ENOUGH

ENOUGH.

Age before beauty, I suppose?

What The Old Guard clique (a.k.a. RINOs if you’re feeling nasty) loves to say about the Tea Party is that they keep picking fights they can’t win, and that the leadership experience of
The Old Guard clique should be respected.

That’s all right though because the Tea Party clique loves to say at least they remember how to fight, and The Old Guard clique would rather cut deals with the devil to avoid any fight, leading a retreat.

No doubt they will both be insulted that I call them cliques.  Too bad. As they spend all their time trying to convince us that their group (Clique) is coolest and the other one is “uncool”, I find it the perfect word.

The worst part is that I’ve come to believe that BOTH of the above statements are completely true. The youth has poor aim, and the elders won’t even load the gun. Neither inspires confidence in the future.  The saddest thing, however, is that if the status quo is going to be changed any time in the near future, it’s going to take both cliques. They need to have each other’s back.  Trust me, if I believed that either group was capable alone, I would back them and write something blistering about police pulling over random cars to collect DNA profiles. But that is not to be.

Going forward, what the Republican Party is desperately in need of is leaders who love both.  We can’t be rewarding people from either clique if all they want to do is crush the other. We have much bigger problems. I know there are people in both groups who despise the other.  That doesn’t necessarily make them bad people, but those are not the leaders we need.

I even realize that some of you politicians are spectacular actors and think you can pretend to love them both long enough to pull off an election or two.  You are mistaken. The quality of the acting in Washington D.C. has not increased nearly as much as the cynicism of the electorate. You will fail and set all of us back even further.  We need the real deal. Merely liking both cliques is not good enough.  Both sides will be really stupid some of the time. We need people who can forgive stupid mistakes quickly and get back to work.  People who love and are loved by both factions even in the face of inevitable Stupid are absolutely required.

The leaders we need are out there. We have been at war in the Middle East for 10 years. We have not had so many leaders who have been literally tested under fire since the end of WWII. And I’m sure there are many other sources of leaders I’m simply not familiar with.

I’m not pushing anything or anyone in particular.  It’s way too early. However these are the things we should be looking for.  And the candidates should KNOW that this is what we are looking for.

Reagan himself said “If someone agrees with me 80% of the time, he is not a 20% traitor; he is my friend and ally.”

Learn quickly.  Time is not our friend.

Sagging Hopes

Sagging Hopes

I gather that MSNBC’s Touré was horrendously offended by a Don Lemon comment on O’Reilly about saggy pants. So he accused Don Lemon (among others) of being a “White Leader” and asked why they don’t focus on White on White violence.  Well, as I am not, nor have I ever been an Albino or a member of the KKK, I have no idea what constitutes a “White Leader.”  Though, I am looking forward to Touré educating all of us about that. As for the deplorable state of White on White violence, hell yes these kids need some pointers!  Let’s start, as suggested, with Saggy Pants.

Now, while I have no kids, I have a very large extended family and I can testify that quite a few of them around middle and high school age do the saggy pants thing. Saggin’ is not just for black people. It’s for any kid who wants to irritate the powers that be. I get that, and I too started somewhere silly, but thank god I’ve finally destroyed all the pictures. (I hope.) So I’ve got plausible deniability.  Still, having lived through the Michael Jackson jackets with a full mile of useless zippers , and the girls in Junior High all dressing like Boy George and attacking anyone who said he was gay. (true story) People my age were as bad or worse than what’s out there today.  We’re not better, we just got over it.

I suppose it’s the functionality of the thing.  Presumably Sagging Pants come from prisoners in jail not being able to have belts – maybe it’s true, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. I remember people not shaving (who had the option) so they could look like Don Johnson. In Miami Vice he was allegedly trying to look like a drug dealer as he was an undercover Cop.  Well, now the dealers have Saggy Pants, or so we are told.

Now let’s think about this.  These kids want to either look like or be gang  members, so let’s look at that lifestyle a little.  It’s all about making money, right? So gang bangers or whoever spend lots of their time on the move making money.  Running after people who owe them money – running away from people to whom THEY owe money.  Running from the police,  the FBI, competitors who are just a little better armed – chasing down competitors who aren’t as well armed as them.  It’s a pretty active and nervous lifestyle I would expect.

Now, these kids – probably not much better or worse than we are – either want to look like these guys (kind of sad) or they want to BE these guys (really sad.)  Or they want to look like their friends, who want to look like or be those guys.  I don’t approve, but I also don’t expect one single kid to care what I think. I wouldn’t have.  I just have one little question. If you are thinking of taking up this lifestyle or looking like someone who wants this active and nervous life, I can’t get around this one question.

Why in the hell would you tie your knees together?

Blurred Lines

Blurred Lines 

Hello folks!  It’s been a while I know.  I do apologize for that. I’d give you an excuse but I find the older I get the less interested I become in inventing them. They were mostly BS anyway.

A great deal has happened over the last month, and there is plenty to choose from.  Yet the thing that I believe most astounds me/offends me is how MSNBC handled the Bashir/Palin situation.  I would have said that this one is a no-brainer, and I would have been proven wrong.  Apparently, for MSNBC, ignorance is bliss.  I find that offensive – and am taking this opportunity to remove their excuse.  (No charge.)

As a society, I would say we are no longer taught how to deal with violence in any way.  It is, I believe, an outgrowth of being mostly safe from violence when compared to the rest of the world.  Children are taught that “violence is not an option.” And like good kids do, we tend to believe it.  What that means now is that you have a group of adults with no clue what the boundaries for that sort of thing are.  They were never taught, and that is a mistake.

“Violence is not an option” is an out and out fiction. It is almost always an option.  99% of the time it’s the dumbest single thing you can do, but it’s still up to you.  For example, the only thing that stops you from walking up to a policeman and slapping him because you don’t like his haircut is YOU. Stupid is always a choice, for you, for me, and for everybody else.  I don’t care how smart you are.  Smart people do dumb things all the time, especially when they have no idea about the consequences. I could give examples but I am dealing with MSNBC/Bashir right now.

Essentially what we are dealing with in this case is physical threats.  There are basically three levels of this sort of thing.  

1

.)    1.)The Direct Threat.  That’s the threat where a person threatens to harm you or others personally. If a person chooses to believe this kind of threat, the person making it can be arrested, sued, or in some cases, legally killed on the spot. Google Bernie Goetz if you don’t believe me.

2

.)    2.)The Proxy Threat. This involves a person saying in a public way “Somebody ought to” do x, y and z to another person.  The individual making the threat can be sued, or maybe even charged.  The poor idiot who tries to do x. y and z, is subject to all the consequences covered under the Direct Threat even if he never says anything. There is also the possibility of a completely innocent person being harmed/killed because the person threatened thought they were about to be attacked. I would imagine they or their family could sue the Proxy Threat Maker as well.

3

.)    3.)The Proxy Non-threat. This may not be a crime but it’s criminal and it happens. It involves either “Gosh it would be too bad if X happened” or perhaps “Somebody is going to do X” (just in case nobody thought of X themselves.) I don’t know if there is anything that can be legally done to someone who makes a threat like that, but it happens and it is despicable. Again the person who decides that he is that “somebody” who is going to do X is subject to all Direct Threat consequences and there is a risk that innocent people will be hurt or killed.

The most natural reaction when accused of any of the above would be to say “You don’t know me! I’d NEVER do anything like that.” I like to think that’s probably true more often than not. But here’s the thing.

I don’t know you.  I probably don’t want to know you. Even if I could, I am not required to read your mind. I expect most people feel more or less the same way about me, and that’s fine. W

The fact that a person is a public persona changes nothing here. Threats are a dangerous, stupid business and, in my honest opinion, there’s simply no place for them in any media organization that wishes to be respected, like say MSNBC, (or so I presume.)  I also know they probably don’t give a damn about my honest opinion. So I’m not holding my breath.

But in any case MSNBC- you are no longer ignorant. That’s one less excuse I have to put up with.