How's Obama Doin'

I think Barry O wants a second term. He's governed in a very centrist manner. Maybe even center right.  He has never allowed himself to be baited by all of the racist slurs against him by the wingnuts, into an angry response. All things considered, he's still pretty popular. I don't think a second term is going to be a big problem.

A lot of people think that his plan for universal medical care is far left. The truth is that it's pretty right wing. No Republican Congress, no matter the majority, will ever repeal it.

A lot of people think that his choices for the Supreme court were too liberal. The truth is that both the girls are centrist compared to the far right justices, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito that recent Republican Presidents have put on the court.

If it had been me, I would have made the health care system far more socialist and allocated a lot of money for expanding medical school graduates in America and decreased the amount of money doctors could expect to make. As far as the Supreme Court goes, there's no question in my mind that the first two justices I would have nominated would have been Anita Fuckin' Hill and Henry Waxman. I'd have the FBI working day and night digging up dirt on the Republican justices to force them off the court and I believe that there would have been plenty of it. I guess that's why he's President and I'm not, among a lot of other reasons.

Be A Good Boy And Eat Your Grease

Doctors are so fucked.

News out today that full fat dairy products contain fatty acids that protect against type 2 diabetes. Seems like just yesterday that we were being warned against consumption of butter, cream, cheese and whole milk. Turns out they are good for you.

My theory is that it's alright to eat absolutely anything, as long as you don't stuff yourself with it, that humans have been eating large amounts of for at least the last several hundred years.

Chow down on fats from meat, dairy, cold pressed oils.

I stay away from modern, small molecule vegetable oils refined or stabilized with chemical reagents and homogenized dairy products.

I'm a big fan of porky goodness. The perfect meal may turn out to be pinto beans, served with boiled collards, side meat and hoe cakes, all cooked with lard. I'm sure the American Heart Association will soon be recommending porcine lipid supplements in little gel caps. What a bunch of stupid shits.

Sedentary lifestyles are the main cause of deteriorating physical health. We don't have the correct motivation for vigorous physical activity. I suggest we all need to spend a lot more time in the aerobic pursuit of and then having sex with, a large variety of age appropriate and fully consenting, sexual partners. It sounds like fun to me. I'd spend a few hours a day at it. Then we could all kick back over a nice greasy meal and a couple of cups of strong distilled spirits. What Larks, Pip!

Shining Path

The key to American politics is that somewhere around 40% of the voting population are not too bright and not too educated. They have a pretty basic view of the World around them, that isn't necessarily reality based. Their political leaders are people like Sarah Palin, Rick Perry and the Dicks Armey and Cheney. They really like watching "Dancing With The Stars". It could be worse. In a lot of places it's 80 or 90% of the population that are ignorant dimwits. Actual reality based societies are limited to relatively few countries where the majority strongly value education and rational thought. I'm not that well traveled and could easily be wrong. There may not be any reality based societies. America may be about as good as it gets.

The forces of reactionary politics in America only need to come up with a little more than 10% of voters who are willing to humor the dimwitted 40% along and they can control the country. It's not that hard and may not be for quite a long time.

It would be nice to think that America is a country that is at least on a path to becoming a country of reality based, rational thought. I don't think it's true. If anything, people here are getting stupider all the time. Current demographics of immigration are not helping the situation. Bummer, Dude.

An Influential Generation, So Far Silent

The most recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going on now for almost a decade, unabated. They will probably go on for several more years. These wars surely will have profound effects on the countries where they are fought and the people who live there. They will have profound effects on the American military, in both it's formal and informal culture. I think most people realize that.

Maybe what most Americans don't realize are the effects that these wars will have on American civilian culture. Many of our young men and women in military service, have been fighting these wars, in foreign countries. Many of them for several years, in cumulative time. This is the kind of military service that hasn't been required in this country since the 1920s and 30s. Eventually, these wars will end. The veterans, as has happened in all previous wars, will be pushed out of military service and return to America. There are a lot of them and they have experienced life as few of their countrymen and women have. They are going to have different perspectives on a lot of things than the rest of the country.

They are going to be people worth knowing, worth listening to. They are going to be people who feel they have earned a right to participate in the national dialogue. If you believe that they are going to line up in any kind of liberal vs conservative or religious vs secular manner, I think you are mistaken.

I have no idea what they are going to be like or how their voices will shape the future of America but I think we will be hearing from them in the decades to come. I'm interested to see what they do. I'm interested to hear what they have to say.

I never thought I'd get married

When I was growing up, a lot of my friends had parents that were divorced. I think I was in the first generation that this was true of. I had teachers in school who were divorced. A lot of my friends that married early got divorced within a short time afterwards.

I was impressed early as to how total the devastation on a life could be, made so by the effects of divorce.

When I got married, not getting divorced in the future was a major consideration for me. It affected who I picked to marry. It affected how my wife and I crafted our relationship. During the inevitable terrible times that all marriages go through, divorce was never high on the list of options for either of us and we got through those times on that basis. Sometimes not much else.

My wife and I are heading into the end stage of our lives and we're still married. That may be a good thing or bad, depending on what perspective you're viewing it from but staying married was a high priority for both of us. From that perspective, at least, it has been a success. I'm pretty happy both with my life and with the fact that we're still married. I think my wife is too but you'd really have to ask her. If you want to stay married, you have to allow your partner some space and her own opinions.

There's no trick to staying married, you just really have to want to. I don't think staying married is always the right thing to do but just from my observation, it usually is. Not all that many people who stay married are totally satisfied but a lot of people who get divorced, a lot, spend the rest of their lives totally fucked up. At the very least, this involves living in crappy places, working long hours at crappy jobs and fucking people infected with chronic outbreaks of Herpes Simplex II or worse.

I gotta admit, I've known several people who have slid out of several marriages without a scratch. Some actually come out in better shape than they were before. There aren't that many though and I'm pretty sure I would not be one of them, if I tried. Maybe I'm just a coward but I don't think so. Life's a war no matter how you choose to live it. I've lost more battles than I've won and have my share of scars and amputations.

If I had it to do all over again, there are things I would definitely do different. There were a lot of times I was a total dickhead and some of those times went on for years. I think I could probably live my life a lot better If I had the chance to do it over. I think I'd still stay married though.

Pat

When I was in my late twenties, I was working at a large commercial lumberyard down here by the beach. It's not there any more but it was only a few blocks from where I live now. The beach is a good place to have a lumberyard. The humidity and mild climate lets you store the lumber for a long time without warping and the salt in the air keeps fungus from getting into it too bad. Part of the way the guy that owned the yard made money, was to buy when the price went down and demand was low and hold the lumber to sell when demand and thus the price, went back up. Lumber is a cyclical commodity. The ability to store lumber cheaply for long periods of time gave him the ability to leverage the fluctuating market, usually to his advantage.

The hardest job at the yard was load builder and also the lowest paying. That's where I started. The guy that trained me was named Pat. Pat was maybe 7-8 years older than me. Made him 36-37 years old at that time. He was a good load builder. He had been doing it at various lumber yards since high school. A pretty long time. His job was secure because if you wanted a load builder, they didn't come much better than him. On the other hand, he wasn't the kind of guy that was ever going to get a promotion and load building was the hardest job in the yard.

You never want to have any more staff at a lumber yard than you absolutely have to and there would be frequent layoffs when things slowed down a little. Sometimes the reason was seasonal sometimes because the housing market contracted. Even though it was a union job, the layoffs were never by seniority. They laid off the guys who had personal problems, didn't get along, missed a lot of days or couldn't maintain production.

So, Pat was getting up towards 40. He had been married when he was younger. It didn't last too long. His wife had a methamphetamine hunger. That's never too good for a marriage. It became especially bad when his wife got pregnant and had a little girl. She really couldn't manage raising a child.

They got divorced. The wife got custody of the baby, even though she was an unregenerate speed freak. That's just the way the law was and is. Since she was expected to raise the child, the court awarded her $800 a month. Pat would be paying that amount until the girl turned 18. When I met Pat the little girl was 7 years old.

There was always a lot of overtime. We normally worked 54 hours over six days. When it got busy we'd go to 60. It didn't matter how many hours you worked though, you could never break much above $300 dollars a week take home and you always needed to save a little in reserve. We never worked when it was raining at all. A day here and there and at least a few storm fronts every year that might stretch to a week or more. Things could get tight. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't bad money in the late 70s, if you were single and lived cheap. I did. Pat wasn't exactly in that kind of situation though.

He had to pay his wife $200 a week, right off the top. She had got the court to have it taken out of his pay and sent straight to her. She wasn't really raising the child though, her parents were and they got nothing. The money was just a head start on her monthly drug expenses.

Pat lived with his own retired parents, in a screened patio they had on the back of their house. He drove an old car of his father's, still in his parent's name because the insurance was cheaper that way. He had to pay for gas and keep it running. He gave his mom what he could afford for expenses. His parents fed him and kept him in cheap work clothes from Kmart. His father bought him a couple cartons of cigarettes and a twelve pack of beer every Friday. He got to see his daughter Sunday afternoons. Any money he had extra went to taking her out and buying her all the things a little girl needs, otherwise she wouldn't have anything.

The really sad thing about Pat was that he had no way out. His little girl was only 8. He was going to be paying his ex wife and living in that screen porch for another ten years. By that time he would be close to 50. If you're working 54 hours a week as a load builder in a lumberyard, that's really old. Things change, of course. Most of the lumberyards around here shut down long ago. The land got too expensive to keep using for that. Most of the home building moved way inland, even out into the desert. Then Las Vegas became the main market and that was mostly direct shipping. It was cheaper for the builders to do that and hire guys to break it down on site. Even that's all gone now. Nobody's built much of anything for years.

If Pat's alive now, he's close to 70. At least he has Social Security and Medicare. Maybe he found a kind woman with a little income of her own. I hope so.

I remember Pat's one big claim to fame was that he'd gone to high school with Gary Gilmore in Buena Park. I guess every thing's relative. He probably did better than Gary, all things considered.

Nice Digs. For Sale Cheap.

Have you ever seen Sheryl Crow's house in Nashville? Go here. Cruise around the site. Look at the pictures. Watch the videos. Nice place. It comes with 150 acres of pretty nice pasture land, big swimming pool, tennis court, home theater, recording studio, a garage for a lot of cars, stables for a lot of horses, indoor riding arena. Probably close to some nice bike paths too! If there aren't enough bedrooms and bathrooms in the mansion for you, there's a guest house with even more. Plus, there's undoubtedly places for all the "little people" to stay too. In my opinion, it beats the hell out of the jungle room in Memphis.

She bought it six years ago. It doesn't look like it's too much older. She tried to sell it for 7.5 million dollars. Didn't work, so now she's auctioning it off. It might go for as low as a million dollars. There's a reserve price though, like on Ebay. I bet nobody get's it. Speaking of Ebay, maybe Meg Whitman would be interested. She's not doing anything and I bet she'd like to move.

If Nashville, Tennessee is the place for you, hurry and get your bid in. Also, it's probably the only chance anybody will ever get again to fuck Sheryl Crow and enjoy it.

Thanksgiving Traditions. Muslims Can Enjoy It Too!

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day to be the last Thursday in November of 1863. He did it to buck up the nation and remind them, though not overtly, that the Civil War was coming to an end, successfully, for the Union. He also did it to help kick off his re election campaign, one that a lot of people doubted he could win, to a term in office he would not be able to fulfill. The Civil War was not a popular war and never less so than at the end of 1863.

Later, the Jewish merchant class took up the Thanksgiving holiday as a celebration they could support without blatant hypocrisy and use as a kick off for merchandising during the following Christian holiday season.

The whole tradition of commemorating the Pilgrims first harvest in an new land by inviting the local indigenous people to a big feast, has never been really documented and is likely a big pile of shit.

Enjoy yourself anyway. It's as good a holiday as any other. Probably better. Even church goers, while they work it into the program, like they do with every other God Damned thing there is, tend to keep the Sky Faerie stuff to a minimum on Thanksgiving.

Eat yourself sick. Get good and drunk. Watch football. Call your brother's wife a whore. Make fun of your sister's husband for being a sissyboy and inadequate provider. Then, stomp out mad or if it's your house, kick everybody else out, continue drinking until it's time to terrorize the children and beat the wife. It's traditional.

Is Good Enough, Good Enough? Laid Back at Staples.

I like the Lakers this year. They have a lot of good players. Nobody is the super star. Different guys have good days every game. Everybody seems to get along. There don't seem to be a lot of personal issues. Everybody is playing like they'd rather see the team score points than themselves. I like that they play clean.

It's a long season. It's just starting. Anything can happen down the road. Probably will.

If they keep playing like this and don't have too many injuries, they have a good chance to get to the Championship series. That would be great.

Phil Jackson is a good coach. I think he probably has a lot to do with it.

The Lakers spend a lot of money to get the players that they have and keep them happy. That doesn't always work but it seems to be, this season.

Chop, Gut and Pluck

If I was the President, I would kill a turkey on the South Lawn, gut it, pluck it and have the Chef roast it up for Thanksgiving Dinner. Michelle and the little girls could help.

That's what the turkey was raised for. What good is it otherwise?

Do You Mind Being Groped?

Do you mind the TSA security procedures at airport boarding gates? In principle, I'm opposed but I can't honestly say they bother me. Unless it's really crowded, it doesn't take that long. I don't mind being groped. I can see where some people might but I'm just not that kind. The worst part is taking off my shoes. There used to not be any good way for age challenged individuals like myself to get them back on afterward. I had to awkwardly do it leaning against a wall so that I didn't fall over or just sit down on the floor and do it then lunge ungracefully back on my feet. Now they have chairs and benches at the other end where older travelers can re shoe with a little dignity. So I'm OK with it.

I don't think it does much good though. My carry on stuff is always full of contraband. Either they don't see it or they just don't care. Either way, I'm sure a determined terrorist could raise a ruckus if they wanted to on any flight, anywhere.

I don't think they really want to. If they really did, there would have been some planes blown up. The Department of Homeland Security is a big waste of money, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanksgiving

It was Thanksgiving Day. I was probably 12. My Mom was going to cook a dinner. I'm sure some people were going to come over later.

I put on my Billy the Kid jeans, a wool sweater over a T shirt and an old oversize cotton flannel shirt that used to be my Father's over that, it was cold out, a pair of US Keds, said I was going for a walk and was out the door.

I walked West out of my tract to Gilbert. There I picked up the Red Car track line that jogged a little to the North all the way to Highway 39, up around to Cerritos, where the Red Palm, Gypsy Fortune teller house was. I knew a guy that swore there were whores in there. I was sure he was right but never knew for sure. I was too shy for whores and later on, too cheap. Then North From there. At Hobby City, up around Lincoln, I started to wonder how much farther I should go. I wasn't tired. I've always been a walker. When I got to Knott's Berry Farm, it seemed far enough. He had built this replica of Independence Hall on the East side of his property, with a big lawn and pond. I sat on a bench there and watched the ducks for a little while. Then I walked home. I'm not sure how far that is. More than twelve miles for sure, not close to twenty.

By the time I got home dinner was over. Whoever had come for it was gone. Nobody said anything. I took a nap. Later I had left overs and then went back to my room and read.

What Will Republicans Do?

It will be interesting to see how Republicans interpret their mandate next year.

If they are serious about cutting the deficit, thy will have to tackle middle class entitlements. Property taxes for all homeowners will have to be reflective of services received. Programs like Prop 13 in California, which allow long time homeowners to pay far less tax than recent purchasers will need to be eliminated. Fees paid by those who use a disproportionate amount of government provided services, infrastructure and resources must reflect the actual value of what they receive. Home mortgage interest deductions on income tax will also need to be eliminated. Public sector pay, benefits and pensions will need to be drastically reduced. Medicare and Social Security benefits must be controlled and curtailed. War and military spending must be cut. Monetary policy must be tightened. Corporate and agricultural welfare programs must be abolished. Interest rates must be raised, bailouts for entities public and private that go belly up must be stopped and what money has already been given out must be recovered quickly.

Simply repealing Obama care, abolishing social services, educational subsidies and entitlements to the poor will not make a dent in the budget deficit. Most of the money that the government pays out goes to people who genuinely believe that they have earned and are entitled to every cent of it. I bet some of that money goes to you. I get some. We all do.

Another legislative emphasis that the Republicans have to address are on social issues. Fully 35% of the American public expects them to move to outlaw abortion, stamp out homosexual civil rights, make a secure place for the observance of religious moral law in secular life and amend the Constitution to deny citizenship to native born children of non citizens, not to mention getting rid of the aliens themselves.

If they address and act on all of these things, they will satisfy their base. Things won't be that bad. Probably no worse than they were in the immediate post war period of the late 40s and early 50s and maybe considerably better. We already have a lot of the infrastructure we need. A lot of housing is already built, it just needs to be utilized differently. Eight people could easily and comfortably live in my house. The power and utilities won't go away, people will just have to use less. The internet and satellite TV are everywhere and a lot of people will make them a big priority, I bet. We aren't going to go back to a segregated society overnight and homosexuals aren't going to be driven back into the closet. America isn't going to become a theocracy, nobody goes to church or really gives a shit about God. I don't, do you?

If our money inflates enough and personal income decreases, imports will decline, exports will increase, employment will rise and America will be on its way back from the brink.

I don't personally think much and maybe not even any of this will happen. The American people are spoiled and the politicians elected by them will continue to give them whatever they want. Deficits will remain high. Productivity will remain low. All the middle class entitlements will remain in place. Eventually, the rest of the World will foreclose on America's debts and we will default. There will be a complete fiscal, monetary and governmental meltdown. It's not the end of the World. History is littered with episodes like this. Iceland is broke, cold and isolated in the middle of the North Atlantic. They don't have a damn thing anybody else needs and aren't likely to anytime soon. I haven't heard that they're eating each other there yet or even the dogs. It happened in France and Italy about every six months for generations. They seemed to like it. It happened to Germany after Word War I. Five years later, the Third Reich was in place and everybody was happy. Well, almost everybody.

Me, I don't really care how it goes. I'm eager to find out though. Bring it on.

Controling the Message

We've been at war in Afghanistan for a decade because of the 9/11 attacks on America. The number of people in Afghanistan who have even heard of the 9/11 attacks is statistically insignificant. The few people in Afghanistan who have heard of the 9/11 attacks unanimously believe it was carried out by Jews. Nobody there, including President Karzai have any idea why we have invaded them. They have no idea why anybody has ever invaded them even though invasions have been frequent. They can't read. They aren't religious.

Bristol Palin claims she is a struggling teen, single mom, just trying to make a place for herself and little Tripp in a cold, cruel, World. She's is, in fact, a young woman from a wealthy family, a millionaire in her own right, with the kind of income stream that most highly skilled professionals never reach. She can't read. She isn't religious.

If you go to the Five Guys a block from my house and order a Little Hamburger, small fries and small Coke, it'll run you ten bucks and have 1500 calories, virtually all of it from fat, starch and simple sugars. The people that go there can't read. They aren't religious.

Buy'em Up, Sucker

General Motors has recently closed a couple more of their automotive divisions. There are several derelict former GM dealership lots currently languishing around my town. Some of them used to sell cars that now aren't made anymore, some they still make but I guess not as many want to buy as used to. I actually know one guy who owns a Buick. It's not that big of a car but manages to convey an unmistakable impression of heaviness. If you don't look too close, a lot of the plastic looks like chrome.

GM says it has a plan in place to make them profitable again. If you believe that's true, they are floating a big new stock offering and maybe you should get in on it.

How fucking stupid are you? That's the big question here, not whether or not they're ever going to turn another legitimate profit.

New Years '66-'67

I had just turned 15. School was out for a couple of weeks. I wasn't working that night. I had asked around about New Years Eve parties and had vague addresses of four written down on a scrap of paper.

There was no way my old man was going to let me drive anywhere but nobody cared if I walked out and about on a Winter night and I had no curfew. Off I went.

I walked miles and miles that night. I only ever found two parties. The first one was for smart kids. It was parent supervised. Chips and dips and soda pop. No music. I wasn't in the same league as the kids at this party but they were pretty friendly. They were impressed that I was there on my own, that nobody had dropped me off or would be picking me up later. I had a long talk with a Jewish girl named Gail Foltz. I had known her for years in school but we had never been friendly. I could see she was trying to see what made me tick. She seemed disappointed that I didn't have any special interests, had not considered where I was going to go to college or thought about what I wanted to do with my life. She never asked me about what I liked to read. I wonder if she even considered reading a fun thing. She was a clean and plumply pretty girl. Probably had about thirty pounds on me. We were clearly not turning each other on. I wasn't sure exactly what that meant at that point in my life but was very sure it wasn't happening. To be honest though, Gail was a lot friendlier to me after that night, at least until the end of our Senior year. At that time, yearbooks had come out. I wasn't letting anybody sign mine and was writing the exact same inoffensive blurb in anybody else's that asked me. The reason was that a lot of people had written a lot of druggy stuff in my Junior yearbook, my parents had read it, became concerned, searched my room, found a couple ounces of marijuana and made my life Hell on a continuing basis. I explained this to Gail and she felt that she should be an exception. I explained that I wasn't making any exceptions. She never talked to me again. She blew an artery in her beautiful brain a few years later and died. I always felt bad about that. Anyway, after an hour or so at the smart kid party I walked on and on and on.

I finally found another party. It wasn't that far from the first but I had wandered wide. It was later, maybe 9:30 or 10. This was more like the kind of party typified in the movie Dazed and Confused, decades later. No parents around, mostly it was taking place in the garage and backyard of the house. There were quite a few people there, you couldn't miss it. I went in, I figured they might kick me out but probably wouldn't beat me up, what the hell.

There were some girls my age there but not many and no boys, they were all Juniors, mostly Seniors. I wandered around, nobody talked to me. I got a few hard looks but mostly they were only disconcerted, like what was I doing there. Surprisingly, one guy talked to me, was even kind of friendly. I think he was just amazed I had the balls to come in and was trying to figure out if I was brave or just stupid. The kid's name was Randy. Everybody knew him. He was my high school's current legendary athlete. Lettered in virtually every sport and won a lot of games seemingly single handed. Little guy though, not much bigger than I was at the time although he seemed a lot bigger and older to me. He had no idea who I was and had to ask my name. I was flattered that he bothered to ask. He moved on pretty quick.

After I had wandered around a little more, watching the antics and grab ass going on, I figured I better leave before anybody started to take offense at my continued presence. I had sidled over to where Randy and some of his Senior buddies were huddled. I could hear them talking. They needed more beer. I was kind of surprised. There were always ways to get alcohol. I went closer and told them I could get all the beer they wanted. They didn't believe me at first. I insisted I could. Money was collected. The order was for six packs of tall cans, all it would buy. I could see there were still a lot of doubters. There was quite a bit of money collected. It would be a very conspicuous purchase for a 100 pound, 15 year old boy to make, late at night, on New Years Eve.

Randy and a bunch of his friends piled me into a car and off we went. They all wanted to see. It was only a couple of blocks, would have been easy walking distance. A little storefront market called The Big Boy. It was right next to the Taco Bell where I worked. It was run by an old Doughboy. He was always there. Now that I think about it, he probably even owned it. I never asked. He never said. We were buddies and when you were buddies with a Doughboy, it meant something. I always brought him a bag of tacos, bell burgers and a burrito, on break, whenever I was working. Always for free, it didn't cost me anything. We'd smoke and joke. I loved the Doughboys. I wish they were still alive. There were never any better men.



Randy and his friends stayed in the car. I got out, went next door to the laundromat and got a wheeled cart and took it into The Big Boy, filled it up with beer, paid my friend and filled up the trunk of the car. Blew the Senior boys away.

We got back to the party with the beer, really breathed new life into it. It didn't make me suddenly popular or anything but I didn't get anymore hard looks. I even had a couple of the beers I had bought for them and nobody minded. I hung around until nearly midnight. It was fun to watch.

Randy was always OK to me after that. We weren't friends or anything but he knew who I was. Things like that make a difference in high school.

Randy ended up at Stanford. The New England Patriots picked him up, even though he was way too small to play in the NFL, because they drafted Jim Plunkett and Randy was his favorite receiver. He played for them several years, even after Plunkett moved on. I wonder if he would remember me now. I bet he would.

Therapy

I have a question for all of you. According to pollsters, those that like Dancing with the Stars are usually conservative and those that like Madmen are usually liberal.

What kind of people do you think like the new TV drama version of Hawaii-50?

My sister likes Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals. What do you think that means?

For several years I had a compulsion to watch the wristwatch sales on the Home Shopping Network late at night and then I switched to ShopNBC. I never was tempted to purchase a wristwatch, I just liked the show. I was able to overcome this compulsion by watching several episodes of Esteban's Flamenco Guitar show.

I think maybe I could set myself up as a therapist by talking with people about what they watch and then recommending other things for them to watch instead, that would balance out their personalities. If somebody was watching a lot of Oprah and Soap operas, I could recommend that they supplement it with some Bob Ross' Joy of Painting and Lucha Libre.

I think maybe I could really help some people out. Turn their lives around in a positive direction.

Are you a dying breed?

The kind of nationalistic, faux flag waving and patriotic, fundamentalist Christian political movements that dominated much of 20th century domestic politics in America are, I believe, dying out.

Indications are that most young people, whether they are liberal or conservative, secular or religious, educated or proletarian, are pretty much fed up with it. If this trend continues, in another 30 years or so, there won't be enough of these creeps around to cause anybody any trouble.

This doesn't excite me that much for two reasons. Somebody somewhere with a vested interest in it, will figure out a new and probably even more virulent way to package xenophobic hatred for mass consumption and even if they don't and somehow the World goes all Dorothy and Toto, though I believe there is small chance of that, I'll be dead.

You're probably just that kind of guy

They've been touting an interesting study around the news media. Apparently, the favorite TV show of Right Wingers is Dancing With The Stars and the favorite show of Left Wingers is Mad Men.

I think maybe this is true. A lot of Right Wingers write about Reality TV shows on their blogs and I never miss an episode of Mad men, although I wouldn't say it's my favorite.

It may be that political views, like so many other personal traits are determined by a lot of other factors not related to reason or discourse.

I think there may be good things and bad things about this. Social issues, where feelings come straight from the gut, may always be beyond settlement by consensus and compromise. Other issues, where there may actually be a right course of action, like the need for sustained austerity in government spending and a balanced budget, may be eventually within our reach in a democratic society.

Maybe not but it's nice to think so.

Nancy with the laughing eyes

Nancy Pelosi wants to be the next Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. There are a lot of reasons why she should be. There are even some why she should not.

The bottom line is this. Congressional Republican members hate and fear her as they have no other Democrat in my memory and she can do or say anything that she wants to them without any fear. She just won re election in her liberal San Francisco district, without campaigning at all, in a race against an attractive, intelligent, popular, well qualified Republican opponent, that I wish was representing me, who had a huge nationally fueled war chest, by 80+ percent of the vote.

If the Dem House doesn't make her the Leader, they're idiots.