Limousine Liberals

                Liberals contributed the most cash to their candidates this past midterm election. Among the top 100 individual donors to political groups, more than half gave all or most of it to Democrats or their allies. And groups that gave more than $100,000 to the Democrats or their allies held the top thirteen spots  on the group donors list. The two biggest super PACs of 2014 were the Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, both backing Democrats, of course.

                Among the 183 groups that wrote checks of $100,000 or more to another group, Democrats had an enormous 3-to-1 cash advantage. The biggest contributor, naturally, was the National Education Association, which coughed up $22 million. Not a single Republican-leaning group cracked the top 10 list of those transferring money to others. Which makes sense, as transferring money from those who’ve earned it to those who typically vote for Democrats is what Democrats are all about.

                In reality, Democrats have been raking in more money from wealthy donors than Republicans have for years and years now. The NEA, Hollywood actors and actresses, various special interest groups,  unions flush with ill-begotten cash fleeced from their members whether they approve or not, George Soros, lawyers, Costco, and many others dependably contribute huge sums of cash to the DNC and its minions.

                Yet, incredibly, they still get away with portraying Republicans as the party of rich people in order to split the country and win votes through a contrived class warfare. 

Pols Push For Poles At Polls?

                Some cities and states around the country are pushing to change existing laws to allow for more interpreters at polling places. Current law, in many areas, already allows voters who can’t read English to bring an interpreter to help them at the polls. If an on-site election judge speaks a voters language they can ask him or her for assistance as well. Yet some still insist that those measures are inadequate and that more needs to be done to help the rapidly growing number of voters (or potential voters) who can’t speak English.

                Minneapolis, for example, provides its voter information materials in English, Spanish, Hmong and Somali. Should the goal really be to have interpreters for every language in the world  everyplace Americans vote? Do other countries do this? If you or I moved to a non-English speaking country and were allowed to vote, would we automatically expect- and be provided with- an  interpreter?

                Why didn’t we do this in the past? Germans, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, Chinese, etc., etc., all came here over the course of a hundred-plus years and were expected to earn their citizenship by becoming familiar with America and her customs. What about the Poles? We made fun of them and didn’t bother to print voter information materials in Polish or have Polish interpreters on hand where they voted. They were expected to learn the language.

                And assimilate to a degree. Why did they come here? Remember the ‘melting pot?’

                E Pluribus Unum.  Out of many…one.

                I’d vote for that.

                

Democrats To Try Historic Filibuster In Attempt To Prevent Republican Congressional Takeover

January 6, 2015

News Syndicate-             

                Leading congressional Democrats stated yesterday that they will filibuster in an attempt to prevent newly-elected Republicans from being seated in the 114th congress, slated to begin today.

                Asked how long he was prepared to keep up the unprecedented filibuster, Al Franken (D-MN.) stated, “a little under two years, probably, until the next elections where the ‘bleeping’ people get a chance to speak again, and maybe get it right this time.” Franken then added, “Who am I kidding, Gruber was right!”

                Other congressional Democrats said that they would just- literally- take their seats with them in an attempt to prevent newly-elected Republicans from sitting in them. One averred, on the condition of anonymity, “Remember how the Clinton people took the “W’s” out of White House keyboards before George Bush the younger took office? It’s kinda like that.”

The Dark Ages- 2.0

                 There is a country whose debt is rising, its population aging and job security fading. The country’s youth, especially, wonder when, and if , their country can bounce back. Most of its citizens do not have the security of lifetime employment enjoyed by their parents and grandparents. Low birth rates combined with longer life expectancy are thinning out its working-age population at the same time the ranks of retirees are swelling. Ultimately, its taxpayers will shoulder the burden of surging costs for health insurance, elder care and pensions. Its leader has tried to jump-start the economy by injecting it with huge sums of money, leading to the devaluation of its currency. He has promised sweeping and drastic overhauls.

                Most in this country feel less well off than before due to long-term declines in wages and purchasing power. About four in 10 residents work in part-time or contract jobs that afford little security or benefits. For the country’s youth, permanent, career-track jobs are the exception, not the rule. Its manufacturers struggle to compete with rivals like China. Some think the nation is in serious, irreversible decline. This sure sounds familiar. The nation I’m describing?

                Japan. (Ironic, as back in their 1980’s economic heyday, everyone thought that Japan was going to own the world).

                Obviously, this sounds like a carbon-copy description of the U.S., but the same is true with many countries in the European Union and elsewhere. The West needs the emergence of a strong, principled leader or leaders who understand that socialism has never been, cannot and never will be…the answer to these problems, as it caused them in the first place. (Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher,  we need you now).

                Even this won’t be enough to save us, if the people  don’t understand or will not support what has to be done. If many don’t stop demanding more of other’s money, and few are willing to sacrifice any of their pensions or entitlement benefits, we will never come out of this economic malaise. And, if we don’t fully utilize all our energy resources, and if we continue to let pathetic dictators dictate to us, we- and the world- will eventually slide back into another Dark Age.

                

Scientists Discover Inception Of Conception!

December 30, 2051-

News Syndicate

                         Scientists Discover That Sex Can Be Used For Procreation

In a stunning report issued yesterday, Thursday, December 29^th, a team of scientists from the Johnson & Johnson & Johnson Institute for Human Behavioral Research (JJJIHBR) released results from a recent long-term study where one participant allegedly got pregnant from an act the scientists termed  “coitus”.

 Birthrates in the U.S. have been falling for decades until hitting ‘0’ in recent years. The resultant aging of the country has only been countered by massive immigration. This has coincided with the vast acceptance- and practice- of gay marriage and  the staggering increase in transgendered and gender-questioning individuals. Some right-wing religious nuts say that these are factors in the U.S. not experiencing a live birth in seven years.  The ‘nutters’ also claim that the continued breakdown of the family,  the near continuous economic slump and the proliferation of various adult ‘toys’ and ‘self-pleasuring’ are additional factors. These, along with the tolerance and proliferation of any imaginable act and the continued marginalization and feminization of males are keys to understanding the phenomenon many ‘Tea-baggers’ say. They cite recent surveys showing that the few remaining males in heterosexual marriages have a near 100% rate of impotence and  corresponding rates of “E.D.” This is  due in part, they claim, to television and movie portrayals and in part due to the fact that the few remaining females in heterosexual marriages satisfy themselves chiefly through their television shows where everyone else is doing it and talking about it all the time, and by reading books about perfect, yet ironically  macho, masculine, males ravishing the female protagonist, otherwise known as “them”. These males are chiseled of body, wealthy- or both- always conveying power, according to one of the few remaining male-support groups. Yet in real life, they claim, these females typically get mad if their husbands are fixated on looks, corresponding femininity and ‘sexiness’, and often say things like, “too tired tonight, help me with the damn dishes for once” before going off to read alone in bed.

Some extremists say there is even more to it than that. They posit that the rise in the number of people addicted to video games and on-line content and the fact that almost no one engages another human being directly  anymore, typically only communicating with another person via their modern “hyper-smart” phones have also been factors in the birth-rate dwindling down to zero.

  In any case, according to the researchers, all of this, along with the rise in artificial-insemination, has led to a  virtual society-wide memory failure regarding what the scientists termed “coitus”, which they say, based on anatomical evidence, is apparently “specifically designed”  to be engaged in by one man and one woman, and can thus potentially produce children! Belinda Lafleur, co-head of the study stated flatly, “ as hard a concept as it is to grasp, there can now be no question that this is the way nature intended for us to bond and produce children.” After this startling realization sunk in, the researchers delivered some bad news, stating that, “ since 87% of the native-born population is now too old to try this new method with any hope of success, even if they wanted to, it may already be too late for this country to reverse the course it has been on now for all these years. Climax change is here to stay.”

The scientists were taken aback by their own findings. Richard Johnson, the other study co-head, exclaimed, “We’re all just hornswoggled now. I mean just stupefied. I, for one, never saw this coming.” 

Many in  mainstream groups such as ‘GLBT Forever’ and ‘NAMBLA’ have taken profound issue with the findings, some going so far as to call the so-called findings “disturbing, sick, unfounded & pushing the envelope for the simple shock value of doing so.”

The head of Queer Nation opined that “this kind of over-inclusive tolerance leads us on a very slippery slope. And I don’t like the reference to ‘nature’. It’s too easy a step from there to ‘nature’s God’ and similar hurtful terms. It’s one thing for the minority to have its little say, but last I checked, the majority still rules in this country. You know, just sayin’.”

Scientists Discover the Inception of Conception

Photocells Trump Photosynthesis

                Finally! Something that appears ‘too good to be true’ turns out to actually be… true!

                The Associated Press  reported recently on an environmental dispute between neighbors in California. A man actually asked prosecutors to file charges against his neighbors because their towering redwood trees blocked sunlight to his solar panels. He wanted the neighbors to be forced to cut down the offending trees. The couple next door insisted that they should not have to chop down the trees because they were planted before the man installed the solar panels.

                Incredibly, after a six-year legal battle, a judge recently ordered the couple to cut down two of the redwoods, citing a little-known state law that protects “a homeowner’s right to sunlight.” This is the first time a homeowner has been convicted of violating the law, which was enacted nearly 30 years ago. The law, titled the Solar Shade Control Act, requires homeowners to keep their trees or shrubs from shading more than 10 percent of a neighbor’s solar panels between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Trees in existence at the time of the panel installation are supposed to be exempt. Perhaps the judge failed to read the fine print in this obscure law.

                The couple, who drive a hybrid car, argue that trees absorb carbon dioxide, cool the surrounding air and provide habitat for wildlife.

                The man, who owns a plug-in electric car, counters by saying his solar panels reduce carbon dioxide emissions far more than the trees do.

                “Experts” say clashes such as these will become much more common as the push for renewable energy strengthens and solar energy systems become more popular.

                Let the games begin!

There Is No Present Like Time

                                                              It’s About Time

                Obviously, New Year’s Eve is a time to reflect on…time…and its passing. How it’s shaped us, and hopefully, we, it. We salute those we lost this past year and make resolutions to try to be better versions of ourselves in the year to follow.

                We have been granted the gift of voice, yet many remain mute. We’re granted the gift of passion, yet many stay passive. We have the ability to tell those we are close to what they mean to us, yet many of us decline to do so. At the end of our lives, if we have squandered time, if we haven’t taken advantage of the gifts of passion and thought and feelings and language that make us different from rock or sand or moss…what have we achieved?

                Don’t squander time of all things, as we are given so little of it. ‘Time is of the essence’ the saying goes. That is technically not true. Time is the essence. What is there without time? Could there be a ‘time before time?’

                It is time for us to speak. It’s time for us to do, to love, to experience new things.

                There is a time for us to be born, to live, to give birth, and to die. Let us make sure that, when it is our time to die, we have truly lived. ‘Time after time’ we here clichés about time. “Does anybody really know what time it is?” Time and again. Time is running out. Time’s up. I don’t have the time. If only I had the time. Halftime.  Bedtime. In the nick of time. Father Time.

                Think about the most important relationship in your life. How has it changed over time? Why? Did you shape it or just let it happen? What have you done with your time…and theirs?

                Let us not just mark time. Let’s mark lives. We need to make a New Year’s resolution that we learn the value of time and appreciate it. Did we make our loved-ones lives better and richer during the immeasurably short time we are here on this planet? Did we do the things that might allow us the opportunity to walk forever with them in a heavenly light?

                Were you granted the ability to love, but remain reserved and distant? Scared? Were you granted the ability to experience joy and pleasure, but refuse to use it? Were you granted the ability to feel pain, but cannot bear to do so?

                It’s about time we show our spouses and loved ones the affection, respect and love they deserve. And we can do that, in part,  by respecting, appreciating and showing gratitude for the little time we have here on Earth.

                Let this shape our here and now, and not our distant future, and act accordingly.

                So, if your spouse snores occasionally, or takes more than his or her ‘fair’ share of the covers, if you don’t like it when they wake you up when coming to bed at night or leaving it in the morning, if you have no ‘time’ for romance…think about when they are gone. That first long, cold, dark night when you crawl over in bed and find that they are not there. And realize that they will never be there again.

                How brutal will that night be, when you reach out and there is no reassuring touch, no breathing, no “it’s okay honey, I’m here and I love you.”

                So the logical thing to do, the moral thing to do, is to act now how you would if, after that brutal, long, cold, dark night, you awoke to find your spouse next to you in the morning and realized you had just had a bad dream.  

               Because, one day, all too soon, it will not have been a  dream.                                               

                I myself have a couple of New Year’s resolutions this year,  but perhaps  our most important New Year’s resolution should be to fully realize how precious little time we have here in this life and to treat our loved ones accordingly.

                There’s no time like the present.
     
                And there is no present (gift) like time.

                                                          **********************

                                                              Happy New Year, All!

                                                          **********************

( Following are the lyrics to a poignant Dan Fogelberg song, appropriate, I think, to this date and this post. NEVER let it be the “Same Old Lang Syne” in your life).

                                                            Same Old Lang Syne

Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve
I stood behind her in the frozen foods
And I touched her on the sleeve

She didn't recognize the face at first
But then her eyes flew open wide
She went to hug me and she spilled her purse
And we laughed until we cried

We took her groceries to the check out stand
The food was totaled up and bagged
We stood there lost in our embarrassment
As the conversation lagged

We went to have ourselves a drink or two
But couldn't find an open bar
We bought a six-pack at the liquor store
And we drank it in her car

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how

She said she's married her an architect
Who kept her warm and safe and dry
She would have liked to say she loved the man
But she didn't like to lie

I said the years had been a friend to her
And that her eyes were still as blue
But in those eyes I wasn't sure if I saw
Doubt or gratitude

She said she saw me in the record stores
And that I must be doing well
I said the audience was heavenly
But the traveling was Hell

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to time
Reliving, in our eloquence
Another "Auld Lang Syne"

The beer was empty and our tongues were tired
And running out of things to say
She gave a kiss to me as I got out
And I watched her drive away

Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And, as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned into rain

Songwriters: Fogelberg, Dan

Same Old Lang Syne lyrics © EMI Music Publishing

One Bathroom Fits All! (Gender Blender III)

                “New school bathrooms welcome all genders” read the headline in the December 26, 2014 Star & Tribune. (Emphasis mine). I would have thought “both” genders would be sufficient…and  shocking.  I was unaware, until recently, that there were more than two sexes. (Male and female. Yin and Yang. The potential for a biblical union of two becoming one whole). I was aware that we needed to update the trite old cliche’  “the birds and the bees” to “the birds and the bees, the bees and the bees, and the birds and the birds” due to the  omnipresence of homosexuality in the mainstream media. Now, however, total chaos has been loosed and all bets are off as to where this will take us.

                We now have birds and “bird-questioning”, bees and “bee-questioning”, birds who “self-identify” as bees, bees who “self-identify as birds”, birds who are becoming bees, bees who are becoming birds, bird-bees, bee-birds, bi-birds, bi-bees, polyamorous birds and bees (segregated and together), trans*birds, trans*bees, combined bird-bee spirits, cis-birds and cis-bees (boring sticks in the mud that they are), and we haven’t, apparently, even scratched the surface!

                The article states that, “these schools are placing Minnesota among a growing list of states taking steps to ensure that transgender and ‘gender non-conforming’ students feel safe and comfortable in school, whether that’s using the rest room or getting dressed in a locker room.” This makes the  heterosexual kids sound like an army of closed-minded bores just toting some sort of party line.

                And what about the thoughts and feelings of this vast majority of boys and girls? The 95% or more that aren’t GLBTG or ‘gender-questioning’? Are they going to feel, “safe and comfortable” in bathrooms and locker rooms open to everyone? Hell, most guys weren’t- and aren’t- very comfortable taking showers with other guys after gym class, seeing how they ‘measure up’, etc.

                Are most parents really ‘comfortable’ with, say,  their 16 year-old daughter urinating in a stall next to an 18 year-old guy  dropping a deuce? Or having to insert a tampon? Or with not knowing what gender or genders are around her and what their level of confusion, curiosity, or experimentation desires are? Are most boys and girls? There is no possible way that the majority of students feel “safer and more comfortable” in that environment.

                Later on in the article, there is the recounting of the time a mother of a 9 year-old girl who "fell outside of the traditional gender binary” let her daughter use the men’s bathroom at a movie theater. “It was absolutely terrifying” she said. “As a parent, all you want is for your child to be safe. And I was worried she might not be safe.”

                Really?  You let your nine year-old girl use the men’s bathroom in a public movie theater and you claim all you want is for your child to be safe? Obviously, that’s not all you want. What trumped the fact that you were terrified  that your young daughter might not be safe in the men’s bathroom?

            

                All-gender bathrooms and locker rooms are a symbol of these schools being ‘welcoming’ places, according to their proponents.

                One of the leaders of a support group called “Transforming Families” stated that she felt that the movement to support transgender students was about 20 years behind that of gays and lesbians.    (Homosexuality was considered by the American Psychiatric Association to be a ‘mental illness’ until as recently as the 1960’s). 

               Yes, and the movements to support bestiality and incest are likely 20 years behind this one. In fact, according to some things I’ve read lately, in certain circles have they have already started. I am not equating homosexuality with these latter behaviors, nor even ‘trans-genderism’ to coin a phrase. But the demands that gay marriages  be seen as absolutely- and legally- “ equal” to heterosexual child producing unions and must be considered completely ‘normal’( with the partners eligible to receive any and all benefits that the heterosexual couples who brought them into this world may get) is absurd. We simply cannot consider agender, Trans*Female and Two-Spirit folks and behaviors as  completely  ‘normal’ without rendering the word meaningless and demeaning the inherent sacredness of the male-female relationship and anatomies.

                One of the students quoted in the article opined that “It’s a very basic right- to be able to use the bathroom and feel safe and comfortable.” That’s as may be, but transgender and gender-questioning kids already had their own bathroom at that students school. And all we’ve done is reverse the ratio of kids who feel safe and comfortable in the schools bathrooms and showers from 95% comfortable and 5% uncomfortable- or worse- to 5% comfortable and 95% stressed.

                Diversity.  Ain’t it grand?

                Except…wait a moment. One bathroom fits all? We can’t have a diversity of bathrooms, apparently.

North Korea Accidentally Insults Itself

               North Korea has denied involvement in the recent, infamous cyber-attack on Sony pictures even though it expressed maniacal outrage at the potential release of Sony’s comedic film “The Interview.” Now North Korea has  accused the United States of shutting down its Internet for over nine hours a few days ago in response to the cyber-attack. Their ‘National Defense Commission’ said President Obama was behind the movie’s release.

             Yes, I’m sure he thought of the idea, wrote the script and had control over production, as well. 

             In reality he couldn’t have, since he’s been too busy with other things.

Vacationing and golfing just for starters.

A spokesman for the North Korean government actually said, “Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest.” I don’t often defend this President, but obviously find this remark offensive, repulsive and ridiculous. And, I didn’t know monkeys could talk. It is the North Korean government, and their ‘spokesmen’ that self-evidently ‘go reckless in words and deeds.’

In attempting to insult the President, all they have achieved with this remark is to make themselves look even more ridiculous and pathetic then they did before. Well, that is remarkable, come to think of it.

Moreover, no one in North Korea other than  the top few  government leaders could possibly have known or been affected by the temporary shutdown…for two reasons. One, most of the people don’t have enough money to buy a loaf of bread, if there was one to be found, let alone a computer. And, two, they have the Fisher-Price, “Baby’s First Internet!” set-up over there. Everything is routed through China. What ‘content’ isn’t blocked or experiencing technical difficulties is too dull and propagandized for anyone to want to access.

So these three North Koreans walk into a bar and…

Guess I better not.

They take their comedy- and themselves- seriously in the Hermit Kingdom.

Vicissitudes?

“Top officials from nearly 200 nations agreed to the first deal committing every country in the world to reducing the fossil fuel emissions that cause global warming” stated the New York Times article. Granted, it’s not binding, is voluntary and based on “global peer pressure”, but what the heck, it’s better than nothing, right?

The article closed by saying that “Obama wants to sign on to the plan because he sees his role in fighting climate change as a cornerstone of his legacy", he and his advisers say.

                Interesting that he wants his legacy to be one of “fundamentally changing (transforming) the United States,” indeed  almost every aspect of it socially, economically, historically, etc., yet also desires a legacy of fighting against climate change for all he’s worth.

                There is a hidden consistency here, to be truthful. They both lead to the near-total transformation, indeed evisceration, of the United States of America as we knew it.