Getting What You Allow

Those of you that care about it have seen it by now: that smack down Andre Johnson delivered to Cortland Finnegan.

The talkers will have their say about it in the coming week, but all sides seem to be favoring Johnson as the class player and Finnegan as the punk. I would agree.

What I want to know is how a punk with the reputation of Finnegan can get away with the fouls and cheap shots? Why have no flags been thrown? Certainly, the refs know who is who out there.

You can't go on the air and pontificate about sportsmanship...

"We really hate to see that."
"That's not football, there."
"Beat him with your play, not your fists"

... all the while not calling out the obvious unsportsmanship that is taking place on every snap, or not calling out the officials who turn a blind eye.

When you allow Finnegans to be Finnegans, you have to expect a Johnson to throw a few 'flags' of his own every now and then. I don't fault him. I applaud him...

...and any fine or punishment dished out by the league against Johnson will be an injustice.

By all means, sanction the trouble makers. And sanction the officials for allowing it. (And yes, they do allow it.)

Living Old

It starting to become clearer to me the more that I look at it that a leisurely lifestyle has never before been part of the human condition, but is increasingly a part of every human's expectation in the modern age. I don't know how we came to this, because the truth hasn't been that far removed from us.

<<< Thinking back to my Great-Grandfather. (that be him, on the left) He had his land. His large (by current standards) family. All the food, water, shelter a man could ever use... and then some. Measured according to the standards of his society, he had it all.

He had earned/acquired leisure in their terms. Not the sitting-on-your-ass-collecting-a-check leisure. Leisure was, for them, leisure from struggle. A state of knowing where your next meal was coming from, along with breakfast ten years hence.

Still, things to do every day: Crops to tend. Sheep to graze. Food to process. Enemies to ward off. A man's work was never done.
It was the farmer's life as well as the life of his family. Every person worked or contributed to the clan's prosperity every day. As elders aged and became less able, less was done by them, of course. But even then, 'less' didn't mean 'nothing'.

One night, Nonuzz (as he is referred to) suffered a stroke after a battle with *Gypsies who'd come 'round to steal sheep. He spent his last couple of years paralyzed and mostly bed-ridden, but still not 'out of the game' as he kept his eye on things and never relinquished leadership.
Naturally, as was customary at the time, he was cared for by family who did all those nurse-ish type things that old crippled folks need done for them.

Today, things are different. We have apparently progressed to the higher levels of civilization, where leisure is some sort of old age entitlement: you sit around, collect a check for it, and produce nothing but a need for ever more medical care, for up to 20 years or longer...
We've come to expect that. But I don't know why.

We are moving ever closer to a state run medical system. (I mean, even more state run than it is now.) Nothing but an increase in taxation is going to pay it. I think we all know this, despite whatever promises the politicians are making.

The biggest problem with the whole concept, as I see it, will be the larger burden placed on those who are producing, with little asked from the ass-sitting check collectors.
We can't allow people to sit around living for 20 years after their retirement dates without tossing a few coins of their own into the bank. Perfectly able geezers should not be sitting on the labors of the younger. They need to be giving, as well.





*Because that's what Gypsies do.

On Racial Profiling

When did 'Muslim' become a race?

for those who may be of knowledge:
if you know how to tyupe, is it easier to do it when your drunk, as opposed to not knowing how to type?

just asking...

I'm thinking that President Obama would do wonderous things for his popularity right about now if he stepped up and kicked some ass over this airport strip searching thing...

Something Cool...

...happened in Miami last night.

Brian Urlacher passed Mike Singletary as the Bears all-time leading tackler.

All he needs now is The Ring.

Back To "Paper, Or Plastic?"

Take that, you eco-obsessed weenies!

Grocery chain Winn-Dixie sells a reusable grocery bag with two sturdy handles, pictures of cute baby faces and enough toxic lead to alarm health experts.

I love the irony.

Are We Winning?

The Naked Body Scanners are still making nudes news. News, not nudes. Well, anyway... Sorry, my mind gets distracted...

This time, it's the Ragheads that are gettin all pissy:

CAIR said Muslims who object to full-body scans for religious reasons should know their rights if they are required to undergo a pat-down, including asking for the procedure to be done in a private place. In addition, CAIR offered a “special recommendation” for Muslim women who wear a hijab, telling them they should tell the TSA officer that they may be searched only around the head and neck.

Because, well, nobody would try to hide bombs or anything in their hair anyway, right?
We'll have to see how far TSA is willing to go in order to violate the privacy rights of Muslims. I hope it's at least as far as the rest of us, if not further, because it is the Muslims who are trying to blow shit up, isn't it?
No, on second thought, I take that back. I want them to violate every muslimish looking chick or dude who tries to approach within five miles of an airfield. Forget letting them buy a plane ticket.
Never can be too safe. Right TSA?

I think the situation may be getting better, thanks to the suspects themselves:

In February, the Figh Council of North America, a group of Islamic scholars, issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, that full-body scanners violate Islamic law.
“It is a violation of clear Islamic teaching that men or women be seen naked by other men and women,” the ruling states. “Islam highly emphasizes haya (modesty) and considers it part of the faith. The Qu’ran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts.”

CAIR endorsed the fatwa, according to a Feb. 21 article in the Detroit Free Press.

OK, so we cant search them. Nor scan them.
If TSA sticks to it's guns and molests everybody equally, Muslims will be religiously forbidden to fly.
The terrorists lose.

I love it already.

Unwrapping The Silliness

More on the Strip Search Full Body Scanners:
It seems that not everybody is dismayed with the idea: An Indian lawmaker from Punjab said Tuesday she had asked President Barack Obama to put a stop to the U.S. border practice of frisking Sikh turbans.

Sikhs worldwide have long protested the American security measure as discriminatory and unnecessary in a world with machines for body scanning and metal detection.

OK, so they like the scanners...

But it's the turban pat-downs and pony-tail checks that have really got them in a blush.

"It is a humiliating experience. For us it's like telling us to remove our clothes," she said.

From this I think I can reach a fair conclusion: Most people do not want to show their private parts to strangers. And those that do must be Sikh.

The WTF Years

Remember those park Merry-Go-Rounds growing up? I know most of you do, but maybe we can find a YouTube video of one for Palm Boy and Tully, who have led childhoods of depravity having grown up in the post Merry-Go-Round era.

We would all get in that thing, and one of our friends would spin it, and spin it, and spin it... til the world was a blur , your brain was plastered against one side of your skull and the sandwich you ate was backing up into your throat.

God help you if you should lose your grip and the centrifugal forces threw your ass 25feet outward.
It was danger. It was excitement. And it was fucking fun!

Sure, every now and then some idiot would take a header, bust a lip, lose a tooth, maybe break an arm... (ask my li'l brother, ha! ha! twice. ha! ha! ha!)
But we learned early and easy: if you can't go 'round with the big kids, go sit on the bouncy horses.

Same thing with those jungle gyms you could hang upside down on, or the big space ship with the 20ft slide that dared a kid to jump off half the way down.

Now, the playground is a dull place. No dangerous spinner (ever stop to think that we didn't have a childhood obesity problem back then because we often purged our lunch at the playground.) The jungle bars have been replaced with a safety conscious climbing apparatus, slides are enclosed and even the swings have seat belts.

Then came helmet laws for kids on Big Wheels, roller skates, and skate boards... making being an active kid rather inconvenient, if you ask me. (What? Obesity problem again?)

Taking the childhood out of childhood seems to be the order of the era, but even that is not enough when, as you've heard by now, San Francisco regulates the 'happy' out of Happy Meals and Pennsylvania seeks to ban cake at birthday parties.

WhatTheFuck?



We have got to be creating an entire lost generation of fucked up, pussified, angry, joy-deprived kids.
Damn.
Just wait 'til they're old enough to realize how much national debt they owe.

Hah!

President Obama dances with children at a Diwali celebration in Mumbai.
Clear evidence that The President is secretly a Hindu.

Pig Out

Party's on, pig lovers! In the age of Islamic terror and Islamophobia, what's a better way to show your solidarity as lovers of American freedom than the unabashed consumption of pork?

"What brings this?", you may be asking...

Well, in case you haven't heard, the McRib is back after a two year hiatus. I missed McRib the last time around, so I'm making sure I get my fill this time around.

Why?
Because McRib is more than just a sandwich.
McRib is also: 490 calories, 25 grams of fat, 75 mgs of cholesterol, and 1040 mb of salt, all processed into a tender pork patty, submerged in a tangy bbq sauce, and gently placed in a warm, soft sesame seed roll with fresh onion and pickles.
And it tastes oh, soo goood!

If you don't eat a McRib, the terrorists win.

I'll be getting another one, maybe two, tonight.

It's Been A Long Hard Campaign

For all you fans who are crowding below the podium of the politician you took time from your jobs, families, and lives to get elected:

He's getting a cushy job, massive perks and benefits, free travel, 'junkets', inside stock tips and dibs on IPO's, health care that surpasses that of a combat mangled G.I., business connections, a ceremonial staff position for his wife that pays six-figures, a pension and a quality of life that you could never dream of...

You worked hard. What did YOU get?

Get a Grip, Not A Grope

One suffers no shortage of indignities when traveling by air as it is, but leave it to the TSA to think of new ones...

A few days ago new pat-down procedures were announced for travelers using aircraft in the USA.

But we will have a choice: either accept the invasive pat-down or accept showing your tender bits on camera with that new strip-search technology thing.

Either way, your giblets are not your own if you intend to fly.

Oh, and before you get any ideas, it'll be dudes groping dudes, and women groping women. No joy jollies for you, unless you're queer.

And that seems kinda not fair, if you ask me. (Wonder if I can claim queerness just so I can get groped by the woman TSA agent? Think that'll fly?)

So what choice do we have, unless we want to drive or take the train to somewhere far, far away?

This is getting to be too, too much if you ask me.

We need to go back to simpler time, to a more straight forward manner of thinking: Back in WWII, we didn't arrest a random amount of Chinese spy suspects so the Japs wouldn't feel picked on, did we? Nope. We went straight for the Japs. We weren't too desensitized to common sense back then.

Did we arrest a sensible number of Polish 'infiltrators' so the Krauts wouldn't think they were being singled out? Nope. We went to the root of the problem, as we should have.
And we won, didn't we?

Let's do that again.

I want to bring back racial/ethnic profiling. If your name is Ali Mohamed Fatwa al-Shabazz, or something stupid like that, you can't fly.
Period.
Too fucking bad.
Take a bus, Raghead!
Ha!

See? I just solved our security problem by half, if not better.