I have a blog on my main website at https://buddybest.tripod.com/.   I type in essays which I can take responses.

I also write other things on my online diary, often simplifying from my written diary.

Sun 22 Feb

Ralph Nader continues to be in denial.  Yes, corporations and every other group are controlling Washington because money talks.  However, that does not mean to push an ego into a hopeless campaign.  Nader still denies that he helped Shrub steal the election in 2000.  If anything, Reagan, the god Pruneface, proved that 70 is too old to be president.  Howard Dean should have had a talk with the washed-up liberal.

If anything, Nader embodies just about everything I have against liberals.  He's entirely too green and just doesn't get it.  Most people simply don't care about politics, and they are unwilling to give money, so the coporations provide the means.  The path should be to work within the system, instead of playing the spoiler.

 

Nader just doesn't get it.  He claims that Al Gore should have had a recount in Florida.  If Gore had won New Hampshire, Florida wouldn't have provided the Shrub with an opportunity to thwart the will of the plurality.  In other words, New Hampshire would have given Gore the presidency. Furthermore, Gore could have concentrated on other states, rather than fighting to keep Nader from giving states like Wisconsin (and especially New Hamshire) to Shrub.

 

I have had quite enough from the likes of Ralph Nader and Henry Wallace (Remember the election of 1948?).  These bleeding hearts just irriate me.  We should have a death penalty and carry it out.  (I volunteer to be executioner of Pennsylvania.)  We have gone about as far as we can on the environment, gun control, and affirmative action.  What we should be doing is keeping the filthy rich from hijacking government, rather than running on a third-party platform of egomania.

A little late for Valentine's Day, Al Capone

 

My uncle, a real Archie Bunker, just place yet another letter to the editor in the Bucks County Courier Times.  I think it's time I place another one, too.  I haven't written anything since the giant mistakes of a column which discussed the death of Matthew Wayne Shepard. 

I submitted the following:

 

Suzanne Fields finally admits that she feels guilty about her sex life at least as much as Senator Rick Santorum.  She's come out (pun intended) for an asinine amendment to the Constitution (Can you say "Prohibition"?) to define marriage.  The Denial of Marriage Act was  QUITE enough of a sop to homosexophobia. 

 

First, she says that "the homosexual culture promotes ... promiscuity".  How does she know?  So, let's make marriage unavailable to homosexuals so they can be promiscuous!  Shrubbish!  Of course, heterosexuals may be promiscuous, because we've seen how marriage has held up anyway.

 

She says that it's states' rights, but only if she agrees with what the states choose.   Then she writes that she cannot trust the states will agree with her.  Fields ducks the fundamental question: What does anyone else's marriage, be it interracial or homosexual, have to do with everyone else's marriage?  She villainizes  judges who must  apply the "equal protection of the laws".

 

 Such bile only show that the psychology of homosexophobia demands that guilt project onto a minority.  Wasn't it 35 years ago that Negroes were promiscuous?  Be a Republican and take responsiblity for your own guilt!

Richard Cohen wrote a column entitiled, "Where you go to avoid battle", which rips off Shrub's evasion about his service in the National Guard.  I remember when the recruiter came to my high school in 1975, he specifically mentioned that the guard would NEVER go into a foreign country, unlike the Persian Gulf War some sixteen years later.  Shrub's evading the truth by making such a comparison, but Cohen really rips the Shrub by telling us what it was like in the National Guard, particularly that he still got paid even when he didn't show up.  Shrub, the rich boy, surely knew how to milk the system, and did it.  Only a Shrub-brain couldn't see through his lies.

What it really comes down to is that I don't care.  What irks me is that the military voted for this draft dodger over a Vietnam veteran in 2000, and the hypocricy which follows it.  Either it isn't an issue, or it is.  Was it an issue in 1988 with the brainless J Danforth Quayle?  Why then was it an issue in 1992?  Why did Vietnam vets have teshirts which complained that "Vietnam Vets are homeless while a Draft Dodger lives in the White House".  A draft dodger not only lives in the White House, but these same vets voted for him over their own!  Hypocricy can be quite an issue, particularly when we're dealing with the god Shrub, whose only criterion for the White House is that he's a son of a Bush who tried to buy the White House, failed, and still managed to finagle it. 

Nat Hentoff wrote a scathing article on Attorney General John Ashcroft after WIlliam Rehnquist denounced the Feeney Amendment for making it more difficulat to use discretion for sentencing.  Anthony Kennedy even called for repeal of federal mandatory minimum sentences.  Meanwhile Shrub keeps attacking the independence of the federal judiciary.  When FDR tried to interfere in 1937, he paid for it.  Why not Shrub?

Meanwhile, David Broder wrote: Required Reading: O'Neill's Account of the Shrubbish White House.

"The very outspokenness and independence which marked O'Neill's tenure at Treasury (and earlier as CEO of Alcoa) makes the publication important.  The failure of the deficits resulted largely from the intellectual passivity of the Shrub, combined with a policy process which discouraged the airing of competitive views and lacked the kind of rigorous analysis of probably consequences that such vital decisions demanded."

"I think of a meeting like that, with so much at stake.  It's like June bugs hopping around a lake."

CBS backed off on its documentary of the great god Pruneface, when it fictionalized his life even more than he did!  Obviously one should never try to write about the god while he's still alive -- which is forever because he is a god -- just ask Caligula!  Holy Ronald Reagan!  Worship the god of senility!

Can anyone believe the audacity of Barbara Bush to object to any criticism of her brainless wimp of a son, who's occupying the presidency?  Typical of the privileged, filthy rich, she doesn't think anyone should attack her son and his bastard presidency.  Hello?  Shrub's mommy is telling us that we should leave him alone, now that he is no longer a god.  Can you say "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen", Harry Truman?  "Frank(lin Delano Roosevelt), don't ask your mother if you can run for the state senate."

 

The rich continue to avoid taxes under the guise of "creating jobs" (like Dick Chaney, right before his firm collapsed and they had paid him a handsome sum).  Yes, there ARE worthy rich, who actually serve many people and deserve the riches they get.  Yes, there are ALSO the idle rich, who serve NO purpose, except to divide everyone else, and enrich themselves in idleness.

 

Now Shrub has called upon his mommy.  Get this wimp out of the White House and put a man in it! 

Will someone tell me where the sanity is of the telemarketers?  Here they're fighting for the right to interrupt those who don't want to be disturbed.  WHY?  Hello, we DON'T want to be disturbed, so how is irritating us going to get us to buy the product?

My number is both state and national on the DO NOT CALL list.  I WILL be rude should any telemarketers call, and I will place a LIFETIME ban on those products.  Their arrogance can only pale with Shrub's.

 

Sun 5 Oct

Rushshshshshsh Limbaughghghghghghgh just went down in arrogance tonight, as Donovan McNabb won a close game for the Eagles.  Of course, the Limbaugh never apologized, using the excuse that he "never intended to hurt anyone".  He really should take a page from the god Pruneface.  Ronald Reagan believed his lies. Wellllllllllll!   Sports fans simply don't want to hear harangues!

I admit that I bought the disc because it was available in both stereo and captions in both French and Spanish.  It turned out to be better than I'd expected.

As soon as I'd seen this movie came out, I compared Frankie Muniz to Michael J Fox in "Back to the Future".  There are some similarities.  Both are little guys at a height of 1.63m, have auburn hair, scattered freckles,  and intense blue eyes (almost azure).  In both movies, they arise and go to school on skateboards.  However, I was surprised to find out how much younger Muniz is, some seven years younger than Fox at the time of "Back to the Future".

The most incredulous part is that Cody Banks is supposed to be 15, which is too young to drive.  Then I realized today, it's for the ineluctible sequences, so Cody remains a teenager for a longer time.  I first watched it in Spanish, then French, then English.  Boy, my language skills are nowhere near what I want them to be -- I missed much in the foreign languages.

Part of it does seem ripped off from James Bond, especially the scene where they escape an explosition while in a helicopter (with Cody's hanging on the side of the vehicle).  Nonetheless, it does instill a spirit of adventure, despite the nagging realization that the CIA could never legally recruit kids without parental consent. 

An ironic coincidence: the servant of the villain has the name of François, which is the French version (and the name means Frenchman) of Frankie's given Italian name of Francesco Muniz IV. 

The disc has much other information about how they made the movie.  Obviously the actors had some fun times in the making.  I still stand by my comparision of Frankie Muniz with Michael J Fox.  In the trilogy of Back to the Future, we're now more than halfway to 2015, and its setting of Saturday, 26 October 1985 occurs before Frankie Muniz was born!

I can tell that Shrub's supporters are beginning to worry that their god may no long be so worshipped.  First, I read a dreadful attack on Wesley Clark when he moved into the race.  Today, I read another article denouncing the demise of Shrub.  The god is indeed falling off Olypus.  The funny ending emphasized  that the son of a Bush is still worshipped!

 

I've just read the speech Al Gore gave in New York at the convention of all the Democratic contenders, and I cannot fathom why he doesn't run himself.  Then he could select one of the nine for the Vice-Presidency, rather than endorse one for the Presidency.   

The Episcopalians approve their first openly gay bishop -- it's about time.  If the Catholic hierarchy did the same, then it'd have fewer problems over sexual abuse!  Somewhere Matthew Wayne Shepard is smiling, for it is his denomination that opened the door.  The problem too many bigots see is promiscuity.  What does that have to do with a bishop who has been in a monogamous relationship for thirteen years?  Even moreso, what does that say about a society which forced him to hide his orientation, which led to a wife and two children?  Wake up!  The behavior one SHOULD condemn is promiscuity, which is no monopoly for any orientation!

Jess Bradford plays Angus McCormick, the teen who befriends a stray golden retriever in a rural setting.  Soon after, they go with Angus's father on a business trip (It's a shipping company).  A storm comes up and shipwrecks them off the coast of Vancouver Island, some 300 km from home.  The father is rescued from the boat, but Angus and Yellow end up on shore with a rowboat of camping supplies.  After nine days, Angus goes inland for rescue, leading to the perilous adventure, which is intense enough for young children to rate this movie PG (Parental Guidance).  The only violence is Angus's confrontation of wild animals.  The only sex is heterosexual kissing. Otherwise, there's no other violence, sex, or dirty language.  It reminded me of some of the Lassie stories.  I shead more than a few tears!

Jesse Bradford passes easily as Celtic -- dark brown hair, rosy and light skin, and scattered freckles.  The scenery is absolutely beautiful.  It is fall in British Columbia.  The plot moves rapidly, suggesting limited funds in production.  I personally remember back in fall 1967, when I had my first dog in rural northwestern New Jersey.  Angus also has a newspaper route, which I had as a teenager in Mountaintop, a rural area outside of Wilkes-Barre (PA).  The writer of the story does seem confused about Angus's age.  In one scene, he's learning to drive a truck.  In another, he's playing with much younger kids.  Perhaps he's supposed to be in early adolescence, a confused time for all of us.  I figure 15, which Jesse Bradford Watrouse was at the time.  He's developed into a handsome man, and the female websites I've encounted only prove it.

 

Words to learn: The business trip encountered a naufragous storm -- one which caused a shipwreck.  Angus was forced to be a nemophilist -- a lover of forests.

 

Now, what does this film have to do with anything?  Like other thoughts of the purpose to life, which includes my heroes on a separate site, I began looking at my own miserable life.  What is my purpose?  I'm halfway through, and I still don't know.  What would I have to do to become independently wealthy, move to a rural area, and enjoy nature, including my own golden retriver?  The struggle continues on other sites!

Bob Hope is yet another example of doing what one loves and the money will follow.  He gave, and it returned with interest.  The above cartoon is (C) Steve Nease of Oakville ON.

"Pissed at your neighbor?  Don't bother to nag,

Pick up a phone.  Turn in a fag."

Jello Biafra of the "Dead Kennedys"

"Moral Majority" from "In God We Trust Inc" (1981)

Lawrence vs TX predicted!

 

Pat Robertson shot off his mouth this week with a ridiculous appeal to God about the Supreme Court.  Laughingly, he called on God to retire "liberal" justices.  Given that there have been NO liberals on the Court since 1991, when Uncle Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall (and took the seat in affirmative action).  (We've had no liberal presidents since Lyndon Johnson, despite what the fascists say.)  Robertson is merely showing off.  Given also that six out of ten agree with the ruling on Lawrence vs TX, he lied when he said the American people prefer fascist justices.  I suppose his definition of "liberal" is anyone who does NOT masturbate with a flag and a Bible.  It's time to retire, Pat.  There aren't that many people whom you still fool!

 

Robertson also spoke of John Paul, "He should retire at 83!"  Neither Pope John Paul nor Justice John Paul Stevens should heed it!

The right of assembly means that government may NOT dictate with whom one wishes to associate.  Therein lies one kind of right of privacy.  The other comes from the 4th core, another right of privacy.  Government MUST have an interest to override one's privacy in "houses, persons, papers, and personal effects".  Ironically, most Americans believe they HAVE a right to privacy.

 

Then it's easy to run through the cases like Roe vs Wade to assert that this case merits "strict scrutiny", which means the state MUST prove an interest in prohibiting consentual acts in privacy.  The 1st provides the right of assembly between two persons and the 4th the right of privacy in one's own bedroom.  Bowers vs Hardwick (1986) actually had two distinctions.  One was that Hardwick was NOT prosecuted; therefore, Lewis Powell thought he didn't have standing..  The other was that the law in Georgia (since repealed) applied to any kind of sodomy.

 

I've gone over the opinons and the dissents of both cases over the past week, and I cannot see how Kennedy could have overruled Bowers any other way.  First, the Court applied the right of privacy, which shifted the burden upon the state to prove an interest in the law.  Then the rest of the argument becomes easy, for the state has no interest in what consenting adults do in the privacy of a bedroom.  States DO have the right to prohibit such conduct with minors or animals (who CANNOT consent) or rape, incest, adultery, prostitution, etc, because it causes HARM to society.

Indubtedably, Kennedy must have known that Powell soon recanted and admitted he'd made a mistake by voting for the law.  Otherwise, Bowers would have eliminated this case.  Kennedy had the problem of how to overrule  Bowers through the right of privacy, when Bowers specifically denied that right.

Sandra Day O Connor had a worse problem.  She'd been in the majority in Bowers.  She found this case was under equal protection of the laws, because the law in Georgia in Bowers applied to everyone -- the law in Texas applied only to homosexuals.  Chief Justice Warren Burger had muddied the waters by declaring that there was "no right of privacy for homosexual sodomy".

 

My guess is that Kennedy went further so that states cannot write laws against sodomy in general.and enforce them only against homosexuals.  I doubt if the majority wants to hear about any more laws on consentual sex in privacy.  Apparently, the Court is following public opinion, for six in ten think that it IS a right of privacy.  About one third does not.  More surprising is the polls show about half accept gay marriages, which might explain why Bill Frist went off the deep end in endorsing the silly amendment to the constitution to define marriage as exclusively heterosexual.  Where will two thirds of each house and three fourths of the states come from to vote for this nonsense?  I don't need another reason to vote straight Democratic.

 

Update on Sun 13 Jul:

Charles Krauthammer and another spend their venom on Sandra Day O Connor over this case and the ones on affirmative action.  I get a kick out of their view that the majority, acting through the legislatures, can decided these issues.  Well, the majority polled agreed with all three decisions!

"Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole.  It can, however, determine who pays for the lunch.  Last week, the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.

Warren Buffet doesn't even mention taxes outside of the federal income tax.  The states have very regressive taxes on income and sales, and Shrub is dumping federal programs on them.  Guess who will pay much more?

Overall, I have no objection to unearned income, but the entire rhetoric should be seen as a whole.  Shrub is pushing the country to the right, the stupid hicks helped put his supporters in Congress in the last election, and now Shrub is screwing the nonrich more than the god Pruneface ever dreamed in the 1980's.  I suppose this trickle down will appear like the nonexistant weapons of mass distruction in Iraq.

(7-9 min)

 

Aron Ralston was very experienced in extreme outdoors.  It was not unusual that he chose to canyoneer solo on a Saturday afternoon. As he tried to drop into a slot, a chockstone came loose and rolled toward him.  He saw it in time to pull his left arm away, but the boulder crushed his right forearm against another stone, and worse, lodged there.

Aron first felt a surge of adrenaline with the pain and tried to pull his forearm out.  Failing this, he panicked  He felt it down into his bones.

"I'm trapped!  How can I get out of here?"

The wave of panic passed, and Aron became rational.  Trained as a mechanical engineer, he began to assess how to escape.

Someone could come by and see him, but few people pass through Bluejean Canyon..  He couldn't call for help on a cellphone, for there was no reception in Canyon Country.

He had options to free his forearm.  He took a dull knife to the boulder and began to scrape it in hopes of allowing him to pull his forearm out.

He rigged his mountaineering equipment to pull the chockstone up.  He was able to sit in a sling, taking the weight off his legs, but the boulder was five times his weight, and it wouldn't budge.

So he worked with these two possibilities, rested, tried again, and rested, which went on for three days.  He slept on and off while enduring pain.  Soon he was in a bleary state all the time.

He feared he was trapped forever.  Thoughts of death haunted him.  He scratched his name on a stone, difficult because he used his left hand.

He worried a torrent would flush his body, and no one would know what had happened to him.  He wrote sinistrally notes where to scatter his ashes.

Guilt and regret tortured him.  Of all times, Aron had violated a rule.  After he had been caught in an avalanche in February, the Denver Post noted that "Aron Ralston never climbs alone without telling someone where he's going and when he's due back."

Well, Friday night he was anxious to finish his three-day hike, so he neglected to tell anyone he'd gone to south central Utah. 

Thoughts of the worry he'd caused his family and friends flooded Aron's mind as he continued to try to escape the pin.  Why, they wouldn't even know he was missing until Tuesday, when he didn't show up for work in Aspen.

By Tuesday morning, Aron's predicament has worsened.  Despite rationing, his food and water had run out.  He began to consider another tactic -- to cut off his forearm to free himself.  He took the dull pocketknife to his wrist -- and couldn't even cut the hair!  Nonetheless he began to make tourniquets and prayed for an answer.  He figured he'd lose the forearm, but how to cut through the bones?

He thought of all he had done -- and what he wanted to do.  Of the 59 mountains higher than 14,000 ft in Colorado, he had climbed 45 of them solo in winter.  He wanted to finish the remained over the next two winters.

He remembered his triumph at Mount McKinley in June 2002.  He became ill and left his fellow climbers for three days.  Then he climbed after them and met them at the summit.  He wanted to climb the highest peak in North America solo in 18 hours the following June to break the record.

By Thursday morning, he realized his time has run out.  As John told us previously, Aron pushed beyond the limits.  "I felt the pain and moved on," he said when a wonderful feeling flowed over him.  He knew how to break the bones in his forearm so he could then cut off the limb.  It took an hour, but then Aron was free and cheated death! 

He had fought nature to a draw.  He was free to pursue life again.  He'd faced death and won!

 

Nathaniel Frank cut to the chase with the simple question of the debate.  Why does Santorum equate harmless homosexual sex with harmful acts of adultery, bigamy, polygamy, and incest?  Later I learned that Santorum thinks that John F Kennedy should have pushed his religion in 1960.  Well, then Protestants would think that all Catholics are religious bigots who march lockstep with the Pope, and reproduce like rabbits -- like Santorum!

 

I was very tempted to propose that heterosexual sex is so harmful in overpopulating the earth that government should limit couples to two children.  OOPS! then Santorum has four too many!  Santorum also attack Griswold vs CT (1965) as setting the right of privacy.  Well, that case struck down a ridiculous ban on contraceptions, and the Senator certainly could use some!

 

Then the former Secretary of the Moron Majority, Cal Thomas, spews logical fallacies in supporting Santorum.  He used the Domino Theory of Morality.  Hello? That is a logical fallacy known as the slippery slope argument.  Then he wrote the usual, "Some of my best friends are gays in a stable relationship..." precisely, so what interest has the state in their bedrooms?  That is the fallacy of inconsistency, or writing contradictory statements.  Cal Thomas and his holier-than-thou onanism is just sick.  I once fell into that groove when I was a staunch Catholic.  Now I know better.  What's Cal Thomas's excuse?

Shrub's War is going about the way we've expected, but the filthy rich and bastard president is also going about the way I've expected!  Ted Hall just ripped Shrub off the way I would have: exposing his bastard presidency and possibly illegal presidency, along with his lack of intellect and the mere fact that Iraqis will not welcome an invader, any more than Americans would!

 

Translation: Some citizens of the Joux (Play) Valley (West Switzerland) traced in giant letters "Bush, No war!" on the Joux Lake, which is currently frozen.  The inscription is written in pink letters, 12 meters high and 200 meters across.  The lake is near the French border.