On The Great Issues of the Day...

Some stuff I've been thinking about. Sometimes, I get this swirl of ideas -- I liken the process to watching something being flushed down a toilet -- and they don't go away until I write them down:

1. On the Looming Federal Budget Battles:

A great Kabuki Theatre of the Absurd. We all know that Obama won't cut a thing and any appearance of a cut is simply for show and spun as a disaster for the country, and that despite the GOP's protests they'll also be very selective about what they cut (i.e. anything that costs them campaign contributions or elections will be spared). This battle is one of propaganda between two competing philosophies; one which has been historically proven to be a complete and unsustainable failure, and the other an attempt by a once-proud-and-principled brand name to recover it's market share and good name.

If the Great Budget Battles to come were a marketing campaign, Obama's ad would basically say "Try New-and-Improved Crap, now with 10% More Less!", and the Republicans can be said to be in the same position that Tylenol was in after the great cyanide scare of the 1980's; They have a product which still works, but now they have to regain the public trust.

Both parties are afraid to tell the truth about these coming battles in this regard: neither will step up to the plate and say "we've fucked up, and the process of un-fucking it up will be long and perhaps bloody". If they did, you'd want to know what they fucked up and how they did it, and then you'd want them tarred and feathered, and perhaps ass-raped, as well. Unfortunately, the job of reigning in the federal budget, and limiting the reach(around) of government into our lives, is not going to be pain-free, and overflowing with rainbows and gumdrops. Sorry Welfare Queens, but you might have to start working for a living.

The only real interest I have in this looming budget fight is this: if, at the end of the day, we still have a welfare state (and that goes for Ethanol Subsidies and keeping GM on life support, too), we still have some hints or vestiges of ObamaCare, if the Department of Education (that's a $1-trillion wasted right there!) still exists, if Fannie and Freddie are still underwriting mortgages and there is no plan to liquidate their assets, if every department of the Federal Government still has a 'Civil Rights' division (we already have a Justice Dept., thanks!), if Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups are still being federally-funded, and if we do not get a better, fairer, less-complicated tax code out of the bargain, then we're fucking doomed.

The problem we face is that approximately 50% of the members of Congress depend upon either expanded Federal spending or being able to grab pieces of that huge-and-overflowing "Discretionary spending" budget in order to keep their positions -- they must bring home the bacon, in any way they can -- there being no other discernible reason for them to be there, otherwise. That 50% number represents the Retards, Apparatchiks, Fixers, Poverty Pimps, '60's Retreads, and Race Hustlers lodged within the U.S. Congress. If you doubt this, take a good look at the New York State Congressional Delegation, and see if you can then find grounds for disagreement. There never was, I should think, a greater advertisement for Birth Control.

(As an aside: it's a toss-up as to who has the worst Galaxy of Retards representing them in Congress -- New York, Illinois, Michigan or California. I think if you take the number of welfare recipients in a state, multiply it by the number of burned out ghettos and abandoned factories, and then divide that number by the percentage of the population which are high school dropouts, you can arrive at a pretty representative Douchebag Factor for each state. The state with the highest Douchebag Factor is almost guaranteed to be the one with the worst Congressional Delegation).

Those members of Congress depend upon their ability to game the system in order to justify their existence, which is why prying any money away from their pet 'projects' is going to be like pulling teeth...from an alligator. Good luck with that, Republicans.

2. On 'Democracy in the Middle East':

The only things a 'democratic' Middle East will ever bring is more of the same. Don't think so?

Palestinians voted for Hamas. Iraqis voted for Al'Sadr. Lebonese voted for Hezbollah. Syrians voted for Ba'athists (like Saddam Hussein). Seeing a pattern here? If given the chance to vote 'democratically', Muslims vote for terrorists, religious douchebags, and dictatorial regimes. It's in their blood, it's in their nature, it is at the very foundation of Islamic Culture.

It's so ingrained now that oppression is the natural state of life, and one brand of repression is as good as the next -- but the best kind wraps itself in the Koran -- that it's probably a genetic feature, perhaps even a biological imperative in most Arabs by now. The need and ability to consistently make the wrong choice -- war over peace, religion over reason, terrorism over negotiation, brutal dictatorship over freedom -- is probably firmly-ensconced within their DNA.

When one of these nascent Arab 'democracies' finally gets around to purging itself of it's worst elements, establishes a clear divergence of faith and state, lets it's women loose to work outside the home, or even better, to wear comfortable clothes that don't express their second-class status with an unmutilated clitoris, when an Arab finally makes something useful that doesn't explode and is actually salable on an open market, when the AK-47 and RPG are replaced by the two-car garage, and the whole Islamic Culture finally emerges from the filthy mental sandstorm of constipated 7th-century doctrinal oppression, THEN I'll believe there's hope for 'democracy' in the Arab lands. Not one second before.

A clear example of what 'democracy' means in the Middle East is something I remember being said by the Jordanian Foreign Minster on FoxNews a few weeks back. When asked if the Jordanian government was worried that an Egyptian-style popular uprising could occur in Jordan, the Minister said (paraphrasing) that such was impossible. That if Jordanian democracy ever 'got out of hand' the King would be there to whip back into shape. In other words, a Monarch with the power to dictate to Parliaments and to reshape the political landscape with a decree, is somehow the guarantor of democratic government.

The 'Uprisings' in Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Algeria, et. al., are simply the visible symptoms of a disease which infects all the Islamic World. It was the same disease which once infected the Eastern Bloc nations, and the Soviet Union. There are legions of unwashed, hungry, pig-ignorant people in the streets of Middle Eastern capitols today who are simply doing what frustrated people always do; they're turning on the people they blame for their misery. The difference is this:

The Soviet Union, when it fell, at least degenerated into a series of semi-democratic, Western-style states and governments. We can argue about whether there is true democracy in the former Soviet lands, but one cannot argue as to whether or not at least some of those countries are on their way to something recognizable as Western Democracy. In the Middle East, there's a critical difference between how we view democracy and how the typical Arab Douchebag in the Street views democracy. To us, democracy is a system of checks and balances, of rights and corresponding responsibilities, of social contract and law. In the Middle East, democracy means
installing Sharia under whichever brutal strongman manages to exert enough control over the security services and make himself President for Life.

Islam cannot tolerate democracy, much like Communism couldn't tolerate it, and even if those people in the street have the best of intentions, because they are so stupid, so desperate, so lacking in basic material from which the thread of a democratic tradition can be spun, they will fail.

The people who rioted in the streets and shouted "Goodbye Mubarak" are the same people who formerly rioted in the streets screaming"Death to America!". Once their short attention spans turn from the heady wine of revolution and begin to turn to the problems of actually forming a democratic system, they'll be back to shouting "Death to America!" again, in short order. Why? Because they'll fail, a distinct possibility because they don't have the mental and social tools to succeed, and it'll be OUR (America's) fault. Why? Because it always is with these idiots, and besides, the Imams will make certain that Mohammed Q. Public actually believes that.

Expect more airliners-cum-WMD's from all those new 'democratic' nations very soon...

3. On China;

If I were the President of the United States, I could bring China to heel in about 30 seconds; I'd make an apparently off-hand, and off-guard, remark about China that would set the financial markets all a-flutter. Naturally, the comment wouldn't be off-hand and off-guard, but that's the point. The President of the United States could bring all of China to a screeching halt with a press release.

Yes, there would be some resulting economic damage done in this country if that were to happen, but here's the really neat trick; this country has the capacity to recover from it, China does not. China depends upon an inflow of Western cash, and access to Western Markets, in order to build it's Potemkin Villages with Bird's Nest Stadiums in the Smog.

To those who would complain that China will simply stop funding American debt if played that game, I say. So what? There's an old expression on Wall Street that goes like this:

"If your banker lends you $10,000, he owns you; if he lends you $1,000,000, then you own him."

Now, just how badly do you think we own the Chinese when we owe them several trillion bucks?
It's funny that Lenin was quoted (paraphrased) as saying that 'Capitalism will sell us (the Communists) the rope with which we will eventually hang them', and here it has come to pass in exactly the opposite fashion.

Fuck China. In another 20 years it will disintegrate into violent revolution, again, once the new middle classes begin to demand political rights in order to safeguard their newly-won personal fortunes. The first enemy all people strive to defend their nest eggs from is usually their own government.

4. On Iran:

This one is too easy. The next time Iranians take to the streets to protest against the theocracy and the sycophantic lunatic fringe which serves as it's visible face, I'd move an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf. I'd airdrop 1,000,000 cell and sat phones, Wi-Fi cards, and spare batteries into Tehran. I'd make certain that Facebook, Twitter and Internet access were available by means other than those controlled by the Iranian Government. I'd also distribute copies of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence --in Farsi --all over the country.

Then I'd bomb the fuck out of every nuclear weapons site I could find or identify, and leave the Iranian people to the grisly business of killing each other over which faction, religious or political, gets to hold the dubious honor of running a ruined country. It is, after all, what they're really, really good at.That ought to keep them busy for the next 500 years, and continued inbreeding from all that cousin marriage will do the rest. Then I'd be building nuclear power plants and drilling for every last drop of fucking oil we know we have, and encourage American Enterprise to make the oil-producing states the industrial version of the dinosaurs.

5. On North Korea:

I'd transmit pictures by any means available to the North Korean people of Americans sitting down to a sumptuous Thanksgiving feast. I'd make the obvious comparisons; Americans have food. Americans have so much food that they can afford to sit down and engage in gluttony. I'd also transmit pictures of Americans throwing food away. See? We have so much food, we can afford to waste it! I'd show them Americans feeding their dogs table scraps-- we have so much food, even our dogs enjoy steak!

Wall-to-wall beer advertisements with busty babes. Pictures of hotdogs grilling. Lovely Scratch-and-Sniff, menu-quality photos of a Wendy's Taco salads, a nice Big Mac, a juicy T-bone, lobster in drawn butter, fresh vegetables and fruit, a nice, fresh loaf of Italian Bread, all airdropped by Stealth bombers all over the peninsula. If it were possible, I'd contrive to have the aroma of a lovely roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, and a lovely side of baby peas and carrots wafted over North Korea's largest cities. I'd gather all them Travel Size toiletries and liberally bomb the entire country with them; tiny tubes of toothpaste, bottles of shampoo, the little soaps you get in the hotel, and quite a few of those airliner bottles of Jack Daniel's, Absolut, Beefeater's, Johnny Walker Black.

What do you have, North Korea? Are you eating well? Do you have beer, or even clean water to drink? Do you have booze? Do you even have soap and toothpaste? No, you don't? Then why don't you march on Pyongyang and remove that demented little paper-hanger you call 'Dear Leader' and get with the program? Workers of North Korea: You have nothing to lose except your malnutrition and head lice!

"I'll Fuck You In the Ass, You Faggot!"

Someone has issues. You need to sit through a load of bad union boilerplate before you get to that quote, so be patient, and try to hold your lunch down.

By the way, if you actually did make good on your threat and fuck another man in the ass, doesn't that make you a faggot, too?

I know that in the Middle East, when you fuck another man in the ass, it's just being friendly, but in this country it is customary to at least offer to take the guy to dinner, first.

Just another example of that new trend towards Lefty civility, I guess. Just as an aside, I've noticed that all the Union people in these videos seem to have an awful lot in common:

1. Morbid Obesity

2. A 6th-grade vocabulary

3. A distinct lack of obvious intelligence (even the teachers). You can tell from all the misspelled signs.

4. A propensity to immediately leap from minor disagreement to violence, or threat, thereof.

5. Raised hand/fist salutes wherever you look. Unions routinely accuse everyone of being Nazis or the next Mussolini, but somehow, they haven't lost the penchant for raucous rallies, violence, and the raised-fist salutes which were a hallmark of the radical Socialist movements of the 1920's and 30's. Only then, they called it "the anti-Fascist' salute', it is a curious gesture which has been attached to every Left-wing cause (often with modification) for the last century. The typical union muster for one of these protests often looks and feels like a Nuremberg Rally, only with more cholesterol, muffin tops, and back fat.

6. You wouldn't fuck any of the chicks there with a stolen dick. Also, there seems to be an awful lot of hippies at these events. I don't know if that's the Left-leaning organizations sending people to fill out the crowds for the benefit of the cameras or not, but a lot of them appear a little long in the tooth to be the typical dopey college kids dragooned for this mission. Conclusion: there's a lot of 1960's retreads in the unions, and most of them are probably still smoking pot.

7. It's the 21st Century. Why all the recycled 1920's-era Socialist rhetoric? Oh right -- the American Labor Unions are the bastard children of Lenin. I forgot. All of these rallies use the same, outdated, language, harkening back to the Dickensian image of the early Industrial Revolution. Which is funny, because when Lenin was read A Christmas Carol. on his deathbed, he hated it, calling it "sentimental bourgeois rubbish." Well, it's only natural to expect that the creator of a Political stupidity so pronounced that it's biggest adherents were always the Peasant Classes (the envious, the ill-educated, and therefore, easily-led) to hate Christmas and crippled children.

If you were under the impression that your typical Union Worker was a regular Joe, just like you and I, who has a modicum of intelligence about him, take a look at this, and listen carefully for this nugget of Labor Wisdom casually thrown in between all the gratuitous racism and mindless ranting:

"You're an entrepreneur, so you don't work...".

And if there were no entrepreneurs, neither would you, Dipshit!

Now you know why Civil Service Exams need to be written so that a 3rd grader can pass them, and why the government (Federal, State or Municipal) never calls those with the perfect scores first with a job offer -- they need to gainfully employ the mouth-breathing idiots first, because otherwise they would simply waddle around aimlessly, engage in senseless violence, and beget legions of retarded children who will probably never be gainfully employed without a Union, themselves.

Government caters to the lowest common denominator in all things because that's where the votes and money are, naturally. Why should anyone be surprised that some guy who passed the Postal Exam with a 62 gets called before the guy with the 100? The answer: because the guy with the perfect score probably isn't a mental defective this-close to going on a killing spree without a steady paycheck. He has options, you know. These people aren't so much workers as they are the seething barbarians of America with a very short fuse. It's cheaper to pay them more than they're worth, and steal their votes, than it is to institutionalize or euthanize them. The Romans thought that way, too. Much to their later distress.

Or, at least it was cheaper, Once Upon a Time.

Professor Hanson explains it all; it's the adolescent mindset. That's what we see on television every night; not people 'fighting' for their rights, or demanding to keep the overly-generous benefits they get; they're throwing a tantrum because they've been told "NO!".

Those people in the streets of Madison are not The Backbone of America. If they were, I'd probably be packing for greener pastures right about now.

ObamaCare and Thoughtcrime...

Making the choice NOT to buy health insurance is now subject to government regulation? Are you kidding me?

This 'judge' has just formulated the basis of the newest version of Thoughtcrime (see: George Orwell); not doing what the government thinks you should be doing, even if what the government advocates is inherently unconstitutional. You can add this new definition of Thoughtcrime to all the older versions already on the books (speech codes, hate crimes, etc.). Soon, it will be illegal to breathe in a manner that invokes a Libtard's ire.

Where the fuck do we grow these judges?

Especially these left-leaning ones. Somehow, the word 'choice' in the liberal mindset only really applies to abortion (which should be left as unregulated, and as worthy of taxpayer dollars as possible, see: Philadelphia), but heaven forbid one should exercise the same conception of freedom of choice in whether or not one chooses to smoke, drink, own an SUVor a gun, let your children live, or stay as clear of The Lightworker's Great Eyedrops and Band-Aids Boondoggle as one reasonably can. No way; exercise those kinds of options (ones liberals don't like) and you've gone off the reservation and need to be punished -- for your own good, of course.

I'd like to suggest that we find the law school Judge Kessler once pretended to attend, and then burn it to the ground. It has obviously failed in it's stated goal of producing people who can be counted upon to be responsible jurists.

Naturally, when the result is reversed -- and Libtards don't like what a judge says -- it's a wholly different story. Then you have to have Congress come up with some code to restrict the Supreme Court...before they actually hear the case for/against ObamaCare. You can't make this shit up, folks.

Then again, when you take all things into consideration -- the judge-shopping that has gone on in defense of the indefensible (ObamaCare), the 900+ (and counting) waivers that have already been issued for a law that doesn't fully take effect until 2014, the unconstitutional manner in which ObamaCare was passed, the open bribery of key democratic Senators in an effort to get their votes on this piece of shit, the intimidation practices of the Left and their Union allies, and now the criminalization of the freedom of choice and the effort to constrain the full Supreme Court from hearing cases related to it -- it becomes absolutely clear just who and what the REAL democratic (smalll 'd' intentional) party truly is, and what they have come to stand for.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Scoop Jackson are rolling in their graves today. Even Robert Byrd, the Klansman and inveterate pork-barreler, who has every highway rest stop and overpass in West Virginia named after him, thought this thing was wrong, and would lead to less liberty, and at least had the courage (perhaps for the first time in his worthless life) to say so...before voting for it, anyway (I think).

Unions? Who Needs 'Em? Part II...

To the strikinig Public Union Workers (three lies for the price of one) in Wisconsin;

1. On Your 'Rights': tell it to the GM and Chrysler bondholders who got shafted so that the UAW wouldn't have to take a bite of the Shit Sandwich our politicians so thoughtfully crafted for us all. Their contractual rights were run over in the Obama Administration's (two more lies, same low price!) effort to reward Big Labor for all the money and adulation they gave to The One in his quest to be the first man to pretend that he's President of the United States, but actually live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

You know, many of those (non-union) bondholders depended upon the payout from those bonds as part of their pension. Where was the sympathy for them? Where was the solidarity with them? So far as I can remember, Big Labor was so silent on this travesty and injustice that you could hear the crickets chirping.

2. More on Your Rights: think back to this past December here in New York City when the largest blizzard in recent memory struck, and the Sanitation Department upon which we depend to clear the snow off the streets staged a work slowdown and sickout, protesting the loss (through attrition, which means they got to retire early) of something like 100 Sanitation supervisors.

Because the streets were clogged with snow, people died when ambulances and fire trucks couldn't get to them to render assistance. Talk about "getting a little bloody"? The New York City Sanitation Department has blood on it's hands already.

I guess the 'right' of 100 overpaid and underworked, probably-mouth-breathing-idiots-or-else-they'd-have-real-jobs to retire on the taxpayer teat outweighed the right of others to live, huh?

3. Even More on Your Rights: Fast-forward to February, 20111, and post-blizzard conditions are such that the perennial plague of potholes on New York City streets has returned. In my neighborhood, there are potholes large enough to cause trucks to bottom out, many have become than concrete ponds in the middle of the streets, and all are a threat to public safety and undoubtedly having adverse affects on other parts of the City infrastructure.

So, what does our Department of Transportation (the entity charged with filling potholes around here) do? It makes certain that it puts half it's 'work crews' on furlough (i.e. paid vacation - they get unemployment checks -- even though they actually still have jobs -- and the Union that represents them pays many of their living expenses while they're out for 10-14 weeks), just when it knows the pothole problem will be reaching it's zenith, and then cries that if the City continues to cut budgets those potholes just can't ever get filled.

Why, It's almost as if they planned the whole thing that way, you know? In another place and time, and if we weren't speaking of 'Public Employees', there'd be a Federal Prosecutor licking his lips over all the prospect of a string of easy convictions, given all the RICO predicates such a conspiracy would indicate.

Around here, some folks have taken to filling in the potholes themselves, and at their own expense. After all, how fucking difficult can it be to fill in a hole in the ground, right? And someone gets paid $40 an hour to do it?

4. On the "Get Bloody" Comment: What happened to that whole civility thingy that the Libtards were screaming about a month ago? Oh, right: that only applies when it's a democrat who gets shot. Seems to me that if your name is 'Capuano', and you come from an ethnic background which has a history of bloody murder and public rubouts, that you should probably be a little more circumspect about calling your cohorts to violence. Mr. Capuano makes me ashamed to be Italian (mostly because he's a fucking doofus).

Of course, people even dumber than Capuano actually took his advice and did get a little bloody, but since we're dealing with Union thugs who's intelligence is often comparable to that of your common garden slug, this should have been no surprise. But remember: it's only White Male Tea Partiers who are the new Brownshirts.

What a much better country we'd have, and a more vibrant economy, if we simply did away with the Unions altogether, made every state in the country a Right-to-Work State, and then allowed employees to negotiate the terms of their employment -- individually -- with their employers! If Union Slobs are shouting in the streets about the sanctity of a contract when it suits their purposes, then I'd like to be able to enjoy the same luxury.

In my case, I'd tell my employer that my skills will cost them $200k a year, but in return I'll forgo medical benefits, retirement benefits, and paid sick days. I'd rather have the money and take care of those things myself, thank you.

Of course, then I'd have $200k a year, and be villified as one of the Rich White Guys the Obamatards hate so much. Oh well, as long as I still get to own a gun, I think I can deal with that.

Only On Staten Island...

...can you leave your children at a Police Station, and then be arrested for Endangering the Welfare of a child.

Then again, with this sort of cop protecting our fair city, that might not be too far from the truth.

However, if charming little anecdotes about scaring your over-indulged, you-made-'em-uncontrollable children into quivering submission, or killer drunk-driver cops aren't your cup of tea, there's more to our fair isle. Why, if you look closely enough, you'll see a classic example of what happens to you if you make extremely poor decisions AND depend upon the government for your catastrophic healthcare. Your ObamaCare future, coming to a town near you!

The category of people once defined as"The Rich" has seemingly gone from $250k+ a year to those who earn $700 bucks a month, in just under 2 years? That's Change You Can Believe In, Son! Yesssirrreeee!

By the way, was I the only one who noticed that this young man is, somehow, both an Honors Student AND collecting government-funded disability payments for a learning disorder? And that John Jay offered him a free education, but that he didn't take it? Does any of this sound right to you? Not to belittle the kid's plight, but really, at what point do you stop playing victim, and expecting the taxpayer to pick up your bills, and start taking advantage of the opportunities you've been handed on a silver-fucking-platter?

Do you know how many people there are who would...ahem...give an eye...for a free education, Dispshit?

But it was so good to see that his union coughed up a whole $250.00 for his healthcare. Way to look out for the Workin' Stiff, Fellas! Warmed the cockles of my black, little heart, it did. I wonder how much the union gave to Chuck "I Wet My Pants Daily" Schumer's re-election committee? Did it get one of those 900+ waivers from the Obama Administration that let it wriggle out of ObamaCare, too?

Of course, it's not all doom-and-gloom in these parts. No, no, no. Sometimes, we can even entertain ourselves with the outrageous antics of our fellow citizens. Especially the ones who walk into a Home Depot, and probably stage an incident so as to provoke some response and therefore have grounds for a potentially-remunerative lawsuit. The gratuitous racism and de rigeur ambulance-chaser-approved neckbrace are just an added bonus.

The gene pool needs some chlorine, methinks.

Some Pigs Are More Equal Than Others...

Honestly, I have to admit that I was attracted to this article mostly because the name George Orwell was attached to it. Orwell didn't write it, but the theme is one of Orwell's favorites, and was the basis for his novel Animal Farm.

(Ed. Note: By the way, if you still haven't read Animal Farm, you really, really should. And then you should see a doctor to get the mental defect that prevented you from reading it in the first place corrected, Dipshit!).

For all those people who routinely scream like Chicken Little that China will one day Rule the Earth, I counter with the argument that articles like this one prove that China is little more than Chicago, Washington, D.C., or New Orleans -- only with better press.

The same sickness which has destroyed those American cities -- the confluence of ridiculously-outmoded socialist thought (oxymoron) politics and policies, open bribery, unfair taxation policies, the misuse of tax money and political power, personal and political connections, the arrogance of a ruling elite, One-Party Rule -- is working the same magic on China, as a whole, that it always has worked everywhere it's been tried. The primary symptom of this disease is a culture of entitlement in which behavior that is otherwise beyond society's pale, is perfectly acceptable so long as it is the 'right' people (those with connections, or who have paid the requisite bribes) who engage in them, and always at someone else's expense.

That pisses people off, you know. In this country, we do things like form Tea Parties and vote Republican (which is only slightly-better). In places like China, people riot -- at least until they get run over by tanks, which only pisses people off even more. Imagine Tiannemen Square, only 50 times worse, and unlike the Newark or Los Angeles riots of American history, burning the city down would probably not be considered an improvement by most Chinese.

So, if all of you economic doom-and-gloomers who cower in fear of Chinese Domination can relax a bit. If we take the examples of what we know happens in (democratic-party-dominated)American cities and states as the natural consequence of what happens when Leftard government behaves in this way, it turns out there is nothing to be afraid of, at all.

Except that China, unlike, say Detroit, has nuclear weapons...but that's beside the point; At the rate at which China is "Detroiting" itself, within a generation there probably won't be anyone left who will be able to read the instructions for launch.

Unions? Who Needs 'Em?

Re: The Wisconsin Teacher's Union. The news is full of reports from the front lines of Madison, so I'm not about to rehash much of what has already been reported and debated in the Press. If you want to really know what's happening in Wisconsin, because the media pretty much lies or reports in a biased fashion about everything, then I suggest you go over to Ann Althouse's blog. She's doing an excellent job in telling you everything you need to know.

Some observations on this entire charade (because despite all the bullshit about Worker's Rights and the 'It's for the children...' nonsense, it is a charade);

a. On the Wisconsin state senators who fled the state to avoid having to vote on a bill that threatens their rice bowl: It seems that democrats love democracy...until they lose. Man up, put your Big Boy Pants on, and take your lumps. There was an election in Wisconsin and the People Have Spoken; they want their state to put it's books in order, and the first part of that process involves renegotiating unsustainable union contracts.

If you really consider yourself to be a Representative of the People, rather than a parasite who preys upon them, you'll go back to work. It is reprehensible that elected officials, charged with the Public Trust, can abandon their posts in a naked parliamentary maneuver designed to protect their sources of campaign cash.

I wonder if these so-called Public Servants are still being paid while on the lam? I wonder if the Governor can order their arrests for dereliction of duty?

b. At the rate we're going, a good number of those Union Slobs are about to lose their jobs, anyway. Unemployment is hovering near 10%, and if you count the people who have stopped looking for work, it's probably closer to 17%. That means that nearly 1-in-5 taxpayers isn't making enough to pay taxes at all. It's those taxes that pay your salaries, Numbnuts! The well is going dry, and when it finally does, you'll get laid off, anyhow. Why not soften the eventual blow, and just agree to do the right thing -- for yourselves -- even if it means giving back a few perks, or making a greater contribution to your own benefit plans?

Oh, right. Sacrifice is something other people are supposed to do.

c. Communism is a bad idea. Always was, always will be. Unions were the initial foothold that communism managed to create in America. If you hadn't noticed -- mostly because you probably can't read, which is why you have a union job in the first place -- the Soviet Union is gone, and the Chinese have all but abandoned ironclad Communism for unbridled Capitalism.

The Labor Union is as anachronistic as spats, hoopskirts, and ox-drawn carts. For organizations that claim to be 'Progressive', it's hard to reconcile that claim with the romantic intellectual attachment to the 1920's, and the serious mental state in which no one has noticed that Times Have Changed, and Things are Different.

The days of the Industrial Robber Barons are gone (unless you happen to be Jeffrey Immelt or Google), and so are the days of the Machine Economy, which still required brute labor and often entailed dangerous, unhealthy and oppressive working conditions. The Unions, it's true, did much to ensure that the horrors of the 20-hour day at the Dark Satanic Mill became a thing of the past, but the economy we live in now bears no resemblance to the one of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th Centuries. People are no longer victimized by their employers they way they were then, and nowadays, in instances where there is an actual beef about some form of victimization, there's 4,000,000 lawyers who will eagerly leap at the opportunity to sue a Fortune 1000 or a State, and rip off their clients, simultaneously.

Worker's Rights are now chiseled in stone, so to speak. Thank you,Labor Unions. Now please kindly leave the stage. You've done your part.

The playing field has changed. Those teachers in Madison are now behaving much like the caricature of the top-hatted, red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist, manning the barricades to protect the privileges gained by stealing from the public and by victimizing others.

d. I think the majority of the Union people in the streets of Madison right now are cowards. What they fear the most is having to actually work for a living and having to compete on an even playing field with the rest of us. I doubt that most could, because their working habits have been formed in the Union Crucible, where actual results mean nothing and where talented individuals are hounded out of the herd in order to maintain the same, lower standards for the greater mass, while struggling to maintain a system of high-pay-high-benefit compensation that can no longer be justified.

I have first-hand knowledge of this due to my (thankfully brief) experience working at the Department of Commerce, where the average, room-temperature IQ public employee seemed the type who's employment prospects before government 'work' probably fell somewhere between Orange Jumpsuit and "Can I Super-size that for you?". As for the efficacy of the Union in 'improving working conditions', I'm reminded of the time when I was contracted to do IT work for the New York Shipping Association (Longshoreman's Union), and was sent to build out an emergency data center in a building in Port Elizabeth (the union muster hall,no less) which was crawling with rats, lousy with asbestos, and full of drunks. The rats were rivalled in numbers only by the empty bourbon bottles (only the cheapest kind, bought with Union Funds, no doubt) scattered about the offices.

e. Teachers, as a rule, are typically drawn from the lowest 20% of any college graduating class. There are statistics all over the place attesting to this fact, go find them if you don't believe me. These are not always the best and the brightest, and the results we've seen produced by our Public Education system more than bear this assertion out. Yes, there are some extremely good and dedicated teachers, but the majority are brain-damaged ticket-punchers who only resorted to an Education Degree when it became painfully clear to them that their dreams of becoming an Archaeologist, The Great American Novelist, Chemical Engineer, or C.P.A. were sadly dashed upon discovering that those endeavors require intelligence and a work ethic.

f. Just in case I haven't said this before; fuck unions. The only thing less-useful than a Union is an Islamic Terrorist, who at least has the virtue of blowing himself to smithereens and so ensuring that his mayhem and stupidity are a one-shot deal.

g. This battle is not about economics (even if economic factors have brought the Madison Protests to the fore), or even of fundamental fairness; it's about maintaining a series of often-outrageous privileges which can no longer be justified, and about the ability of the Unions to buy the politicians who will continue the gravy train.

If the teachers in Madison actually cared about the children, they'd be at work, teaching Billy and Jennie proper condom use, or all the finer points of anal sex, subjects which somehow managed to replace rote mathematics, phonics and American History in the typical Public School curriculum. You can, you know, still work and hold negotiations over your contract at the same time. If you really cared about the children, you wouldn't be putting your interests above theirs.

Multitasking is something Unions don't do, either, it seems.

Instead, what they're doing could, in the strictest terms, be likened to extortion. The fact that there might be a contract that gives them the right to engage in this form of extortion doesn't make it morally right. If anyone ever needed a list of reasons as to why the rest of the planet is kicking our ass economically, and why employers are willing to risk breaking the law and hire illegal immigrants, or flood the State Department with H1-B requests, you need only show up at any mass meeting of Unionized Workers. There you will find, in microcosm, everything that's wrong with the American labor market.

This process being played out in Madison has done us a great public service, however unintentional; it has exposed the naked hypocrisy of the unions, and given us yet one more example of what's wrong with our so-called 'Political Leadership'.

Accomodating Islam...

A round-up of Mark Steyn posts, including the redefinition of "pedophile" so as to not give offence to a certain segment of the population known for smelling like a camel in full rut, and exploding unexpectedly. Oh, and stepping all over Western principles of free-speech at the same time.

There's more Steyn on the failure of multiculturalism -- and the mess it's left us in -- here and here.

Our Government is Out to Kill Us....

There is no other explanation.

$60 billion dollars wasted on intelligence agencies which seem incapable of telling people what they need to know, but then can -- with a straight face -- point to a single sentence, with no relevance whatsoever and after the fact, which purports to "prove" that the Obama Administration "was on top" of the whole Egypt debacle all the time. The entire thing a sad-but-necessary bit of political theatre. Barack Obama, the Lightworker, Savior of the Universe, must be seen as infallible and all-knowing -- even if he is dumber than a sack of hammers, and some General has to ruin his reputation trying to convince you of it.

Sorry, but it doesn't look like Obama knows a damned thing about anything from here. But then again, that's perhaps not so much his fault, as it appears the people who are supposed to know seem incapable of telling him. Maybe The One wants it that way; no unpleasant news which might interfere with his fantasy world where Communism can be made to work. Perhaps people are just afraid to approach the Right Hand of God and utter non-politically-correct blasphemies to him. Maybe, just maybe, there's so many goddamned Czars, Special Advisers, Special-Assistants-to-the-Special-Advisers, Special-Advisers-to-the-Special-Czar-Assistants, that by the time information percolates up to the Resident of the United States, it's been cherry-picked, mangled, garbled, folded, spindled and mutilated to such an extent that he can't make any use of it, or it leaves him badly misinformed.

I will remind Gen. Tapper -- and I really dislike his cavalier defense of what appears to be indefensible --of something that he should already know, assuming he's read any history whatsoever; when the intelligence services are no longer interested in providing badly-needed facts, especially inconvenient and politically-painful ones, and are instead committed to ensuring that a certain political point of view is presented and advanced, then the term "intelligence service" becomes an oxymoron, and the threat to our citizens increases one-hundred-fold. If that was an example of what we're paying for -- something that read like a 5th-grade book report, only with fewer facts and fewer reasonable conclusions, to judge from the excerpts -- then it's no wonder that the Obama administration hasn't clue fucking one about how to fight a war against terrorism (then again, GWB didn't either), and seems to always be two steps behind the curve on every foreign policy issue of the day.

I'll tell you all you need to know about how to deal with the Middle East and international terrorism, Mr. Obama, and I don't need expensive satellites, eavesdropping equipment, spies, a great big expeditionary force, or fifty douchebags in government gray three-piece suits carrying James Bond briefcases, and Cereal-box Batman Decoder Rings. I don't need $60 billion bucks, either; I'd settle for $1 billion (tax free) if and when my ideas are tried and found to work.

Here's how you treat any issue arising from the Middle East;

1. Start killing Muslims by the tens of thousands, right in the shitholes where they breed, at the first sign of trouble. Make them suffer horribly, and if and when they beg for mercy, kick 'em in the teeth, and repeat the process. Once the Muslim World has been reduced to a smoking wasteland of ashes, pulverized concrete, and starving dogs feeding on rancid corpses, you won't need to spend a whole lot of money spying on anyone there, because the survivors (if there are any) will be far too busy trying to remember how to walk upright and gathering insects for subsistence to entertain thoughts about bombing anyone or shouting "Death to America!"

The reasons why we haven't followed this surprisingly simple strategy are easy to understand:

a. We are afraid, as a culture, to face the truth about the nature of the enemy, and his motivations. This (War against Radical Islam) is not about some minuscule band of nutjobs that simply 'give Islam a bad name', nor is it just some politically-motivated movement of really-excitable people; it is a fight against a poisonous cultural and religious imperative that is inimical to every value we hold dear. These guys can't be negotiated with. They can't be bought off. They can't be democratized, and then traded with. Their goal is nothing less than our death as a culture, and if they can't arrange that, they'd be happy to settle for our enslavement.

Instead of recognizing the obvious -- the leaders of this crusade (not afraid to use that word!) have only been telling us what they intend for the last 50 years -- we chose to be willingly deaf, and to advance with Eyes Wide Shut. Why is it that no one is listening, or takingnote of the obvious? Because if you took the Ama-dada-doo-dads of the world at their word, someone might expect you to actually do something, and who the fuck wants to take action? Taking action means possibly making mistakes, and when you make mistakes, they talk badly about you in the newspapers and on FoxNews.

b. There is a streak of cowardice which runs through the political leadership of the West. Doing what is necessary, in this case fighting a war of annihilation, is simply something too terrible for them to contemplate. In European capitols this is understandable; they've been -- excuse the expression -- Ground Zero for two World Wars, and they are, literally, on the front lines in this fight; the Muslim populations of a good number of European cities is absolutely staggering. War is already on their doorstep, but their cultural memory of war is such that they shrink from the prospect of further violence.

I have news for you; these guys (the Terrorists and Islamonazis) aren't afraid to die, like we are. In fact, they're eager to die; when you kill them, you're doing them a favor and sending them to Heaven and hooking them up with the false Paradise their stinking excuse for a religion promises them. Killing them by the tens of thousands, in this regard, is not as terrible, as say, the useless and bloody experiences of the Somme, Verdun or Ypres, the mass slaughters on the Eastern Front or the Hurtgenwald, it's actually an undertaking which would make both parties happy: we get to continue our way of life, they get Martyrdom. Everybody's happy!

But, bearing that sort of history in mind, it is easy to see just why Europeans would shrink from the sort of violence necessary to win a war of this nature.

There is no excuse for such a cringing attitude in this country, however, which makes the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan so confusing. No American city has ever been bombed flat...or at least not yet, and one would assume we'd be less squeamish than pansy Frenchmen and Panty-wearing Belgians. It appears as if the original strategy for both wars was to give the appearance of a strong response to Islamic terrorism without actually responding strongly at all. Considering the length and apparent meager returns of both campaigns, one is left to wonder just when it is that the real war is going to begin in earnest. From my viewpoint, there hasn't been a War on Terror as much as there has been a Public Relations Exercise With Guns in the Middle East, and a steady assault upon the liberties of Americans at home. All excused and justified by the threat of a future terrorist attack.

Two consecutive Administrations have talked a good game about a War on Terror, but there's been very little useful action, all the purple thumbs not withstanding.

c. The people who hold and exercise political power in this country are committed, insanely, to an unworkable program of encouraging democracy in a part of the world where that term has no meaning -- unless it means that the people get to vote for Sharia Law and expanded Jihad, implemented under the auspices of the dictator of their own choice -- and where the institutions to create what a Westerner would recognize as a pluralistic, free-market democracy simply do not exist, and cannot be created swiftly. Not without a long-term, and probably-bloody, super-expensive and difficult occupation of the Middle East.

This should not be surprising as it has been evident for a very long time in the Western world that our own political institutions have been overrun and infected by a multitude of people who poorly understand both the nature and origins of democracy, themselves. Their attempts to democratize the Middle East, and their repeated, weak justifications for their hard-to-fathom (in-)actions to date, remind one of some new-and-improved-and-vaguely-defined version of the White Man's Burden; only this time the program is being handled not by the energetic and clever individuals who built, say, the British Empire, but by a bunch of drooling doofuses who can't articulate just what it is they do hope to accomplish, and who are too busy playing domestic politics with the issue to be bothered with such petty distractions like winning the war before claiming victory for this or that piece of it.

d. Let's be clear; these wars are about Oil and access to it. The terrorists are funded by the proceeds of petroleum, and the West, for a variety of insane and often-contradictory reasons, is addicted to the Middle Eastern variety; but we could shrug off the worst of this addiction in a relative heartbeat, if we really tried. Doing so, however, is politically impossible at present because neither Right nor Left is either honest about it's true motivations, nor ready to jettison most of it's own Sacred Cows. So, we're locked into a strategy of trying to negotiate with madmen, dangling the trinkets of democracy, diplomatic niceties, commerce, and friendship -- none of which they want or understand -- all the while denying that the true engine of this conflict is the Right's requirement of Middle Eastern oil to maintain it's technological and economic dominance (while crowing about Free Trade), and the Left's motivation which is to ensure that all the pollution, dirt, danger and poisons that come from drilling and refining crude oil -- and which make possible their cushy lifestyles -- to be the problem of some brown-skinned people so that we can posture about saving endangered fleas and have nice, clean parks. And this all happens while Leftists paradoxically crow about their concern for both the 'environment' and the welfare of the 'Third World'.

The first step in winning this war is to be honest about why we're in it, and exposing the bullshit political pathologies which guide and inform the people who supposedly run it.

2. Since international terrorists do not respect the distinctions between innocents and combatants, or the niceties of international borders and sovereignty, neither should we. If it becomes necessary, for example, to chase a terrorist from Afghanistan and into Pakistan, it should be done, and fuck the Pakistani government; if they were truly an ally, they would be going after these guys themselves.

This is a war where there is no battlefield, no well-defined and recognizable front lines, unless you remember that London, Madrid, and New York were made such by the enemy. In this war, the enemy has the initiative; he chooses where to strike, he chooses where to fight, and when we chase him from one battlefield (say Afghanistan), he quickly melts away to another (say, Somalia). This isn't the same bunch of ragheads hopping from country-to-country every time, either; it's a world-wide movement that springs up in another place just as soon as we're occupied elsewhere, and this is by design.

Al'Qaeda, much like McDonald's, is a franchise; you don't have to have met Usama Bin Hidin' personally, or been given orders from his own mouth, to open up a branch of Al'Qaeda...only a press release, and an atrocity. Which is why it is imperative to stop this nonsense about building schools, and bringing clean water to a guy who is your friend this week, and planting IED's the next; start doing some truly horrific violence to people, and the romantic allure of becoming a Junior Al'Qaeda quickly wears off. String together a series of truly-disgusting incidents of violence, and pretty soon either no one wants that McBomb Franchise anymore, or, even better, there's no one left to join the Jihad.

Being nice to these folks is not going to deter them. Recognizing their borders and sovereignty is a courtesy they certainly don't extend to us. Being sensitive to their feelings is tantamount to surrender. It should be the policy of this country that it will reserve the right to beat the piss out of terrorists wherever we find them, and we fucking double-dog-dare-you to stop us.

3. Since the terrorists, and the states which support them, don't give a damn about UN resolutions, international law, cultural sensibilities, etc., neither should we. The only way to win this thing -- permanently -- is to be just as ruthless as the enemy, and often, thrice as ruthless. This is not a war over some line on a map; it's about ridding the planet of a pernicious evil that is every bit as dangerous and deadly as any we've ever known.

This is not a rabble of discontented people fighting for their freedom or rights; it's the mass psychosis of an entire culture reaching it's boiling point and erupting all over the world, committed to the idea that it is a chosen group, born to rule, promised dominance by God. It will use unspeakable violence to achieve that goal, and it is aware of the fact that it cannot achieve it's victory in one fell swoop; it is prepared to spend decades, perhaps centuries, to achieve it's divine destiny. For this culture, perpetual warfare is something that will just have to be accepted as the price of success. That many will die, and good number of them will be committed to suicide as a tactic, is something they actually embrace. With enthusiasm.

Along the way, they will engage in the worst crimes a Westerner's fevered imagination can come up with; slavery, mass rape, genocide, mass destruction, looting, pillaging, beheading, floggings, mutilations, burning down entire cities, destruction of cultural icons (art, architecture, literature, etc.), theft and dislocation. Their motto, to paraphrase the Caliph who ordered the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, is "if it agrees with the Koran, it is not needed; if it does not agree with the Koran, it is not wanted...".

These assholes are not interested in our quaint notions of law, justice or diplomatic discourse; they want nothing less than to erase everything we hold dear or recognize as decent from human memory.

The West has dealt with enemies of this sort before. These are the New Huns. The New Nazis, Vandals, Visigoths, and Mongols. They are the New Breed of the Emperor-worshiping, fanatical, Kamikaze Japanese Militarists who had to be dug out of a hundred island strongholds, subdued by firebombing, bloody direct assaults, and atomic blasts. They are the Modern Day equivalent of the Aztec who had a perpetual need for slaves, flowing blood, and the beating hearts of their enemies -- a gift to their insatiable gods who gave them the imperative to conquer and kill in their names.

And while we dither, while we argue over the financial costs of wars we're barely fighting, as we argue about how to give free boob jobs to senior citizens and illegal immigrants, while we pretend to know what's in the hearts and minds of Muslims while blissfully ignoring the evidence of our eyes and ears to the contrary, while we pretend that we're dealing with people who are just like us, and who want the same things we do, and who are just jealous of our freedoms, they're arming themselves with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons; establishing contacts and alliances with the Enemies of Decency, the international drug cartels (Mexico, Columbia), the rogue states (North Korea),the criminal dictators of the world (Chavez, Khadaffi, Castro, Putin, et. al.), that will enable them to strike at us so much more easily and decisively when they're finally ready to do so -- all of it financed by The West itself, in the form of oil and drug money.

They've also infiltrated our societies, mostly because they were invited to do so, and work from within to weaken our resolve, tie us up in our own laws and pieties and suicidal need to be seen as 'nice', and if they can manage it, score a Trifecta of Insult by building a Mosque at Ground Zero, with federal funds, and with Western politicians and courts defending every overtly obnoxious, antagonistic gesture they make in the process. They laugh at us while they sap our morale and plan to kill us with our own money and institutions.

I promise; if you follow my plan, you'll see guaranteed results within 30 days, Mr. President...or your money (or rather, OUR money) back..

Culling The Herd...

A Giant Glass Crater.

A very good friend of mine sent me an e-mail this morning remarking on yesterday's puked-up pablum. In that post, I recommended the forced migration and expulsion of Muslims from the Western World if only because it would make the process of boarding a flight to Disneyland that much easier for us all, and represent a giant step towards getting the government out of our lives. He also makes reference to some of my other pet peeves, written about extensively in this Diary of a Madman (the epidemic of stupidity, the complete wasteland full of knuckle-dragging barbarians that is American politics, and my going-to-crap-at-warp-speed hometown). He writes:

A giant glass crater...... is what you want the middle east to become...I'm convinced Staten island should [secede] from the union and implement a few of your policies.Oh, while you're at it, I want you to enforce that you need to take a general intelligence test before you get the right to vote, too. Too many idiots in this world cast their vote because they are promised a free lunch and a brief joyride on a minibus. Thoughts?

And this began to dovetail nicely with one of the recurring themes which runs through my mailbox; the comments and e-mails I get from complete retards who want to know what sort of horrible disease I must suffer from that makes me so "negative" and "hateful" of (fill-in-the-blank) Muslims/Democrats/Women/Minorities/Ivy Leaguers/Irish Setters/ the Elderly/Single Mothers/Europeans/Union Workers, et. al.

The most impassioned nonsense though, comes from self-important Baby Boomers who want to know why I hate them so much. There was one 60+ year old respondent yesterday who especially chapped my ass with is sanctimony about how his generation 'created' so much, and 'contributed' to this-that-and-the-other, and was 'owed' a 'debt' of 'gratitude'. I wanted to puke.

The notions seemingly came together of their own accord -- would life really be more tolerable if we just started knocking off certain categories of disagreeable people? Why is it that I seem to hold certain antipathies towards certain groups of folks? And who the fuck does this jackoff lecturing me in an e-mail think he is? -- and shit just sprang into my head.

So, with this in mind, I wrote my buddy back. I hope my "I'm Baby Boomer God" correspondent reads this, and finally gets it:

Yes, there should be a great culling of the herd, methinks, to be followed by a carefully-planned program of street executions.

Never mind taking a test to vote; there should be a list of minimum requirements necessary for continued breathing. And, of course, I'd just kill anyone born before 1960, if only because I don't feel like supporting them in their old age, which thanks to medical science seems to last far longer than it actually needs to, and keeps people alive long past the point where they're of any use to anyone.

To wit: our world is run by the Baby Boomers. They are the CEO's, Politicians, Professors, Money managers, Media figures, Generals, Bishops, and Bureaucrats, all infused with the rubbishy, romantically-retarded mindsets of their youth -- the Kennedy worshipers, the Flower Power generation, the Hippies, the Draft Dodgers, the Acid Droppers, the Communism-was-a-great-idea-only-poorly-executed mindset, and the No-Fault Divorce Generation. Do you think they've done a good job running this world? Have they done the right things? Are they leaving anything of value in their wake? If you judged an entire generation of human beings on just what it was they collectively left to a civilization, what would their (the Baby Boomer's) record be?

The Beatles, The Nehru Jacket, Situational Ethics, AIDS, Hedonism, The Pet Rock, Jimmy Carter, Mood Rings, Earth Shoes, Financial Collapse, interminable warfare with incomplete or nebulous 'Victories', and the mass marketing and consumption of Viagra and Cheetos?

Yes, re-open Auschwitz under new management, I say!

Baby Boomers are some of my biggest detractors, and my second-deadliest enemy (I didn't forget about you fly-swatting-eat-with-the-same-hand-I-wipe-my-ass-with-sheep-shaggers-in-the-sand!). This generation seems to think they're smarter and better than I am, that they're entitled to live forever on my dime all hopped up on government-financed Viagra, plastic surgery, and medical miracles that claim to 'cure' all the inconveniences of Old Age -- from a toe fungus to malfunctioning prostate -- at $300 a bottle, and which always comes with a list of side effects that predictably begins with crippling diarrhea and always includes with 'risk of sudden heart failure', and a warning not to drive or operate heavy machinery under it's influence. That's when they're not busy lecturing me on how I wouldn't live "in the world we have today" if it hadn't had been for them and their Noble Enterprise in every field of endeavor from modern communications to medicine.

Guess again, people. If you were truly honest with yourselves, you'd see just exactly what pieces of excrement the majority of you truly are. You have merely stood upon the shoulders of giants, and self-proclaimed yourselves Titans, and presuming the right to lord it over much better people than you.

Does this world look like an Earthly Paradise to you? Does it even look like a moderately-tolerable world? It's the World you Baby Boomers have created, you know. You run it. You crafted it in your mold and gave it the special ingredient that only you could provide in abundance; bullshit. In my mind, the resulting product of such infantile minds was entirely predictable.

Because, for the most part, Baby Boomers were the most mollycoddled, selfish, spoiled, over-indulged, and least-disciplined generation of human beings to ever come down the pike. Spare me the defensive e-mails, please, about how you, personally, are the exception to the rule; how grew up poor, how your parents were strict disciplinarians, and how you did 'all the right things', ate your peas, and never followed that pot-smoking-orgy-lovin' Hippie crowd. If you actually do exist, in the form you've presented yourself, then you, Sir or Madam, are a distinct minority. You are a dinosaur. You are the unexpected shard of pottery that turns up in the stratigraphy of human history, and throws the archaeologist for a loop. A flaw in the pattern. The majority of the people of your generation have caused the people of my generation to wonder whether or not you were all just a colossal waste of DNA, some Great Cosmic Mistake.

On that Chart that shows the "Evolution of Man", I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to count 'Baby Boomer' as a separate species, and then stick it someplace between the primordial primates and the first upright-walkers? We could call it Homo Erectus Erectus, the two 'Erectus' designation nicely describing both what absolute pricks most of you are, and your complete fascination with the hard-on. Viva Viagra! and all that.

Where does this visceral dislike come from, you ask? This desire to write off an entire mass of human beings, this lack of empathy, sympathy, the denial, even, of your basic humanity?

Well, I would think it starts with my parents, who for lack of a better term, were/are absolutely horrible human beings. They weren't cruel, nor were they neglecting --up to a certain point -- but they were selfish, thoughtless bastards, the pair. Mostly this is because the culture in which they 'came of age' was a selfish, thoughtless age of bastards. They were still living on the cusp of the previous era, where some Old-Fashioned virtues were still respected, or at least still followed because society had not made it's Next Great Leap of Stupidity (that would require a new range of technology which on the one had, promised to make communication ever faster, cheaper, easier and achievable, to break down frontiers and open new vistas of human achievement, and on the other, isolates and stratifies us all in ways that we can barely begin to recognize),which explains why they got married so young (father: 23, mother: 20) . That was, according to the mores of the day, what you were 'supposed' to do when you were that age, and when the routine of double-feature-and-hamburger-at-the-Malt-shop became stale, when you couldn't think of anything better to do on Saturday Night, and you didn't have the guts to wear tie-dye and get blasted as 'mind-expanding' experience.

My parents weren't exactly what you would call 'involved', unless you applied that word to them solely as individuals. They were certainly very involved with themselves. Which is probably why they got divorced. As I've 'grown up' and 'matured' I've come to recognize that my parents never gave me a single piece of advice, not one decent example, not a shred of guidance in any form that you would expect to get from a parent, which didn't, ultimately, revolve around three basic premises:

1. Don't embarrass me in public.
2. What would people say about ME if they saw you behaving that way?
3.I'm your Mother/Father....you owe me.

In fact, it was my grandparents who taught me my lessons growing up, and unfortunately for me, they died (young) just at the point where I probably was just beginning to understand what sort of people they were, what they were telling me, and just what it was they still had to offer. My (maternal) grandparents were teaching me maxims that if one person in ten still followed, would make Planet Earth a much better place;

1. People have obligations to one another, and responsibilities towards one another
2. Hard work eventually pays off
3. A man's word is his bond, and honesty is always the best policy
4. Nothing EVER comes before family
5. Do 'the right things' all the time and all will be well.

Unfortunately, they were teaching me these things just at that point in history where my parent's generation was busy tearing that foundation of common sense, that Universal Code of Conduct, down.

In fact, in retrospect, the only things my parents ever taught me was that everything in life could be dealt with by the application of a very simple formula;

1. Denial
2. Run away from your problems when they could no longer be ignored
3. Bitch and whine about your problems when running away no longer works is the only way to go,
,4. When denial, running, bitching, whining don't serve, do everything you can to make your problems someone else's,
5. When all of the above fails, complain that you are the victim of an invisible, all-encompassing conspiracy, and then stew in your own juices about how 'unfair' it all is.

My Father, an absolute cretin that someone thought it would be a good idea to give a badge and gun to, thankfully died at age 37, and so spared me having to put up with his special brand of insanity for many years after. My mother simply made her misery everyone else's by making bad decisions in serial fashion and then calling upon her children to pick up the pieces of her shattered life (and, naturally, suffer the consequences that came with those pieces). If that meant your eldest (19 year-old) son had to co-sign second mortgages as part of your (second) divorce settlement, or take out extended lines of credit in his name for your use, or work 12-hours a day, seven-days a week to feed everyone, while you declared personal bankruptcy in the dark of night without his knowledge -- so you could be 'free' while sticking him with the bills and legal responsibilities -- then so much the better. The part where he had to financially and morally support you for the next 20 years, and become all but a surrogate husband because you were a depressed bag of skin for whom work was a dirty word, was the part that went unspoken. But then again, I was younger and dumber, and still thought that sons were supposed to do things like this for their mothers. It was a rather romantic notion, no?

There was never even as much as a "Thank you", or an "I'm sorry". No need for any of that. You gave birth, after all.

When I went to work for a living (at age 18), skipping college because my overriding goal since the age of 14 was to get the fuck out of my mother's house just as quickly as possible (she remarried, when I was 13, to a complete asshole who's Ozzie-and-Harriet vision of what a married couple should be didn't seem to include a wife with three teenagers that he couldn't stand in tow) I encountered a shitload of people just like my parents; authority figures who were self-interested, selfish, stupid, short-sighted, crass, conceited, and convinced of their own superiority (after all, they had been at Woodstock, and burned their Draft Cards, and finished college, although they hardly ever seemed to display anything approaching 'smarts', you see), and they had a certain power -- they could sign a paycheck, or they could pass on the secrets of the trade -- and they used these, often wantonly, to bludgeon people into line.

"Into Line" is a euphemism for 'keep me employed without having to really work, Cubicle Slave!'

I can't tell you how many really bad bosses I've had. I've lost count. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been denied promotions, recognition of a job well done, opportunities, or even just the simple respect due a human being because there was something else at stake -- usually money -- by someone who had achieved a certain position in life and had to do everything humanly possible just to stay there. If that meant stepping all over others, then so be it. If that meant making a promise one day and breaking it the next, then that was alright, too. Ethics, you see, are something that you're supposed to demand, but which only other people are supposed to have, and something that's conveniently forgotten by you until it becomes necessary to use them to your advantage.

Yeah, I know: Life isn't fair. Fine, I can deal with that. When it's unfair because someone has a vested interest in making it unfair, then I have issues.

Keeping someone 'in their place' because they kept you in YOUR place was simply what a 'good manager' did, the definition of 'good manager' being 'bigger paycheck for me, more responsibility (and accountability) for everyone else'. I found the worst examples of this mindset in exactly the place you would most reasonably expect to find it; on Wall Street.

If you've ever had any morals or quaint ideas of the Old-fashioned virtues about you, you will quickly become a victim in that sort of environment. You're dead meat the second you walk through the door with that mindset. There's hunters and there's prey, and what comes in between equates to the human equivalent of a Serengeti-plains scavenger, like a hyena. The differences between people on Wall Street are not truly measured in ability, intelligence or potential, but in corner offices, status, bonus checks, perks, and titles, but mostly by what one is willing and prepared to do to his fellow human beings in order to get them. The ability to play at office politics, rather than the ability to do something productive, is far more important in this regard , as is having the 'right' qualifications (pieces of paper that say you faithfully parroted whatever the professor told you to think). 'Connections' (Ivy League vs. State School, working-class background vs. upper-middle class background, school or club ties vs. professional ones) matter even more than smarts or politics.

If you doubt this, take a look at our 401(k) statement this month, or ask your bank just how it is that your home is now basically worthless. The 'Best and the Brightest'? How many of them actually got fired after that debacle? How many billions of dollars did the government pour into financial institutions to cover their losses? Don't make me laugh. These guys are simply bookies in better suits. The Mob is actually fairer, more honest about what it does, and harder-working, but because the Mafia isn't a licensed agent of the State Revenue Collectors, they're the ones who get prosecuted.

When you haven't any of that ammunition (the right sort of qualifications or connections) in your arsenal, you have to do the best you can. I became a master of playing their game -- but by my own rules. Wall Street made me a hyena.

So, you need me (to keep you in your cushy no-responsibility-high-pay job) more than I need you? Good, let's see you discipline me when I'm an hour late late tomorrow...and the next day. I want to see you have to eat my shit for a change when I do it.Thinking of throwing me to the wolves to save your own sorry hide when the time comes? Well, let's just see who else will work every weekend and holiday, or take on the shittiest projects when you need them to, because otherwise you don't get the leather upholstery in the BMW this year. Not going to put an extra zero on the end of that bonus check? What do you think will happen when your wife gets that letter in which I rat you out for all the shit I know you've done in your life?

I made my living by being the 'Indispensable Man'; they guy who knows everything, especially where all the bodies were buried, who does everything, has his hand in everything, but really doesn't give a shit unless there's extra zeros involved, who can stick that in your face, or beat you over the head with it the way you used to beat him.

It worked for a good, long while, too. Until one September morning where the depth of the depravity finally reached new lows; a 757 was forcibly embedded within the North Tower, and every suit in the building was consumed not by the idea or horrors of the incredible human tragedy being played out in Lower Manhattan, but whether or not such a disaster meant the financial markets wouldn't be open for business that day. They did open, incidentally. Trading actually took place. A lot of it. It happened, in small part, because I was one of the people who made sure it could. That was my job; it was the means by which I survived in that particular jungle.

And a week later, you see yourself within a promotional video in which your company's line-up of Financial Superstars brags that while the tallest buildings in New York may now be smoldering ruins, 3,000 people are dead, a trillion dollars of mostly-paper assets were wiped off the boards, and the country was now going to war, by God, Smith-Barney -- a Division of Citigroup -- turned a goddamned profit on 9/11! In fact,they were the only brokerage house to do so on that day. Why, that's a fabulous selling point; the world may be going to shit, people may be getting murdered in the streets, but dammit, we'll still make you hard, cold cash.

It made me physically ill to watch that. I guess not all of the decency in me had completely evaporated.

I don't know you would feel, but I couldn't live with myself after that. I felt absolutely filthy. And that's where it all started. There's much, much more to tell, but you get the general idea; when you've been surrounded by complete assholes all of your life, it's only a matter of time before your head explodes. At every point in Life, it seems, there was always someone born between 1945 and 1960 who stole, cheated, lied, oppressed, frustrated and disppointed, at the focal point of every personal crisis.

Who were my rotten parents? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who shit on the values of my grandparents? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who disappointed, lied, cheated, stole? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who turned me into a heartless, mercenary prick? Baby Boomers. Who planted the flag of financial victory on a pile of corpses? Why, they were Baby Boomers, too. Imagine that?

And now in 21st century America, it's the same people who have presided over the figuratively-smoldering ruins of a once-great nation. They run everything, you know, and they've run everything right into the ground, too. It's the generation of "if it feels good, do it", or "tune in, turn on, drop out', of "Greed is Good", of "I didn't inhale" or "Compassionate Conservatism" and "I voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it". The generation where every problem is the result of someone being a "victim" of someone else. Where conspiracy theory and petty partisan politics informs the public discourse, where the battlecries of a Stoned Generation -- equality, fairness, justice --still echo, but never take any concrete form or appear to be one fucking inch closer toreality. It was all lip service and posturing. It's a generation which has created a world where everyone is entitled to everything, but no one is ever expected to actually earn anything, and if you do earn it, someone else has the right to take it from you. A world where the rule is "do as I say, not as I do", and where getting away with the absolute worst of abuses is often either a badge of distinction, or a sign of how much smarter you are than everyone else.

It's a world run by people who fight wars to "bring freedom" to others who have no idea what that means, no matter how many lives or how much of (other-people's) blood and treasure it takes. It's a place where color still matters, regardless of how much legislation you pass, because it's a wound that can never be allowed to heal (otherwise, you couldn't troll votes and campaign donations, Dummy!). It's a place where people become gazillionaires by running three-decade-long Ponzi schemes with no legal oversight, and by creating bright, shiny, visually-exciting virtual worlds wherein nothing of consequence is ever achieved. Here, in our current state of affairs, the way to the top is by manipulating people; rich vs. poor, black vs. white, manual laborer vs. office worker, tax generator vs. tax consumer, man vs. woman. None of this, incidentally, is new; the history of mankind is replete with examples of all of this stupidity, it's just that the Baby Boomers who have it developed it into a fine art, gotten stupendously wealthy off it, caused so much grief and heartache along the way, and then expect to be rewarded for the absolute desolation they have created in perpetuity by a shrinking tax base (another consequence of their actions? a lower birthrate!), which is harried, worked, propagandized, categorized, dictated to, and indebted to inhuman levels by a system of government absolutely crammed to the rafters with the very people who will soon benefit the most -- i.e. Baby Boomers. Or so they think.

I don't like you people. I don't want to be like you. You're evil. For the majority of you, a natural death is more than you deserve. And guess what? There's literally millions more of me out here, and we're determined to ensure that you get exactly what you deserve, and not a penny more. Not even as much as an extra aspirin, roll of toilet paper, or five minutes of our time. Why? Because you've left us with nothing; no anchors, morally or spiritually, no ethics -- just ask five people at random to define that word for you, and you'll be surprised that no one can anymore -- no code of conduct that hasn't been torn to tatters by your hypocrisy, no system of justice or government that hasn't been tainted by your foul stench. Remember when your parents used to say to you "I hope one day you have children who do to you what you do to me?" -- and you laughed at them?

Guess who's laughing now? You'll soon be retiring in massive numbers with greatly-depleted assets. Think those Tea Partiers in the street are concerned with 'government spending' as a matter of principle? Take a closer look, and you'll see all the 40-somethings out there, and on some level, I can promise you, there's a great mass of them who recognize the enormous blood-sucking-probiscus the Hippie Generation is about to put on their wallets, and all that talk of 'curbing govenrment spending' is really just a subconcious euphemism for 'starve those selfish pricks to death!'. On some level, all that Tea Party jazz isn't so much about taxes, as much as it is Generational Warfare.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "Never have so Many owed so much to so Few...", and quite soon, that will become a kind of reality in America with regards to the huge swarms of retiring Baby Boomers who want nothing but free Healthcare and ever-growing Social Security checks, convinced that they deserve it all. Only in a few years, it will become "Never have so Many Depended Upon So Few".The parallels are these: Churchill's Few were fighting for Survival, and the New Few who are expected to pay for, and then shut up about, being screwed by the most-selfish Generation of Many in human history, are in a similar battle for their own survival. Churchill's Few were men willing to sacrifice on behalf of others; Our Few won't sacrifice for anyone...our Parents, Teachers, Bosses, Politicians, all taught us we that didn't have to, as that was always someone else's job.

You sowed the wind, and I dearly hope you reap the whirlwind, Assholes. If you're really lucky, maybe some 40-something will have enough compassion for you to invent a low-salt cat food that's far more palatable and easier to eat without Medicare-supplied dentures really, really soon.

And you should be fucking thankful for even that much.