Richard Nixon's China Anniversary


This weekend marks the 43rd anniversary of Richard Nixon traveling to the People's Republic of China. This was a truly great breakthrough and shows how good things can be done by anyone, regardless of how felonious or bigoted they might be. Ahh Mr. Nixon, you were not the best president and certainly not one of the most honest presidents, but golly, you were without doubt one of the most interesting.

POPE PAUL OR FREE WILLIE?

People are endlessly fascinated by the current Pope and more so by his recent remarks to the National Catholic Reporter namely that people need not reproduce "like rabbits". He maintained his opposition to the use of contraception but said that there are many "licit" ways of regulating birth. Still this goes too far for some, particularly William Donohue of the Catholic League, which incidentally has no official relationship with the Catholic church. Mr. Donohue is quite upset, and suggests the Pope  clear future press releases with him, so let's just see who's in charge...Pope Paul or "Free Willie"...cause he is certainly free with his opinions.

NRA update


The No Reason Allowed group has done it again and this time they've taken an even more cutting edge approach to get new membership. Now they're giving out free knives when someone joins up, that's good shoot 'em and then stab 'em. Kudos to Charlotte T. from Pennsylvania who suggests they give out gift certificates to funeral homes; hey a discount is a discount and a coupon is a coupon.

The top 1%


Surveys show that without a doubt by next year the top 1% of the world will have 50% of the wealth; two things then to keep in mind. 1. 60% of the conservative voters think they are in the top 1%. 2. They're at a loss to explain why there has been a great decline in their children's math scores.

Honoring MLK?

This is the actual speech from the women's coach the Tennessee basketball game right before they were to play Notre Dame on the evening of MLK day. "Today we are going to honor Martin Luther King, what are we going to do"? They answered: "Dominate!" The question is asked and answered again three times, each time louder. Then she concludes with the following  "Let's go fight!!" The Reverend King would have been so proud.

Another smart thing about the smart gun

The smart gun is a weapon that can ONLY be fired by a specific person (or persons) due to an imprinting process. So here's one more smart thing about the smart gun, if someone is murdered by one, its easy to identify the suspect. So why then is the NRA against smart guns? Because they are the NRA.

The awful complexity of murder

That was a horrible horrible awful thing what happened to those policemen in Brooklyn. And that's why say this issue has so many many many sides. I know I don't have the answers, it's taken me all this time just to compile a list of the questions.

Cruz outa control


Ted Cruz has "apologized" to Republicans for "ruining their weekend". Apparently Democrats are not people who have weekends as well, but  it turns out that Republicans are still not particularly happy with him. Apparently  their smooth agenda was not exactly on Cruz control (forgive us, sorta kinda) but to paraphrase/quote an ancient Hebrew parable: " if it weren't their fool, they could laugh too."

America the beautiful, America the ironic

It seems like it's always the draft dodgers, the guys who wanted to do everything in the Vietnam war except actually participate in it who are the "roughest and toughest ". Defending our policy of “enhanced interrogation" are Senator Saxby Chambliss and former Vice President Dick Cheney, who have multiple deferments between them. Against torture of any kind is volunteer war hero Senator John McCain, he who has never backed off from that stance one iota, as he knows firsthand just how that stuff "works out".  Mr. McCain’s kind of honor gives even more credence to the phrase “America the beautiful”. So then isn't it interesting that Israel, which the Republican right claims to so fervently admire has firmly and unequivocally forsworn torture of any kind no matter what the circumstance. Which is why folks like Chambliss and Cheney remind us we can be “America the Ironic”, if we let them speak for us, and I say this as a veteran and who is darned proud of it.

If I were emperor


No one who didn't vote in the midterm elections would be allowed to call sports talk shows.

Military philosophy

The Navy has stripped (and many feel rightfully so) Bill Cosby of his honorary rank of "petty officer." Well, not to be petty ourselves, but military assaults are up 8%, over 6000 this past year and at an all-time high and the victims have to go to their own commanders for redress even if that's the very person who committed the assault. So what then is the military's philosophy? We don't want honorary members sexually preying on our troops, we'll do it ourselves.

Up with a down presidency


They are saying, especially with the new Republican control of the Senate, that Mr. Obama has a diminished presidency and the numbers actually may prove it. Everywhere you look his numbers are down; unemployment was 7.8% when he took office, now that's down to 5.9%. The budget deficit percentagewise of the GDP was 9.8 and that deficit is down to 2.8. And the number of Americans WITHOUT healthcare is down by 10 million. Down down down...do we miss the brains and prosperity of the Bush administration yet?

The "ultimate" dating resume


How's this for an irresistible package? You're 80 years old, you've got a Nazi tattoo between your eyebrows, you're a confirmed psychotic, but it gets better. You're wondering how much better could get? Well you're a mass murderer and you're in prison for life and you're basically unrepentent, so what attractive 26-year-old wouldn't fall for you? Well the "bachelor" is none other than Charles Manson. The bride has got to make a heck of an interview but the upside of having a husband in prison with no chance of parole is that she knows where on the planet he is at all times. We just want to know what planet she's from.

NRA MEMO


The reason we need so many bad guys able to easily get guns is that we would have an excuse for "good guys" getting guns. And it sure does help the bottom line for the gun manufacturers, who in addition to owning their factories, are also the majority owners of the NRA.

A concession on suppression


In last week's midterm election, less than 37% of ELIGIBLE voters actually did so. That is the lowest level of participation since a very united and somewhat distracted America in 1942 had less than 35% participate. So I don't want to hear a word from Democrats, progressives etc who claim that Republican's suppress their vote...they do fine by themselves. And when we got a "decent" participation as in CT where more that 55% voted, we didn't have to put up with 4 years of "Foley's Follies".