| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Jun | Aug » | |||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
But Obama has now made such a mess that even the Messiah-loving media cannot clowd over.
Good news: Almost half of America is sane again.
Bad News: Half of America is still drunk.
Sorry I have been away, I have been on a few mini-vacations exploring the great Midwest. But I cannot think of a better way to check in with everyone than this.
I just read something that strikes me as absolutely hilarious. FOX News reports that shock rocker Marilyn Manson has made a direct threat: “If one more ‘journalist’ makes a cavalier statement about me and my band, I will personally or with my fans’ help, greet them at their home and discover just how much they believe in their freedom of speech. I dare you all to write one more thing that you won’t say to my face. Because I will make you say it. In that manner. That is a threat.”
I’m not sure what’s funnier…saying he’ll do it himself or that he’ll get his fans to do it. Can you possibly be serious?
Now, I’ll admit that there have been songs I found myself enjoying that turned out to be Manson songs. I listen to grunge and heavy metal. But the bands that I like actually have talent; they don’t rely solely on their shock value to gain a following. That is the only driving force behind Marilyn Manson’s popularity: the shock factor. Every time I see a group of “disenfranchised youth” waiting for a Manson concert, they all look the same. Black clothes(layered, of course, and torn to shreds), neon hair, and makeup, all done to make them look like freaks.
We ARE freaks, they say. We’re the ones nobody wants. We’re the castaways, the ones with no talent, the unpopular ones, and YOU religious nuts, YOU MADE US THIS WAY!!!
Oh, please. Gag me.
You know what? I was bullied all the time as a kid. There are times when it still affects me, but I do not let it rule my life. Some of you guys have no idea what it’s like to be beaten to a pulp in the locker room because one of your junior-high classmates told the popular girl that you liked her. A person largely becomes an outcast because they allow it to happen. You cannot blame it on religion, your parents, your teachers or your classmates. You’re an asshole because you want to be that way.
I’m almost completely sleeved out. I have piercings. Sometimes, I even let them show. I do not wear a chip on my shoulder and beg people to knock it off. You can express yourself without needing to go to the extreme, and that’s all Manson knows how to do. His fans have followed suit.
Manson, don’t send your fans, because that will have all the ambiance of a traditional lynching. Spend your own money and have the balls to go completely on your own. Don’t hide behind your army of fans who’d kill for you because you don’t have the balls to take someone else on intelligently.
And for Chrissakes, grow up. All of you.
I’m currently reading an amazing book. It’s by Bernard Goldberg, former CBS News correspondent, and it’s about the liberal bias in the mainstream media. Before I get to what I’ve gleaned so far from what I’ve read I have a personal experience to share.
Two of my coworkers (I won’t say which job this happened at) got into a discussion about illegal immigration. Both of them are very young and very opinionated; one is busting her backside to work full-time and go to school nearly full-time. The other is a hard-working guy but didn’t finish college. Their conversation started out with political labels. He was of the opinion that nobody can really be labeled, that one believes what they believe despite the labels that the rest of society may place on them.
She openly identified herself as conservative, at which point he tried to correct her by telling her that she’s NOT conservative, she just lives by a certain set of beliefs and it’s really her beliefs that define her, not the label. So they get into illegal immigration, and she talked a little bit about her views–at which point he immediately branded her a racist for her views. He then dropped what he was doing to go to another person and announce to them that he thought she was a racist.
I shudder sometimes to think what he’d say about me if he knew what I believe. My beliefs are similar, if not just a tad more harsh. But I found it interesting that he refused to accept being labeled as “liberal” and told her not to “confine herself” to being labeled “conservative” right before he rubber-stamped her forehead with a big, red RACIST label.
All because she believed that the rule of law should be observed and amnesty should never be given to people who have already broken the law.
Here’s where the book ties in. Goldberg was deep in CBS and was best friends with the likes of Dan Rather, Andy Rooney and other news superstars for over two decades when, in 1996, he got fed up with the bias he saw in his news organization and wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about it. For years, he’d been voicing his concerns of how badly twisted the MSM had become in believing they really weren’t violating journalistic ethics and had met brick walls. Now, those brick walls admitted that there was bias, but they basically told him he needed to back off.
He brings up an amazing point, one I hadn’t considered before. After the piece was published, he found himself drowning in a shitstorm the likes of which he’d never dreamed of. In a slightly heated debate about it with “The Dan” (as he calls Dan Rather in the book), he asked Rather how he’d describe the New York Times. Rather said, “middle-of-the-road.” The Times, one of the most liberal rags in the country? Yep. You will never read a piece in that paper critical of abortion rights, anti-death penalty advocates, Democrat lawmakers or anti-war protesters. And Rather, like many colleagues, called it “middle-of-the-road.”
It brings to mind a thought that I hadn’t really found a description for. Most liberals don’t realize that they’re really liberal; they see themselves as mainstream. I’ve often griped here about the names we get called: “intolerant!” “bigots!” “racists!” “neocons!” And my personal favorite, “you guys must be a bunch of self-loathing closet cases! How can you be conservative and be gay? It’s like a Jew calling himself a Nazi!”
To any rational, thinking person (even to some of the folks I know who identify as liberal), that is the height of intolerance. But, I’ve just figured out something very important. Liberals don’t need to be tolerated–because they’re not really liberal. They’re the mainstream. They’re middle-of-the-road, progressive, forward-thinking, and they don’t need to be tolerated because they see themselves as the only reasonable members of society.
In 1972, Richard Nixon beat the unholy snot out of George McGovern (I flubbed that one and had to change it–Mel). He won 49 states while Mondale only took ONE. A normally brilliant film critic named Pauline Kael proves a point here with what she said: “I can’t believe it! I don’t know a single person who voted for him!”
That statement spotlights just how out-of-touch the mainstream media has long been with the rest of American society. CBS, ABC and NBC are run by people who think the things I have just described…that they understand what America wants to hear and that makes it perfectly okay to abandon journalistic ethics to pass live editorials off as unbiased news. If they really understand us, then please explain why Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Tammy Bruce, Michelle Malkin and Laura Schlessinger have enjoyed so much popularity.
I work with plenty of people like that young man I described above. Some refuse to give me a second thought because they know that I identify as conservative and they see me as a traitor. It only proves how those who demand tolerance are incapable of being tolerant, and how they think they don’t need it.
Yet because I refuse to toe the party line, I’m arrogant. I’m a racist. I’m a self-loathing closet case. I’m a traitor. I’m intolerant.
I’m not LIBERAL.
(Bernard Goldberg is an author well worth reading. I’ll most certainly be buying the rest of his books; click here to find his work on Amazon.)
I’ve blogged before about Shawn Grell.
To recap, back on December 2, 1999, Grell picked his two-year-old daughter Kristen up from daycare, took her to McDonald’s, fed her, played with her–then drove her out to a remote stretch of desert in Apache Junction where he doused her in gasoline and lit her on fire. Investigators were able to determine that baby Kristen had walked around and stamped her little feet for at least 60 seconds (likely more) before she finally collapsed and died in the dirt.
The big controversy surrounding this case hasn’t been what Grell did. No…it’s been whether or not he should be put to death for his crime.
He was originally sentenced to death in 2001. But his defense attorneys, determined to win, started fighting for him and won a new trial. I was supposed to go to his sentencing today, but car trouble put the kibosh on that.
I got a text message as soon as the verdict was read: a jury sentenced him to death yet again.
Defense attorney Gary Bevilacqua said immediately afterward that Grell had been diagnosed as mentally retarded and that he has a “cognitive disorder” that leaves him unable to control his impulses. That’s awfully convenient. The word “cognitive” describes the ability to understand and the word is frequently repeated in decisions handed down by the Warren court in the 60′s. So Bevilacqua is claiming that because Grell doesn’t understand what’s going on, he can’t control what he thinks of doing.
I call bullshit.
This argument is one made frequently by people accused of heinous crimes and the defense attorneys bent on winning their case in court. The system was originally designed to enable the honest pursuit of truth and stop the invasive process that European justice was back in the 18th century. Today, however, reactive and activist courts (such as the Warren court) have turned American justice into a farce. It’s not about asking, “did you do it?” anymore. It’s about winning. It’s not about being fair to all involved, it’s about giving the accused a fair chance to beat the system.
In 1962, Gallegos v. Colorado set the major precedent for due process for juvenile offenders. Gallegos’ full name has never been published because he was only 14 years old at the time of his crime; he and two of his friends followed an elderly man into his hotel room, beat him and robbed him of $13. Police spotted Gallegos with his younger brother one day and invited the young boys to sit in his patrol car to escape the heat, whereupon Gallegos immediately admitted his crime. The officer had no idea who Gallegos was and apparently, Gallegos had no clue that the officer really was just trying to be nice.
Within two weeks he was convicted of assault to injure and adjudicated as delinquent (meaning he was sent to what amounts to a prison for teenagers). Shortly after his conviction, the victim died of his injuries and Gallegos was tried for first degree murder. He was quickly convicted. When the case made its way to the Supreme Court, the argument was made that because of Gallegos’ youth, the police should have immediately contacted his parents before any questioning took place (even though he wasn’t even questioned before he told a cop what had happened).
Unfortunately, this case had a massive backlash in normal adult cases as well. In the opinion written for the court, the following was written by Justice Douglas: “we deal with a person [the defendant] who is not equal to the police in knowledge and understanding.”
What this did was set another precedent, one far more dangerous. It gave defense attorneys the ability to argue that because a person cannot understand or outwit the police, the process is unfair.
Someone please tell me when this became acceptable. How did we get to a point in criminal justice that we are willing to let known dangerous criminals go free on technicalities such as the one Bevilacqua is suggesting, that Grell can’t understand what he’s done? Grell has been fairly insistent from day one that he knows exactly what he did. No doubt Bevilacqua really wanted to win state conservatorship for his client, meaning he’d never go back to prison; now he’s just hoping that the Supreme Court will rule that he’s retarded and thus can’t be executed.
The argument here goes that a retarded person isn’t able to understand the weight of what they’ve done. I beg to differ. Just because a person isn’t considered of average intelligence does NOT mean they are incapable of understanding their crimes. And it is an insult to the conscience that we are willing to accept low-grade or even no justice at all in the name of protecting those who may or may not understand what they’ve done.
Trust me, folks–Shawn Grell knows perfectly well what he did. It was a period of hours from the time he picked his daughter up until he doused her in gasoline and lit her on fire. It took time to buy the gas can at Target, go to a gas station–and even after that, nearly an hour for Shawn to find the spot that he felt was “just right.”
Nobody on Earth can convince me that this waste of space and air, this example of evil personified, was merely acting on impulse and didn’t understand what he was doing–or that he couldn’t control himself. As reprehensible as I believe it to be, one may argue that shaking a baby is impulsive. What Grell did, though, took too much time to be argued as having been done on “impulse.”
It’s quite a leap from wanting to be fair and trying to find the truth to where we are–arguing that a person is innocent because he can’t control his impulses. I have seen many people in prison who committed crimes on impulse; that doesn’t make them any less guilty.
Most of the people in my life are ardently against universal healthcare. They are against it either because they are afraid of losing their private coverage and their right to choose their care or because they’re in the healthcare system (like me) and they know full well what the consequences will be of rationing healthcare. Gunshot wounds, childbirths, stabs, people run over by cars, projectile vomiting–EMT’s and paramedics can handle it all. If you really wanna see us squirm, walk into our station and start a conversation about universal healthcare.
There’s a lot of very good reasons why the vast, overwhelming majority of doctors, nurses and paramedics don’t want to see universal healthcare become a reality. Obama may have a handful in his pocket, but if you look closely, they’re all interconnected to him and his cabinet somehow. Not the least of those doctors is none other than the brother of Rahm Emmanuel. Of course they’re going to toot the horn for universal healthcare; they’ll be on the inside, free of the worry of being at the mercy of the government system. It should speak volumes when the President is not willing to say unequivocally that he’d put his own family on that plan. When asked if he’d do that last week, he stuttered, fumbled and then refused to give a real answer.
If George W. Bush had done that, he’d have been tarred and feathered.
Universal healthcare is a nightmare that people from Canada, England, Ireland, Spain and Japan are begging us here in the United States not to adopt. I have friends from each one of those countries now living here in the US, and all say that the government healthcare programs in their home countries were part of what drove them to the US to begin with. One friend found out she had cervical cancer after being told by her doctor in Belfast at age 23 that she wouldn’t need that test until she was 25 years old; doctors there were being rewarded for denying tests and care in an effort to save money. Another watched his grandfather die a slow and painful death because the government of Spain refused to pay for a kidney transplant that would have saved his life–because he was too old. Yet another buried his son in Japan after he was hit by a car; the college student could have been saved if the paramedics called to rescue him hadn’t been forced to sit in a parking lot for two hours, trying to find a hospital capable of taking him. Stories like these are horrors to us because of the free market that healthcare now is.
Do you really still think that won’t happen here? Are you really still convinced that the government will truly have your best interests at heart? If you are, click here and read what even the liberal financial analysts are saying about HR 3200.
Because when even the left-leaning bean-counters are astounded, you know it’s gotten bad.
I just found this and had to re-post it…think long and hard while you’re reading this, folks.
***** ***** *****
Well Mr. Citizen, I guess you have figured me out. I seem to fit neatly into the category you place me in. I’m stereotyped, characterized, standardized, classified, grouped, and always typical. I’m the “lousy” cop.
Unfortunately, the reverse isn’t true. I can never figure you out.
From birth you teach your children that I am a person to be wary of…and then you’re shocked when they identify me with my traditional enemy, the criminal.
You accuse me of coddling juvenile criminals, until I catch your kid doing something.
You may take an hour for lunch and several coffee breaks each day, but point me out as a loafer if you see me having just one cup.
You pride yourself on your polished manners, but think nothing of interrupting my meals with your troubles.
You raise hell about the guy who cuts you off in traffic, but let me catch you doing the same thing and I’m picking on you.
You know all the traffic laws, but never got one ticket you deserved.
You shout “Foul!” if you observe me driving fast enroute to an emergency call, but literally raise hell if I take more than ten seconds responding to your call.
You call it “part of my job” if someone strikes me. But its “police brutality” if I strike back.
You wouldn’t think of telling your dentist how to pull a badly decayed tooth, or your doctor how to take out your appendix, but you are always willing to give me pointers on law enforcement.
You talk to me in a manner and use language that would assure a bloody nose from anyone else, but you expect me to stand there and take it without batting an eye.
You cry, “Something has to be done about all the crime!” but you can’t be bothered with getting involved.
You’ve got no use for me at all, but, of course, it’s OK if I change a tire for your wife, deliver your baby in the back seat of my patrol car on the way to the hospital, save your son’s life with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, or work many hours overtime to find your lost daughter.
So, Dear Citizen, you stand there on your soapbox and rant and rave about the way I do my job, calling me every name in the book, but never stop a minute to think that your property, your family, or maybe your life might depend on one thing – me, or one of my buddies.
Yes, me, the lousy cop.
- Author unknown
Now this is classy. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for disorderly conduct at his home by Cambridge police officers who were called by a neighbor reporting a possible break-in. In the wake of the arrest, President Obama publicly said that the officers acted “stupidly,” immediately jumping to the defense of his friend and echoing the sentiment that professor Gates had initially yelled at the officers:
“This is what happens to black men in America!”
Oooooh, boy. Here we go again.
A neighbor had called police to report that she saw two black men with backpacks trying to break in the front door. When officers arrived, at first Gates refused to provide ID, then later provided proof that it was his home and what the neighbor had seen was them trying to open a jammed front door (all he was willing to give was a Harvard University ID card). Okay. But when the officer asked to speak to him outside (something I’ve seen officers do on all manner of calls to avoid the appearance of invading someone’s personal space during a civil conversation), Gates replied, “yeah, I’ll speak with your mama outside!”
This sparked off a heated argument between Gates and the two officers, who then arrested him for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. If you read the report, you’ll find that before Sgt. Crowley (the first officer on scene) even introduced himself, Gates was being verbally combative–starting off with the “black man in America” comment, calling Sgt. Crowley a racist police officer and telling him that it was none of his business. In the middle of all of it, Gates told the good sergeant that he had no idea who he was dealing with.
Gates screamed a litany of threats at the officers in full view of no fewer than seven civilians who had stopped to gawk at Gates’ screaming fit. He all but chased Sgt. Crowley out of the house and then stood on his porch and continued to scream at the officers, calling them racists and refusing to hear anything anyone had to say. He was only arrested when he refused to calm down and stop disturbing the peace.
When a police officer comes to your home, common sense should tell you to calmly answer questions about your identity, provide an ID if it is requested, and if you’re doing nothing wrong, there won’t be a problem. It is plain to anybody with more than two operative brain cells that this incident could have been avoided if Gates had simply been civil with the officers instead of having an apoplectic fit in public.
President Obama refuses to apologize for his remarks about the officers. He has since openly defended saying that they “acted stupidly” and has defended leveling accusations of racism at a highly-decorated and well-respected police officer so he can defend a close friend. This proves that he has no respect for our police or for the law that they are sworn to uphold. He should be ashamed of his friend for behaving like a maniac and, even moreso, ashamed of himself for defending such behavior.
According to the commander of the Cambridge police department, the morale in their department has dropped significantly as a result of Obama’s remarks and disdain. I hope everyone involved remembers this incident the next time they need the police.
In response to the President’s comments which labeled him and his local colleagues as people who behave “stupidly,” Sgt. Crowley says that he will not apologize to Gates. He also implies how unimportant Obama’s opinion is of him by asserting he did not vote for him.
Doing a complete flip; however, Police in Cambridge, Mass. are now demanding the apology – but from the President himself. Among the department is a Black officer who supports the arrest of Gates as he was there to witness what actually happened. Miraculously, Gates has neighbors that witnessed the event, too and err on the side of the officer given what he saw as well.
Meanwhile, the Obama staff has done a complete turnaround with the media. Suddenly, it is fashionable for Gibbs to blame the media of obsession for prolonging the story.
In other words, can’t we just make this go away!?
These guys should try being Sarah Palin for just one day.
My take on this focuses more on the response by commenters on youtube and Facebook who are expressing sorrow for casting their vote for the beloved one after being convinced of Obama’s bias to this incident by his rushing to judgment without knowing all the facts (as he has admitted).
My surprise is that Obama has exuded signs of racial activism since his days in the Illinois legislature. We all know he went to a church and listened to the sermons of Wright and Pleger for many years before suddenly resigning in the same year he was running for President.
NOW America is noticing? Proof that Mr. Gibbs better watch his mouth with regard to the media as it was that same enterprise that sent over half of the voters into voting booths pulling levers as a bunch of drugged monkies.
If indeed Al Queda ever had reason to laugh at us, this is the time.
Even with all of the things in my own life considered, I’ve often wondered why it is so difficult for so many to do what each of us knows to be right. It’s as if we have begun to stop caring about doing the right thing. In some cases it’s almost understandable; clamming up and failing to take action can be a selfish thing, saving one’s own career or hide. In most cases, though, there’s little excuse for doing the exact opposite of what’s right.
Ever notice how you don’t have to teach a child to do what’s wrong? When I was a kid, I regularly did the exact opposite of what I was told. “Don’t touch the grill, Mel, you’ll burn yourself,” my father said. I planted both hands on the bottom of that shiny black kettle grill. “Don’t open the medicine cabinet, Mel, what’s in there can make you sick,” said my mother. Not only did I eat an entire box of chocolate-covered Ex-Lax, I took the box to my dad and smiled as I told him that I’d eaten it. “Don’t play with the electrical outlets, Mel, you’ll hurt yourself!” My parents sat me down to explain this to me. I’m not sure what the bigger mistake was: telling me not to play with them or showing me how they put the plastic covers on them so I could later figure out how to pry the little bastards off with the car key that I immediately inserted into one of the slots.
(So if any of you ever wondered what was wrong with me…)
A child knows full well what they’re NOT supposed to do because in normal homes, mom and dad say “no, you can’t do that.” At school, there are boundaries, rules, places you can’t go and certain times you have to be in certain places. But a child will naturally push those rules and do things they know to be wrong, partially out of rebellion but mostly out of curiosity.
A kid needs to learn those lessons. What’s an adult’s excuse?
I didn’t like being a corrections officer. I didn’t like what I became. I was an instant asshole–just add uniform and gear, only $17.99 an hour! I became that way because I had no patience for listening to grown men whine about being forced to obey the rules. I’ve never understood how a human being can terrorize other human beings at will for their own pleasure. And I’ve certainly never understood how, after doing such a thing, they can whine about paying for it. Many of my fellow officers felt the same way I did but they realized they’d never change the way life is, so they–in a way–accepted it.
Something that I think is a little more insidious than the evil that our prisons are always teeming with, however, is the wrongs we commit against each other on a daily basis. Have you ever made fun of someone at work, school or church? Did you ever feel guilty about it? Most liberals I know wouldn’t because their sense of right and wrong is barely there (at least until they’re made the victim). When the “friends” I thought I could trust made fun of another person nearby, then acted like sweetness and light when this person was around, I never realized how wrong it was. Then they turned it on me. I overheard them one day making fun of me–my weight, my geeky personality, my muscular build, my more masculine qualities, and the fact that I had a little crush on someone who wouldn’t have given me the time of day.
Suffice to say, it hurt.
It didn’t take me long to remember just kind of chuckling at some of the horrible things I’d heard them say about another person. I not only didn’t speak up and tell them it was wrong, I went along with it. Laughing at what they were saying was just as bad as taking part in it and saying those things myself. I will certainly not allow those people to get to close to me anymore, but I also won’t forget that I am capable of being just as harsh. It took being hurt the same way to see that.
I’ve never really been afraid of death. I know what’s going to happen. I’ll get to go home. I’ll get to see all the people I’ve lost in this life again in a place where I’ll never be hurt, I’ll never have to struggle anymore, and I’ll never be alone again. Sometimes I wonder if my lack of fear is the reason why God has allowed me to remain here, enshrined in this weakness that we call skin. Then I learn lessons like these–simple but nonetheless important–and my eyes are opened a little more.
A doctor brought up an important point with me today. Most human beings don’t have much concept of right and wrong until it directly affects them. The only creatures on this planet that are truly solitary are tigers; humans, like every other being, operate in a social milieu and naturally conform to the group they’re in for the sake of survival. If that means being humble, being cruel, or being criminal, people will do whatever it takes to be accepted. Acceptance is something I’ve wanted my whole life, but now I wonder if it’s really what I need.
I hope I never operate in the moral vacuum I’ve seen in others around me. If I ever cease to feel guilty about the things I fail to get right, I will be lost.
In the Jerusalem Post today, an almost unbelievable story has been published detailing shocking actions by the Iranian Basiji Guards. The story was given by a proud member of the guard force after he was arrested for releasing two young teenaged girls who’d been arrested for supposedly taking part in riots and violence over the recent election scandals.
His reason?
His mother sent him to the Basiji Guards when he was only 16 after his father was “martyred” in the war with Iraq. Within two years, his superiors were so pleased with him that they bestowed upon him the “honor” of forcibly marrying young girls sentenced to execution under Sharia law. According to Sharia, a virgin cannot be executed, regardless of her crime. To get around this important religious law guards would force the girls to marry them, then rape them.
The guard who spoke said that the girls were actually more afraid of the rape than their execution, so much so that they had to be tranquilized before the deed was done. He said that by the next morning their faces would look hollow and empty–as if they were glad to be facing death.
The guard (who could not be named else he face execution himself) said that it was past experience that taught him what would happen to the two teenage girls he helped. As a husband and father now, he said he could not bear to let it happen because they were so young.
Note to those who still protest Prop 8 with signs that say “stop the Christian Taliban” and “stripped of human rights”: you have no idea what it really, truly means to be stripped of human rights. Go live in Iran, where the religious police can publicly beat and torture you–literally–for wearing clothes deemed “too Western.” Go to Iran, where you can be executed for being a woman out with no related male escort, and your execution will be made legal with a rape the night before.
THAT is what it’s like to be stripped of human rights.
Someone tell Code Pink to wake up.
steveflesher
Philip
Mel Maguire
Mark Ciavola
