years now), pay is fines and go back to counting his wealth and putting his names on hospital wings in New York City. No one will do any jail time since the lawyers will tiee this one up for years and since, nod and a wink, it wasn't like we were Enron, was it? Well, yes, you were Enron, in the sense that you did something wrong. Incidentally, if I recall, Citi was up to it's collective backside in Enron, too. Grubman also had a lot to do with the Global Crossing fiasco as well. The "system" will correct itself, displaying to all the world that they have truly learned their lesson, and when no one is watching them anymore, go right back to doing what they were doing anyway. It's always been done this way and it will never change.
If you want my advice on what to do with your money, you're asking the wrong person. However, if you want some advice on what the truth is about Wall Street and the scum that works on it, I can tell you the following:
- A stockbroker is a licenced bookie in a suit.
- You'll bever get "in on the ground floor" of anything. By the time the small potatoe investors get calls from their brokers, the firm has already made it's money, the broker made his, and now they're pumping up prices on your dime, so thatthey can make more later.
- Anything in which you still pay, win or lose, is something that requires your full attention. You paid for expert advice and if you want to take it, you should have enough common sense to follow up on it. Hold them accountable, hold them responsible, but for God's sake, don't absolve yourself of responsibility. Yo made the final decision and if you lost, that's your tough luck, or rather, your stupidity for going solely on trust and their say-so. There is no longer nay trust on Wall Street and a smart investor does his own homework.
- Very few, if any, of the brokers you might deal with is an honest individual. He has something to sell you, and he will always put the best eyeshadow on the worst pig and present it to you as the Prom Queen. At the end of the day, a stockbroker is a private firm, Me-Myself-and-I, Inc, and his well-being depends on you, or rather, on taking your money. Ethics on Wall Street went out the window a long time ago. Expect to be ripped off, frequently, and take action to minimize those losses if possible.
My old employer, Citigroup, has been back in the news as of late. The latest lawsuit (you almost never hear anything positive about Citi, only about the lawsuits) arises from investors peeved about the actions of Jack Grubman (con-man extraordinaire) and his use of the ratings system to prop up AT&T , then run by a Citigroup board member, Michael Armstrong. The suit alleges that Grubman purposely gave AT&T a higher-then-deserved rating in order to allow Citi to obtain a lucrative contract with AT&T. In return, Grubman got the help of Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill in getting Grubman's kids into a ritzy pre-school program. Investors got stuck with stock, held or bought on Citi's recommendation, that was hardly worth the paper it was printed on.
My own personal thoughts on what passes for responsible management at Citi have been somewhat well documented here. I believe it to be a den of thieves, and when I hear something like this (I had heard about it three or four years ago), I'm not terribly surprised. This is par for the course; the old-boy network once again taking care of each other, with money and favors changing hands. The old nod-and-a-handshake method of business has never actually gone away, and probably never will.
I've gotten a few missives, queries and questions from various places about what I know went on at Citi, or more specifically, at it's Salomon, Smith-Barney subsidiary, where I was employed as a system's programmer, back in the day. I cannot tell anyone what actually happened in the boardroom, in the excutive dining room or in the executive suites. That was not my territory. I can only talk about what had filtered down to my area vis-a-vis management practices and the perceptions those practices created amongst the rank and file.
I never liked what was going on. Still, I held my nose and soldiered on for 11 years --- I had a job to do, and bills to pay, just like anyone else, and I was doing okay, despite the stress and the sick feelings I got everytime I walked through the front door at 390 Greenwich Street. Agita, like the three martini breakfast and the fully-staffed, on-site cardiac unit, is a staple of life on Wall Street.
So is greed. So is the stupidity engendered by greed. The short-sightedness that elevates the making of a dollar to the top of the list and the application of etics and common sense to the bottom of the trash heap. I've seen the greed and stupidity first hand, and after a while, the lines between where one starts and the other ends becomes awfully blurred. But it amazes me, to this day, how people with expensive educations from the finest Ivy League business schools can continue to be so incredibly stupid.
Jack Grubman was not poor. Jack Grubman could have afforded to send his children to any damn pre-school in the world, but he HAD to have the one at the 92nd Street Y. It wasn't just a better pre-school program, it was a status symbol. If the suckers had to be fleeced in order for that to happen, and the firm benefitted from some extra business at the same time, then so be it.
You see a lot of this on Wall Street.
I spent 18 years of my life in the financial industry, never on the trading floor, always in the system's areas, but you can't help but see this kind of thing happening all the time. In the end, the stupidity always revolves around three bsaic tenets:
1. Acquisition.
2. Status.
3. Arrogance.
Acquisition in the go-go 80's revolved around who could rake in the most money for the firm. Who had the better house or car, and who belonged to what clubs. It still does. One only need look at Dennis Kozlowski and Ken Lay, with the gazillion homes in Vail, the $18,000 umbrella stands and the art collects to see it. Back then, these guys would have actually done something productive in order to enjoy these perks. Nowadays, they just borrow the money from the firm, with no intention of ever paying it back, and leaving the investors on the hook for it. Acquisition in the 90's went far beyond the worst excesses of the 80's, in my opinion. Having the mansions, the yachts, the Bentleys and the memberships was no longer enough -- now they had to acquire even more mundane things, like the right pre-school, provided the proper patina of status was attached to it as well.
Status has always been a problem. You will find very few brokers on the street that don't have a "drop your pants and grab your yardstick" mentality. The big earners always got the better perks, and in the age of mass media, the better press. Your status nowadays revolves around how many magazine covers and Wall Street Journal profiles you happen to be seen or mentioned in. No one labors anonymously anymore, except the cubicle slaves who actually make it all possible. Still, the title of Lord of the Jungle not only revolves around how much you've acquired, but how much face time you get on television. About the only thing better than a multi-million dollar bonus was five good minutes in front of Maria Bartolomo, Stuart Varney or Neil Cavuto. If i had to guess, this need for exposure as well as riches reinforces an impression of the high rollers that I had formed very early on in my career: these guys probably all have small penises and have been compensating for it with wealth. Money, as they say, is a wonderful aphrodesiac.
As for arrogance, you couldn't be a market mover without it. You have to have a killer mentality and a swagger if you hope to get anywhere. Very often, that smugness, that swagger, that overconfidence, is vital to success. No one wants to do business with someone who hedges, who covers his behind or who second-guesses himself, even when he's dead wrong. These guys would rather go down in flames than to admit to making a mistake. Mistakes are for other people -- other people get blamed for them, other people are held responsible for them and ultimately, other people get fired for them. I can't tell you how many of these guys I've seen in my day who actually believe that if they yell enough, become intimidating enough, then nothing becomes impossible. I saw so much of it on September 11th, 2001 that it made me want to leave the industry for good. Nothing like watching the CIO of the compnay you work for pound a table demanding things that now lay at the bottom of a smoking pile of rubble, because he said so, and despite all logic indicating it can never be done. They become so arrogant that bringing the dead back to life becomes merely a matter of thundering and sending the peasants into a frenzy of activity.
At the end of the day, it's not Citi that does these things or is stocked to the brim with this kind of character. Every firm has them, regardless of the business they're in, and not all of them get caught. But occasionally, one does, and when that happens, the rest of the firm is caught due to the increased scrutiny the original sin brings. It's when the full force of daylight is brought to bear on the happenings of once-closed boardrooms that we begin to see just what fools these folks are. They have everything, and it's never enough. They have the power to affect the world's financial and political systems, and it's still not enough. The egos expand until they fill the four corners of the universe, and then they demand a bigger universe.
The probelm with the Jack Grubmans of this world is that, eventually, their egos become so inflated that they believe they will never get caught. Grubman got caught because he couldn't stop bragging about getting his kids into that school (it was an internal e-mail, for the love of Pete!), and that he was sufficiently in control of the company apparatus that he could manipulate all he wanted from the writing, issuing and filing of the reports, right down to side-stepping the compliance and legal departments, and that he could then use his knowledge of where the bodies were buried to protect his own behind. He forgot about the investors, many of whom would have lost enough money to notice, and who would begin to ask questions. He forgot about the press, whch back then was his friend, but which changes stripes as soon as blood hits the water. He did very well, for a while, escaping with a $32 million "severance package". That escape is merely momentary, apparently.
Want to know how this is all going to end?
Jack Grubman will be convicted of something, pay the requiste fines, avoid jail and become a "silent consultant" someplace else, raking in big bucks. Sandy Weill will retire (rumored to be coming for at least 10 years now), pay is fines and go back to counting his wealth and putting his names on hospital wings in New York City. No one will do any jail time since the lawyers will tiee this one up for years and since, nod and a wink, it wasn't like we were Enron, was it? Well, yes, you were Enron, in the sense that you did something wrong. Incidentally, if I recall, Citi was up to it's collective backside in Enron, too. Grubman also had a lot to do with the Global Crossing fiasco as well. The "system" will correct itself, displaying to all the world that they have truly learned their lesson, and when no one is watching them anymore, go right back to doing what they were doing anyway. It's always been done this way and it will never change.
If you want my advice on what to do with your money, you're asking the wrong person. However, if you want some advice on what the truth is about Wall Street and the scum that works on it, I can tell you the following:
- A stockbroker is a licenced bookie in a suit.
- You'll bever get "in on the ground floor" of anything. By the time the small potatoe investors get calls from their brokers, the firm has already made it's money, the broker made his, and now they're pumping up prices on your dime, so thatthey can make more later.
- Anything in which you still pay, win or lose, is something that requires your full attention. You paid for expert advice and if you want to take it, you should have enough common sense to follow up on it. Hold them accountable, hold them responsible, but for God's sake, don't absolve yourself of responsibility. Yo made the final decision and if you lost, that's your tough luck, or rather, your stupidity for going solely on trust and their say-so. There is no longer nay trust on Wall Street and a smart investor does his own homework.
- Very few, if any, of the brokers you might deal with is an honest individual. He has something to sell you, and he will always put the best eyeshadow on the worst pig and present it to you as the Prom Queen. At the end of the day, a stockbroker is a private firm, Me-Myself-and-I, Inc, and his well-being depends on you, or rather, on taking your money. Ethics on Wall Street went out the window a long time ago. Expect to be ripped off, frequently, and take action to minimize those losses if possible.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
And Another Thing, PETA...
As long as I'm gonna rail, let's at least make an effort to rail at a relevant subject.
PETA, although they're a bunch of pains in the backside, are merely yet another indication of what is wrong with the world. If ya asked me, I'd tell you that what's wrong, simply, are that people have lost their sense of proportion, to begin with. I'd also tell you that people have become so selfish that it's becoming impossible to distinguish between pure greed, pure stupidity and mindless narcissism. Finally, for good measure, I'd also tell you that every human being on this planet requires a good, long enema with a high-pressure steam hose, because ultimately, we're all full of shit.
Some of us have more of a fecal retention problem than others. Take democrats , for example. Rules don't matter to them (especially when they helped put them in place), if it doesn't suit their needs. Can't win an election at the ballot box, then sue. Can't win in court, pout. Can't win in the court of public opinion, get paranoid and invent conspiracies to explain why you didn't get your way. The same thing is happening in Ukraine right now. The Russian Communists still have not gotten over their loss over a decade ago, and like good paranoids, they're striking out at those that hurt them or who mightpotentially hurt them --- Ukranians seeking political freedom.
You know people are ful of shit when Fox News, in the process of trying to cover the events in Ukraine, manages to bring Oksana Lada into the studio to talk about these things. Who is Oksana Lada, you ask? She's an actress whose claim to fame is that she played Tony Soprano's Russian slambag one season. This was the most famous Ukranian of some standing that they could find?
You can see the selfishness in this country reflected in the recent visit of President Bush to Canada this week. Tens of thousands of Canadians took to the street to engage in the kind of stuff that gets one a degree in "Social Consciousness" here. You know, parading around with pictures of Bush and Hitler, holding up signs with catchy slogans with lots of foul language, throwing garbage and riot barriers at the police. We saw the same thing here for the last three years, especially this past summer in New York during the Republican convention. No matter who gets interviewed during these things, the same crap is always recycled:
"America is hated. We're hated because we had the temerity to strike back instead of surrender. If we just stopped, everyone else would stop too."
Translation: I'd rather be popular than right. Stop this fighting before I either get my butt blown up, or God forbid, I get drafted and have to give up my X-Box and skateboard. Why can't we just take it on the chin and then pretend it never happened?
Response: If you care what the rest of the world thinks, then fine. Go live there. When you can't get Starbucks, cellphone service, the Gap, Survivor on TV or access to a hospital, don't cry to come back. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice for what you have and more often than not, you have an obligation to fight for it. If that screws up your cushy, metrosexual lifestyle, too damn bad about you. We don't ignore it because if we let 9/11 pass, then we're setting ourselves up for a bigger attack next time around. Don't think so? Check the history of 30 years of Arab terrorism against America and you'll find pinprick after pinprick until it finally ramps up: 243 dead Marines in Lebanon, Pan Am 103, Embassy bomnbings in Africa, Khobar Towers, U.S.S. Cole, World Trade Center, twice.
Perhaps if we just set ourselves up for another one, we could get lucky and have the terrorists blow up the Berkeley faculty lounge, but I doubt we'd have that kind of good fortune. Any major university would be a viable alternate. If we're going to get bombed, let's at least take out the low end of the gene pool. You know, the ones that in the wild would have been the easy pickings for the lions.
We've heard people screaming for years: I have the right to kill a baby in my eighth months, I have the right to screw little children if I want to, I have the right to marry a daschund, I have the right to shoot heroin, I have the right to be permanently paid not to riot, I have the right to be President because I said so, I have the right, I have the right, I have the right.
Sure, everyone has rights. But in excercising yours you must remember that others have them too. You may not like meat, but I'll eat it whenever I want to. I don't like homosexual behavior, but people have a right to their preferences despite my wishes. Rights come with repsonsibilities. Prime among them is the ability to recognize that just because you may have a right to something, it doesn't automatically follow that you SHOULD have that right.
Why is it that no one ever says I have the responsibility?
So, we get back to everyone being full of shit.
PETA can rail about cows being "mistreated" when the real reason they're in a slaughterhouse is to be killed in the first place. Makes no sense. I'll bet the same people who walk around waving signs shouting "Meat is Murder" don't have a problem with Arab men beheading human beings. Cows should have rights, people responsibilities, in this case. Unless assigning responsibilities (i.e. the responsibility to act like a civilized human being) interferes with your other political goals (i.e. trying to avoid having to take responsibility for fighting for your country and culture against murderous thugs).
Yes, I know hypocrisy amongst human beings is nothing new. But damn, is it tiring.
As long as I'm gonna rail, let's at least make an effort to rail at a relevant subject.
PETA, although they're a bunch of pains in the backside, are merely yet another indication of what is wrong with the world. If ya asked me, I'd tell you that what's wrong, simply, are that people have lost their sense of proportion, to begin with. I'd also tell you that people have become so selfish that it's becoming impossible to distinguish between pure greed, pure stupidity and mindless narcissism. Finally, for good measure, I'd also tell you that every human being on this planet requires a good, long enema with a high-pressure steam hose, because ultimately, we're all full of shit.
Some of us have more of a fecal retention problem than others. Take democrats , for example. Rules don't matter to them (especially when they helped put them in place), if it doesn't suit their needs. Can't win an election at the ballot box, then sue. Can't win in court, pout. Can't win in the court of public opinion, get paranoid and invent conspiracies to explain why you didn't get your way. The same thing is happening in Ukraine right now. The Russian Communists still have not gotten over their loss over a decade ago, and like good paranoids, they're striking out at those that hurt them or who mightpotentially hurt them --- Ukranians seeking political freedom.
You know people are ful of shit when Fox News, in the process of trying to cover the events in Ukraine, manages to bring Oksana Lada into the studio to talk about these things. Who is Oksana Lada, you ask? She's an actress whose claim to fame is that she played Tony Soprano's Russian slambag one season. This was the most famous Ukranian of some standing that they could find?
You can see the selfishness in this country reflected in the recent visit of President Bush to Canada this week. Tens of thousands of Canadians took to the street to engage in the kind of stuff that gets one a degree in "Social Consciousness" here. You know, parading around with pictures of Bush and Hitler, holding up signs with catchy slogans with lots of foul language, throwing garbage and riot barriers at the police. We saw the same thing here for the last three years, especially this past summer in New York during the Republican convention. No matter who gets interviewed during these things, the same crap is always recycled:
"America is hated. We're hated because we had the temerity to strike back instead of surrender. If we just stopped, everyone else would stop too."
Translation: I'd rather be popular than right. Stop this fighting before I either get my butt blown up, or God forbid, I get drafted and have to give up my X-Box and skateboard. Why can't we just take it on the chin and then pretend it never happened?
Response: If you care what the rest of the world thinks, then fine. Go live there. When you can't get Starbucks, cellphone service, the Gap, Survivor on TV or access to a hospital, don't cry to come back. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice for what you have and more often than not, you have an obligation to fight for it. If that screws up your cushy, metrosexual lifestyle, too damn bad about you. We don't ignore it because if we let 9/11 pass, then we're setting ourselves up for a bigger attack next time around. Don't think so? Check the history of 30 years of Arab terrorism against America and you'll find pinprick after pinprick until it finally ramps up: 243 dead Marines in Lebanon, Pan Am 103, Embassy bomnbings in Africa, Khobar Towers, U.S.S. Cole, World Trade Center, twice.
Perhaps if we just set ourselves up for another one, we could get lucky and have the terrorists blow up the Berkeley faculty lounge, but I doubt we'd have that kind of good fortune. Any major university would be a viable alternate. If we're going to get bombed, let's at least take out the low end of the gene pool. You know, the ones that in the wild would have been the easy pickings for the lions.
We've heard people screaming for years: I have the right to kill a baby in my eighth months, I have the right to screw little children if I want to, I have the right to marry a daschund, I have the right to shoot heroin, I have the right to be permanently paid not to riot, I have the right to be President because I said so, I have the right, I have the right, I have the right.
Sure, everyone has rights. But in excercising yours you must remember that others have them too. You may not like meat, but I'll eat it whenever I want to. I don't like homosexual behavior, but people have a right to their preferences despite my wishes. Rights come with repsonsibilities. Prime among them is the ability to recognize that just because you may have a right to something, it doesn't automatically follow that you SHOULD have that right.
Why is it that no one ever says I have the responsibility?
So, we get back to everyone being full of shit.
PETA can rail about cows being "mistreated" when the real reason they're in a slaughterhouse is to be killed in the first place. Makes no sense. I'll bet the same people who walk around waving signs shouting "Meat is Murder" don't have a problem with Arab men beheading human beings. Cows should have rights, people responsibilities, in this case. Unless assigning responsibilities (i.e. the responsibility to act like a civilized human being) interferes with your other political goals (i.e. trying to avoid having to take responsibility for fighting for your country and culture against murderous thugs).
Yes, I know hypocrisy amongst human beings is nothing new. But damn, is it tiring.
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