I hear there’s a bipartisan stampede to waste my money on rescuing another class of morons. This time it’s the clowns that sought to capitalize on the ever-ballooning housing market. They took loans with payments so large they had no hope of maintaining them, but the tactic was to re-sell them quickly and make oodles of money, so that payment magnitude would never become an issue. Surprise! The ever-ballooning housing market got punctured, they couldn’t sell, the payments crushed them, they lost the properties, and all manner of woe ensued.
Our intrepid legislators, though, are out to purchase votes by throwing green lifelines, woven partially of my dough, to the sorry speculators. No one cushions me when I make bad investments. No one rewards my poor judgment.
I’m sick of doling out welfare to all the enurectic losers, of which there is a surfeit, in this country. When did we become a nation of panhandlers?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
LIFE, LIBERTY, AND ?
Have you noticed we scarcely require imported terrorists to assassinate us? While a small army of airport myrmidons deprive 80-year-old women of their shoes and poke their fingers into potentially explosive chocolates, our neighbors may be mass murderers. There are enough homicidal lunatics in this country that al-Qaeda would be smart simply to hire them as contractors and forget infiltration.
Evidenced by recent news one is jeopardized in schools, churches, courtrooms, farmhomes, offices - you name it. None of our citizens has contrived a way to annihilate thousands of us simultaneously, but they have scored in the hundreds, and it's a matter of time until one breaks into the big time.
Thomas Jefferson numbered among our inalienable rights life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I wonder what he would think of their evolution. More and more, life is at the whim of vicious psychotics, liberty is constrained by misdirected measures to thwart foreign terrorists, and try pursuing happiness when a berserk citizen has consigned a loved one to a premature casket.
Government is such a ubiquitous octopus that a person can’t turn around without running afoul of its tentacles. Government or another agency should formulate ways to restore to us what has gone alienable.
Floundering here, we stridently advocate rights the Constitution never recognized while Jefferson’s ideal evaporates. In “Death of a Salesman” Willy Loman shouts, “The woods are on fire!” They’re on fire here and now, and means must be found to quench the conflagration
Evidenced by recent news one is jeopardized in schools, churches, courtrooms, farmhomes, offices - you name it. None of our citizens has contrived a way to annihilate thousands of us simultaneously, but they have scored in the hundreds, and it's a matter of time until one breaks into the big time.
Thomas Jefferson numbered among our inalienable rights life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I wonder what he would think of their evolution. More and more, life is at the whim of vicious psychotics, liberty is constrained by misdirected measures to thwart foreign terrorists, and try pursuing happiness when a berserk citizen has consigned a loved one to a premature casket.
Government is such a ubiquitous octopus that a person can’t turn around without running afoul of its tentacles. Government or another agency should formulate ways to restore to us what has gone alienable.
Floundering here, we stridently advocate rights the Constitution never recognized while Jefferson’s ideal evaporates. In “Death of a Salesman” Willy Loman shouts, “The woods are on fire!” They’re on fire here and now, and means must be found to quench the conflagration
Monday, June 16, 2008
DO WE NEED A GRAY SCALE?
What’s all this about the first, black, presidential candidate? It seems to me the adjective is applied to many people that are no more black than white. Obama, for instance, had one white parent, one black, so he is accurately described as a mulatto, not a black.
Similarly, there are other words, also not derogatory, for certain other mixes: a person with one black, three white grandparents, is a quadroon, whereas if one has one black, seven white, great-grandparents, s/he is an octoroon. Clearly, this terminology is insufficient for all white/black mixtures, so “partial black” and “partial white” are informative and correct. In its days of minority rule, didn’t South Africa advocate “colored?” Of course, there is another major race, and one can’t neglect American Indians and others, so precision would require additional nomenclature.
In our country, however, we’re continually exhorted, if not rigorously constrained, not to pay undue attention to a person’s race. Some news sources distribute their attention to the attribute in a bifurcated way; if a black or partial black, probably designated “black” in either case, has done something creditable, race is remembered but, otherwise, neglected. Perhaps, then, the best way to reference candidates or any other classes of people is to omit parentage, which is beyond our selecting, anyway.
Whatever you decide to do, don’t call Obama and other partial blacks “black.” Doing so marks you as an illiterate and/or some sort of racist.
Similarly, there are other words, also not derogatory, for certain other mixes: a person with one black, three white grandparents, is a quadroon, whereas if one has one black, seven white, great-grandparents, s/he is an octoroon. Clearly, this terminology is insufficient for all white/black mixtures, so “partial black” and “partial white” are informative and correct. In its days of minority rule, didn’t South Africa advocate “colored?” Of course, there is another major race, and one can’t neglect American Indians and others, so precision would require additional nomenclature.
In our country, however, we’re continually exhorted, if not rigorously constrained, not to pay undue attention to a person’s race. Some news sources distribute their attention to the attribute in a bifurcated way; if a black or partial black, probably designated “black” in either case, has done something creditable, race is remembered but, otherwise, neglected. Perhaps, then, the best way to reference candidates or any other classes of people is to omit parentage, which is beyond our selecting, anyway.
Whatever you decide to do, don’t call Obama and other partial blacks “black.” Doing so marks you as an illiterate and/or some sort of racist.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
MARRIAGE DEFINED, NOT DEFILED
I’m weary of all the sound and fury, none of it significant, at various levels of authority, over whether to allow, prohibit, or what have you, “homosexual marriages,” meaning the “marriage” of two persons of the same sex. I use quotes only because these, or similar, terms are current in some places.
The issue is easily resolved by the English language itself, but as English-speaking Americans are generally ignorant of their own tongue, we have much ado about nothing.
According to the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, “marriage” is defined, “the condition of being a husband or wife.” “Husband” is defined, “a man joined to a woman by marriage,” whereas “wife” is, expectedly, “a woman joined to a man by marriage.” Therefore, a marriage, by definition, cannot consist of two men or of two women, so why all the nonsense over approving or prohibiting a “homosexual marriage?” One might as well consider banning the “marriage” of a porcupine with a tree or of a woman to a bowling ball.
Unfortunately, we in the United States have never named an official national language, so I’ve dealt with the one in which I’ve noticed this uproar reported. It would be interesting for citizens and other residents that speak mainly Amharic, Bantu, Chinese, Dutch, Estonian, etc. to determine what their lexicons make of the muddle. As of this writing, though, our laws are still formulated in English, so perhaps my argument suffices.
My advice is that proponents and opponents of the legalized union of persons of the same sex agree upon a new word and not seek to transmogrify one that is well-defined, not to mention sacred to many.
Yves.
The issue is easily resolved by the English language itself, but as English-speaking Americans are generally ignorant of their own tongue, we have much ado about nothing.
According to the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, “marriage” is defined, “the condition of being a husband or wife.” “Husband” is defined, “a man joined to a woman by marriage,” whereas “wife” is, expectedly, “a woman joined to a man by marriage.” Therefore, a marriage, by definition, cannot consist of two men or of two women, so why all the nonsense over approving or prohibiting a “homosexual marriage?” One might as well consider banning the “marriage” of a porcupine with a tree or of a woman to a bowling ball.
Unfortunately, we in the United States have never named an official national language, so I’ve dealt with the one in which I’ve noticed this uproar reported. It would be interesting for citizens and other residents that speak mainly Amharic, Bantu, Chinese, Dutch, Estonian, etc. to determine what their lexicons make of the muddle. As of this writing, though, our laws are still formulated in English, so perhaps my argument suffices.
My advice is that proponents and opponents of the legalized union of persons of the same sex agree upon a new word and not seek to transmogrify one that is well-defined, not to mention sacred to many.
Yves.
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