Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The Weightless Elephant

Self-described "devout Catholic" Paul Ryan now says he supports homosexuals adopting children, disavowing his previous voting record on the issue:

RYAN: Adoption, I’d vote differently these days. That was I think a vote I took in my first term, 1999 or 2000. I do believe that if there are children who are orphans who do not have a loving person or couple I think if a person wants to love and raise a child they ought to be able to do that. Period. I would vote that way.

Gotta love the "period" part. Like he's taking a strong stand on something instead of just blowing in the wind.

It's bad enough that we have the most corrupt politicians of all time. But do they have to be so awkward and flat-out bad at concealing their corruption? 

Monday, April 29, 2013

So Jason Collins is a Homosexual

The corporate sports world, fueled by its PR mouthpiece ESPN, is in a lather over NBA scrub Jason Collins' revelation that he is homosexual.

It's really not going too far to suggest that the Total Sports Leader is giving Kennedy Assassination coverage to this "event".

So let me get this, ahem, straight:

Big-time athletes today are tatted-up, steroidal thugs who commit rapes, robberies, murders and smear excrement on hotel walls yet I am supposed to be shaken to the core in my belief that sexual perversion is wrong because one of these modern-day gladiators has "bravely" revealed himself to be this form of degenerate as opposed to one of the more common forms predominant in professional sports today?

Let's take this logic to its natural conclusion:

Hmmmm... that Pac Man Jones sure has some cover skills. Maybe I was wrong all along to believe that making it rain in a strip club and then attacking the people who scamper after the money until one of your posse ends up shooting and paralyzing for life a bouncer is evil?

I gotta reconsider all this. And maybe become more.... TOLERANT... of reckless gunplay in strip clubs.

Thank you Pac Man. You have opened this former bigot's eyes. And helped me grow.

Utterly ridiculous, yet this is exactly the effect that a pro athlete "coming out" is supposed to have on me.

Jason Collins is a homosexual and I am sad for him. But sadder still is the fact that we live in a culture that has lionized professional athletes to such a degree that their poor personal choices are assumed to promote social change. This is the far more significant lesson to be learned from this otherwise meaningless affair.

Of course you won't hear anyone saying that on ESPN.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

What the Corporate/Welfare State Has in Mind For Us All

This article from across the pond is frightening and revealing...

Homes in Britain are becoming the smallest in Europe with new one-bed flats now typically no bigger than a Tube carriage.
Faced with rising land costs, developers are cramming a lounge, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom into as little as 495 square feet.
The result is ‘cramped, dark and artificially lit’ environments that put health and wellbeing at risk, the Royal Institute of Architects said.

With our corrupt politicians in the pockets of large, amoral corporations AND simultaneously seeking to expand the total influence of the federal goliath over us all, this is the future we have to look forward to.

There is a concerted effort to get citizens off the land and into the ever-growing megacities currently cropping up all over the U.S. I lived in Washington, D.C. for 25 years before moving away in October and one could see quite plainly how the city stretched out ever wider by the year, like a sponge absorbing more and more around it.

Today, the city of Washington is a vast swath of strip malls, townhouses and condos extending for miles without reprieve. One could drive from Warrenton, Va. north for about 12 miles, then east to the Beltway and north toward Frederick Md., a distance of roughly 78 miles in all. You could chart the continual growth of the Communist Bulgaria-era block housing over time. There would be gaps here and there, but you could see the blight pushing in to fill any remaining space with each passing year.

It is all very soulless, overcrowded and removed from the land. An artificial glow of streetlights and business lighting constantly smothers the beauty of night and the choking oppression of traffic and cookie-cutter concrete landscapes suffocate the natural light of day.

When the government provides everything they can stuff us into cages. There we will be far easier to control than if we were scattered amongst the countryside, like... oh, what's the word?.... like.... free people.

Coming soon to an America near you:

These mind-boggling images capture the scale of soaring apartment blocks in one of the world's most densely populated areas; Hong Kong.
As home to a population of more than seven million crammed into an area measuring just 424 square miles, space in Hong Kong is at a premium.
It means that, when it comes to providing accommodation for Hong Kong's huge population, the only way to go is up.

But fret not. Everybody gets his own box to call his own:

They are barely large enough for a single person to squeeze into at all, let alone swing a cat.
But incredibly these tiny 'coffin' apartments in central Tokyo still command rents of up to £400 a month.
The Japanese capital is one of the most crowded cities in the world, and to cash in on the chronic housing problem, landlords have developed what are known as 'geki-sema' or share houses.

If you want to avoid this definition of Hell, fight against the illegal invasion of our homeland, stop supporting the corporate behemoths who dream of one universal customer base and get back in touch with the outdoors and the rhythmic heartbeat of nature.

Years ago I came across this prophetic quote and it has stuck with me ever since. This man foresaw the horror of our modern "global village", a horror that is now threatening to engulf us all:

In a 1932 essay filed from Berlin, the critic Giovanni Battista Angioletti warned Italians of the dire fate that awaited them if they succumbed to the seductions of foreign models of modernity:
[Y]ou will be an element, an atom of the crowd... surrounded by four million men similar to yourself, who have your same thoughts... You will see the green fields and open sky only on Saturdays and Sundays. You will never know your neighbors, and for your whole life you will be a complete unknown in the city where you live.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Our Post-Christian Culture Responds to Tragedy

This post is not meant in any way to attempt to diminish the tragedy that befell the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings. 

That said, the response that was on display in the city over the past weekend is a telling indictment of the shallow times we are living in. 

This ABC News report inadvertently hits the nail on the head with its assertion that Fenway Park is a "civic cathedral" for the people of Boston. 

And that really sums up where we are now. In the past, the churches would be filled after a horrible catastrophe - the start of a world war, civil war, monster flood, etc. People would bow their heads and solemnly pray to a Just God for mercy.

Nowadays it is the sporting arenas that are filled after every disturbance that can be milked to full emotional effect.

Folks don their Sox gear, wave their American flags in grandstanding style and sing along with a Schmaltzy Neil Diamond for "healing".

It all makes for a bizarre quasi-religious commercial experience as the congregation vows that no act, no matter how horrible, will stop the party from going on.

We have become a nation of emotional consumerists and steroidal men wearing sports uniforms are our new high priests.

You have to love the inspiring tag the ABC report closes with:

There's also been plenty of commerce today and that's important because Friday's shutdown really cost this city money. Today money, and good will, have been flowing all day long.

They may bomb our marathon. But they will never break our will to attend overpriced baseball games, eat hot dogs and spend money.

Friday, April 19, 2013

If You Think the Name of This Blog is Ridiculous...

... You obviously haven't read this inflammatory piece at Salon.com titled "Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American":

“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”
Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.

Let us count the ways in which this shows, yet again, that you can say things about white males in the Amerika of today that you simply cannot say about any other identifiable group of people:

1. Imagine a headline to a local crime story, "Let's hope the rapist was a black man"

2. Or how about this on the latest Wall Street scandal, "Let's hope the embezzler was a Jew"?

3. Or how about, "Let's hope the man who murdered his daughter was a Muslim committing an honor killing"?

To deliberately seek out a group of individuals after a hideous crime is committed and dearly wish that they be the perpetrators just because it would endorse your personal beliefs/biases used to be the very essence of bigotry in this nation. Today it is clever liberal nuance used to spotlight the higher intellectual point: White males are the cause of all problems in the world.

Have no illusions, my fellow white male Americans: You ARE a target.

Get used to it, because things are only going to get worse.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

This Man is a Traitor to His People

The push to give open amnesty to illegal aliens has reached a new level of absurdity with this New York Times article about the plight of one poor American farmer:

A federal audit had found that 12 of his 14 workers were immigrants who had provided [Jeff] True with false work documents, the letter said. The immigration authorities ordered him to dismiss those workers.
Mr. True, whose family has been dairy farming for two centuries, scrambled around the clock with his relatives to milk their 1,100 cows, hire and train new workers and keep the farm in business.
Most of his workers are immigrants from Latin America, and he now dreads that he could receive another letter at any moment.
“My biggest fear is my labor is not going to be here tomorrow,” he said. “Most of us live in fear of that every day.” 

What a tearjerker! This American farmer is going to go under if he is not allowed to hire illegals to work his farm. Tragedy! Pathos! Whoa, wait a minute. 

1,100 cows! That's not a farm, that's a factory. So we're supposed to get all swollen-eyed over a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) "farmer" who is hiring the cheapest labor he can find at depressed wages so he can cut even more corners on his operation? Imagine how he's treating the cows you all drink your milk from?

Let's take a look at how this factory man operates his "farm":

They milk in a double-10 parallel parlor and cows lie on sand-bedded free stalls with bedding added twice each week. Farm 2 has rubber belting in the entire feed alley and pushes up feed 12 times per day. Donna Walker, nominator from Dairylea Cooperative, says, "True Farms does an exceptional job balancing the production of high-quality milk. They thoughtfully create protocols and follow them for consistent results."

Rubber belting for the entire feed alley! Isn't that wonderful? Kind of demolishes the quaint notion of happy cows munching grass on a sunny day, huh? Farmers don't "create protocols," they raise animals for food and milk. If you want to read more about what people like Mr. True and the folks at the Dairylea Cooperative, Inc. are doing to the quality of life in their Upstate New York communities, check this out:

Karen Strecker is bracing. She's about to turn on the faucet, and there's a chance liquid manure is going to stream from the spout. "I've been taking a bath and actually had cow shit pour into the tub,'' Strecker says, matter-of-factly. She uses well water. "It's nasty." Yet the threat of a sewage bath pales in comparison to a more dangerous problem: Breathing poisonous fumes. After years living next to Willet Dairy, the largest industrial farm in the state, Strecker and her neighbors in Genoa are reporting the kinds of health problems eco-watchdogs lose sleep over, from blistering eyelids to brain damage. Manure is known to release gases that, in high concentrations, are linked to those scary symptoms.

But, then again, did you really expect this man to be practicing rotational grazing for his 1,100 assets, er, living animals, moving them from one parcel of pasture to another to ensure maximum nutritional health?

This is the flip side to the "jobs ordinary Americans won't do" argument: This kind of "farm labor" is demeaning and quite dangerous to the workers involved. Demeaning for obvious reasons (lagoons of manure) and dangerous because cows are meant to graze on pasture, not "feed alleys." This kind of operation guarantees sickness:

Working conditions at confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are unhealthy, dangerous and extreme. Because the animals are often housed directly above the giant pits that store their manure, harmful gases such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and methane that are produced by the decomposing manure can contaminate the air that the animals and farm laborers breathe. In addition to these gases, dust and other irritants known as endotoxins—which come from the cell walls of the bacteria in the manure—are often found in very high concentrations on CAFOs. These substances can be hazardous to farm workers either through chronic (or long-term) exposure at low levels, or acute (concentrated) exposure at higher levels.

This man is hiring desperate people who are in this country illegally to perform dangerous and dreary labor instead of running a smaller operation that would give American citizens an opportunity to perform meaningful work. He is also providing you his fellow citizen with an unhealthy product, as a sick animal is not going to provide healthy milk. And he is doing all of this for the sake of increased profit for himself.

But you have to love the insinuation in the Times' article that a rich, two-centuries-old tradition is facing cruel extinction if this SOB isn't allowed his exploitative labor.

It takes a special kind of gall to make yourself the victim in a situation like this.

Amazing times we are living in.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Movies For Men - On the Passing of Roger Ebert

A time and a "career" encapsulated in one moment:




I had been feeling a tad guilty for loathing Ebert in lieu of his recent death.

This is just the tonic I needed.

You want to be nice because the dude just died but then you realize he had real influence and used it to promote excrement.

The guy did damage. Cheerleading for all the crap that has led to the emasculated "films" we are inundated with today.

Perfectly captured here:

- Boring, full of itself beyond all hell psychobabble Platoon is an unquestioned masterpiece. That goes without saying.

- Full Metal Jacket, the movie that has really lasted the test of time, is an insipid cliche.

Of course, it is laughable today to think that Oliver Stone even belongs in the same conversation as Stanley Kubrick but you could have a field day going back and reading and watching critics like this go on and on about similar movies in the '70s and '80s.

They were legion.

Platoon quote:

"I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy... was in us."

BRILLIANT! AMAZING! OSCAR! OSCAR!

Full Metal Jacket quote:

"The Marine Corps does not want robots. The Marine Corps wants killers."

JOHN WAYNE CRAP! B-MOVIE BRAVADO!

One has to only recall the tyranny of all that Alan Alda, wimpy, "thoughtful" BS that came out back then to understand my lack of compassion for Ebert. It was suffocating and it led directly to the estrogen-soaked movies of 2013 America.

Despite the universal praise it received when it came out, I didn't see Platoon until years later yet all along I instinctively knew that it was not worth my time.

And when I finally got around to watching it the only thing that surprised me was that it was even worse than I thought it would be.

This really strikes a nerve.

The very ones who were presented to us in the pre-Internet age as "sensitive minds" pushing their "intelligent" films were the dumbest SOBs by far.

And the dumber they were, the more "enlightened" they became in the mainstream media machine of the day.

Poseurs, frauds and femmes.

They made a major contribution to the destruction of masculine film.

They will not be missed.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Noted in Passing

The "No smoking" sign on the UK Border banner in the second photo accompanying this article documenting the migrant invasion of the formerly Sceptered Isle is particularly hilarious.

Come and rape and pillage our country as you please, we will do nothing to stop you and will even pay you to do so, but we must insist that you extinguish your cigarettes as you enter.