Still in Mexico, still don’t give a fudge about what’s happening. Ah, bliss. Enjoy life people.
Sorry for no posts, I’m in Mexico Saturday, Apr 21 2012
Uncategorized 3:06 am
Sorry for no posts for a while. I’ve been in Mexico, ignoring the world. I do not much all day. Read some of a novel, go to eat, have some beers while the sun sets, walk along the beach front, you know, vacation stuff. I have a great little apartment at a beach front hotel in the Historic Center of Mazatlan. Here you go, some links to where I am –
http://www.gomazatlan.com/Inicio.html
http://wikitravel.org/en/Mazatlan
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=aaplw&va=Mazatlan
The first three are touristy sites, the last is the yahoo picture pages.
Well, I’m so relaxed I do nothing much all day, and I’ve simply ignored politics in America. I’m sure the concepts and the overarching theme of too much government and too many taxes has remained the same, and I’m sure the details ebb and flow and everyone gets all excited about it. My big decisions right now are which restaurant to get some shrimp in, and how many beers to drink, and which book looks interesting enough to even bother to pick it up to read.
That’s what I came here for, to avoid it all for awhile. For two years or more I posted a lot, I commented a lot all over the internet, but it didn’t make much of a difference, though I’m sure some enjoyed whatever I wrote. Indeed, I’m sure some did, for they told me so. And I’m sure all the people who are up in arms are up in arms, except, well, like me, a few who took their sweet tuckus off to some out of the way place and are doing nothing much.
I look at the local papers from time to time. They’re heading in a presidential election themselves here in Mexico. They usual crooks are running, and everyone has their party alliances, and that’s it, the country is in the same deadlock as America — with the vast majority concluding that there’s too much gov’t and the taxes are too high, and there’s too many laws and too many police to enforce them. The people in the two countries, USA and USM (yes, teh United States of Mexico, it’s right there on the money and the official papers,) are remarkably the same, as are the overbearing governments. Who will have the better chance to throw of their yokes remains to be seen.
Well, I keep thinking I should write up some impressions of the place, but well, frankly, I’m stilling thinking about it.
And so that’s it for now. Apparently people still keep wandering into here, despite me no publishing anything for three weeks, so that’s not so bad. Still, enough ruminating for the night, I’m off to the bar. Enjoy yourselves. My plan is to arrive back in the real world by May 20th. But, well, who knows, right? Hasta la vista, baby.
I’m in Mazatlan Mexico Thursday, Apr 5 2012
Uncategorized 6:00 am
OK then, I’m in Mazatlan Mexico, doing nothing much, and not really caring that I’m not. Thinking, reposing, languishing under the cocoanut palms, simply enjoying life, and looking at the sea.
Go here: http://creativeintellectual.com/mazatlan.html
and see what I see.
Other than that, the political mush will seethe and stir and boil over and stew and I’m sure not much will happen in the big scheme of things, and the rhetoric will remain the same while the reality will be ignored. Keep up the good fight, whomever you are, whatever you do.
Cheers
Jim
I’m off to Mexico for a while, I think Sunday, Mar 25 2012
Uncategorized 12:42 pm
Dear Readers, such as you are, well, I’m off to Mexico for a while, to recharge my batteries. Doubtful I’ll post stuff for a few weeks, doubtful it makes a difference anyway. Mazatlan is a beautiful place, and well, it’s a great place to watch the sunset, too. The weather is near perfect; the people are friendly; and I got plenty of friends there – as the joke goes “Soy el gringo favorito de la ciudad” – I’m the favorite gringo of the city. Maybe I’ll be back quick. Maybe it’ll be a few months. Just not sure. Maybe I’ll wind up with a house in New Orleans – the deal is in the works, somehow, who knows? Maybe I’ll wind up somewhere else; who knows? Stranger things have happened in my life.
Weirdly, when I plan something it goes kerflooey. When I don’t plan, it slips into some sweet place. Why, the first time I went down there I wound up playing the piano at a nice little coffee shop and had a nice apartment two blocks from the beach. “Whoosh,” went the waves, waning myself to sleep each night. I had made no plan, I just kept taking buses south and wound up there – within days it all fell into place.
Maybe while I’m down there the US economy will tank – that may or may not help the house hunting. Maybe while I’m down there something else will come along in my life to keep it at the nail-biting excitement that permeates my existence. Sure, I’d like the dull life in my own house – but that somehow never quite seems to work. Maybe I’ll even get back on the Prague to Mazatlan commute – Prague in the Summers, and Mazatlan in the Winters, and across the US during Spring and Fall. Well, it’s quite a journey, those oh, 8,000, 9,000 miles, whatever it is.
It’s all “maybe” though – nothing is set, nothing is plain, nothing is ordained. Topsy-turvy seems to be my means of living. Of course, I never quite know where I’ll wind up next, either. But hey, at least I get to see lots of places. It’s rather incredible, when I think about it, all the places I’ve been to – and not just for a week or two vacation, but no, for months at a time. Oh, don’t try this at home; it takes a professional to do what I have done. It’s been going on for quite awhile. Sometimes I even settle down for a year or two. Other times, well, no, most times, it’s a few months in one place, then on to the next.
Meanwhile, of course – my posting here will become even more erratic. Not that that makes a difference. I’m not sure if I’m making a dent in the world. My hundred or so readers a day seem to be from all over the planet. My posts range from economics to foreign policy to the “gay issue” – of which the latter there is no issue except what some wackos make of it. Indeed, recently some of those wackos are being quoted on a site: http://www.glaad.org/cap – and the poor folks being quoted are besides themselves in fire and brimstone at the audacity of GLAAD to quote them. Yes, well, if one says and writes mush, then one should stand as firmly with your own mush as you can.
Still, I have no real house nor home at the moment. I’m not really living anywhere. I’m just bouncing around from one person’s house to the next. And well, that gets tiresome quickly if it’s in the same city or two (right now, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.) And it’s oh so much easier to just go on vacation for a few months and worry about whatever I should worry about whenever I return to wherever I might wind up next in the US. New Orleans would seem the most reasonable, from my perspective. Other people have other ideas. Still, an apartment in Mazatlan for a few months never hurt anyone (well, only if one drinks the tap water.)
Is it safe? Oh, that’s always the question for Mexico, isn’t it? After all, there’s State Department “advisories” about not traveling down there. And the “news” (or, as I might refer to it “the sensationalist mush,”) is filled with reports of violence. Only, well, it is surprisingly safe down there, as I discovered. Oh sure, some places are like Detroit, or a Chicago Housing Project, or even like the edges of the French Quarter in New Orleans, where the local criminal class picks over the drunken tourists. They are easy pickin’s, I’ll grant that. But if one stays away from drug dealers in Mexico, and the burgeoning revolutionary nuts, well, it’s quite nice. And if one stays out of small hill towns next to marijuana fields, and down in the seaside tourist districts, it’s not so dangerous at all. Frankly, I have felt safer in every Mexican city I ever went to than most places I have strolled around New Orleans.
Will some banditos seize the bus I’m taking, haul it off the road and steal everyone blind? Maybe. That could happen in any American city too, from what I gather. Will some drug dealers all of a sudden start using their Attorney General of the USA Eric Holder’s guns (Fast & Furious, the scandal that is slow brewing in Washington, DC,) to shoot up a bus terminal, or some police or military road block? Maybe. Who knows. On the other hand, one can be walking through a US shopping mall, or be on a city street, or at a restaurant, and have some crazed wacko shoot up the place just as easily. One’s chances of being in the fracas are the same in either place.
Still, I’m not really worried. Though maybe I’m a fatalist – if one is shot and killed in the ambush, oh well, that solves a lot of problems in one’s life, no? Certainly bills, medical care, housing, etc etc, are then nothing of much worry. Though what to do with the body is always troublesome to one’s survivors. Of course, sometimes I think more people worry more about the dead than they do the living. Which is backwards to me, but hey, I don’t make the emotional mush my stock in trade.
And that’s it for the moment, I think I’ll end here. The future is tomorrow, and so is, I think, the bus trip. I’m sort of tired dealing with morons here, maybe I’ll go deal with morons elsewhere. Here, a picture or two of where I’m going — for the fifth time — so it’s not like I don’t know what I’m getting into:
The beach at Olas Altas (the High Waves)
The Plaza Machado — a charming location, (and it was at El Restaurante El Memorial just beyond the yellow flowering trees where I played piano for so many months at a time.)
The Plaza Republica — oh, look at all the perils of the place! Why, a palm frond might drop on one’s head!
Me, high above the North Beach, with the Golden Zone (where the prices are in gold, for the gringos, and to which I rarely ventured,) in the background, and Mazatlan’s three signature islands right off the coast. They are strange lumps in the sea, and seemingly not connected to the flatlands of the city which they face.
The hustle and bustle of a downtown street — the criminal violent class doesn’t even have room to maneuver through the crowds and vehicles!
Ah, the Faro — supposedly the highest light house in the Western Hemisphere, if the tourist brochures are to be believed, and the second highest in the world, after Gibraltar. Well, those are the claims, who am I to argue.
And so, ta-ta for now, I’m off on another adventure while other things brew at home. Like I said, maybe I’ll wind up living in New Orleans, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll return to a new rationality in politics in this nation, or maybe the mush heads in power will continue to spoil the place. Who knows? I got no crystal ball.
I’ve been busy house hunting Wednesday, Mar 21 2012
Uncategorized 8:49 pm
Hello dear readers and all who wander to this site — I’m sorry I have not been posting a lot — I’ve been house hunting in New Orleans — I think I found one to buy, and the financing is in place — please bear with me as I complete the deal — my living arrangements are far more important that the impending bankruptcy of the nation, or the fantasies of the genocidal, expulsion, incarcerating fools who think they’ll eliminate gayness and gay folks from the planet.
As soon as I know more, or get settled in, I’ll get back to posting on a regular, almost daily basis.
Sometimes, in the greater scheme of things, getting one’s living arrangements together is far more important.
Thanks.
Jim
Since when is genocide against gays “controversial”? Wednesday, Mar 14 2012
Uncategorized 3:46 pm
I wake up this morning to find a most strange article staring me in the face on Yahoo:
The article is headlined: “Rock Group “Junkyard Prophet” Delivers Controversial Message at School Assembly” By Sarah B. Weir, Yahoo! blogger | Parenting
Really, Ms. Weir, (and Yahoo,) “exterminating homosexuals” is merely “controversial” – don’t you mean incendiary – as in to the gas chambers incendiary?
DUNKERTON, Iowa — A group invited into Dunkerton High School to bolster tolerance instead drove wedges between classmates, according to students. Now, leaders of Junkyard Prophet — a hard-rocking band and part of the You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministry — claim they will schedule a return visit this week.
They want to defend their message, which they claim has been misrepresented since Thursday’s school assembly.
Bradlee Dean, founder and executive director of the controversial ministry, said Friday the group intends to send a representative to Dunkerton this week. That person will show images taken during the recent performance.
Really, Ms. Weir, and the Dunkerton Iowa school authorities, and Yahoo, and politicians galore who troop to Mr. Dean’s radio show and to his side, and invite him in to speak, do you not do any research? A quick internet search of “Bradlee Dean Kill Gays” comes up with a plethora of sites detailing exactly how crazed this man is in his genocidal rage against gay folks:
“Minnesota House Republicans invited anti-gay preacher Bradlee Dean of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide to give the morning prayer. The prayer was so offensive to many legislators that House leadership brought in the chaplain to redo the prayer.”
The opening paragraph, mind you, and it got worse from there. And yes, well, I dare say “Exterminate the homosexuals” is quite offensive indeed, no?
“Dean has made many controversial statements as pastor of You Can Run, including advocating the incarceration of gays and lesbians” – and our extermination too. Oh let us not be fooled merely by the tomfoolery of creating a police state of enormous proportions to round us up to incarcerate us for the rest of our natural lives, and then to send us to the wall to be shot, or the gallows to be hung, or the gas chambers to be eliminated all the more quickly with less fuss and muss. Let us not forget that this creep thinks killing 10,000,000 or so fellow American is just a fine thing to do on any given day. Ah, but it’s merely “controversial”? Talk about sick jokes, right?
Oh it goes on from there, if one seeks to spend a moment in researching the mad ravings of this certifiable lunatic:
http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/13614-the-solution-to-gay-marriage-kill-them-.html
by Mel Seesholtz Ph.D.
“It’s no secret that the radical Christian Right’s most often quoted “psychologist,” discredited Paul Cameron, has been advocating killing gays for decades:
At the 1985 Conservative Political Action Conference, [Paul] Cameron announced to the attendees, “Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.” According to an interview with former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, Cameron was recommending the extermination option as early as 1983.”
Well, then, that’s well before gay marriage ever surfaced as a real issue to be discussed (not that we haven’t been bringing it up since the early 1950s, before I was even born,) but still when being gay was illegal in most states already – laws against our existence weren’t enough for these mini-Hitlers – they want us dead. Nothing says “good Christian” than “kill the gays,” eh?
You can read more about the Cameron’s “final solution” all over the internet – this is not some off the cuff one time statement – this is a continued effort to gin up support for the destruction and elimination of some 10,000,000 American taxpayers through a Nazi-Khmer Rouge inspired extermination plan. Peachy, eh? And you wonder why gays might “seem” paranoid? Well, I dare say when politicians and church leaders are all of a fellowship for exterminating their fellow Americans, well, I’m not paranoid – they are out to get me. And are quite pleasant in their calls for “extermination.” Swell!
“Of course, most the “Christian” leaders of the anti-gay movement distance themselves from such outright murderous statement, preferring instead to run workshop to teach children as young as 14 to hate gays:”
And where is one of the leaders of the GOP today? Rick Santorum is right there on Bradlee Dean’s radio show sharing points on how to eliminate gay people. Michelle Bachmann? Ditto. Tom Emmer of Minnesota’s governorship? Ditto. Newt? Ditto. How many more, who can keep track of it all?
But I find the blasé word “controversial” to be so strange, other worldly, simply beyond rational thought.
Oh hate gay folks all you want. Don’t go to a gay bar. But kill us? Really? That’s merely “controversial”? Say it ain’t so. In fact, own up to what Bradlee Dean has said, admit proudly that you are all for a murderous police state for liberty. Let that contradiction sink into your mind. Wonder about the rapaciousness of it, astound yourself with the very concept that in America in 2012 there are people in this nation calling for the wholesale slaughter of fellow citizens.
And when they are done killing all the gays, who shall be next on their list?
The left-right divide in the gay community Monday, Mar 12 2012
Uncategorized 4:15 pm
Just like among the vast heterosexual majority there is a divide between liberals and conservatives within the gay community. Or if you prefer, between Democrats and Republicans. Or Left & Right, if that’s the way you want to see the issue. The reality is, of course, that being gay is not a political position, despite all protestations to the contrary. Being gay doesn’t make one more or less economically aware. Nor does it make one more or less religious. Nor does it make one more or less for or against any particular issue or matter of public policy. About the only thing gay folks agree on is that we are all gay – after that it gets a bit fuzzy, fast. There’s no gay position on any laws that might be passed; except only on laws that are passed against gay people – or if laws are not passed to include us in the already existing laws.
And yet, on many a left-leaning gay blog there’s this idea that somehow to be a right-wing conservative gay person is not allowed. Of course, like at this blog, there are many conservative, liberty based, free market economic gay sites. There’s www.hillbuzz.org and www.gaypatriot.com and some Conservative Lesbian people keep telling me about, but which I have yet to access (who has the time?) And there’s much heated debate on the gay blogs like www.queerty.com and www.towleroad.com and www.truthwinsout.com other such sites between lefty and righty gays. Indeed, from what I can tell, there’s actually more left-right discussion on policy issues than there are on many a hetero site which lean to one side or the other. For on the hetero sites there’s this “we’re right wing, the rest are trolls.” And on left wing sites it’s “we’re liberals, the rest are idiots.” But on gay sites there’s much more discussion on policy matters not affecting gays that have a give and take on the left-right divide in the nation.
Too much government, too little government? Gay folks are arguing this all the time. I notice at places like www.spectator.org everyone who comments is a conservative of some sort – there are no left leaning folks come to argue policy. On www.nationalreview.com it’s the same thing – as it seems at places like www.huffingtonpost.com and other such left wing pro-Obama sites where heteros wander to give thoughts on the pressing issues of our day. Indeed, it seems that at heterosexual sites, or sites that don’t really look at gay stuff at all, or so peripherally it is as if they are not addressing the matter at all, there’s just one side. The other side be damned. Or if someone comes from the other side to “debate” it devolves into “you’re an idiot” sort of childishness. That doesn’t really resolve anything, and it seems that ideas are set down in concrete and nothing the other side says could conceivably make a difference.
Yet, at gay blogs there is this give and take, there is this “well, could both sides have something to add to the debate, that might help the other reach the accommodation we all so sorely need?” Well, we gays should at least take credit for that. Heterosexuals might take a lesson from what we are doing on gay sites.
Though too, some gays claim that only the Democrats are for us – even as the 95% Democratic voting African-American community is rather anti-gay. Or the Catholic clergy, which seemed to be agog with Obamacare until the reality that it’s not about providing health care so much as it is controlling who will be pay for the healthcare provided. Witness the new mandate that Catholic organizations pay for contraception (well, lie down with dogs, get fleas, eh?) And for the record, since I’m against government mandates, no, I do not think that Catholics against birth control or contraceptives should have to pay for what they think is wrong – particularly in light of my comments yesterday blasting the sovereign Vatican City Catholic Church for interfering in our political process here in America on gay matters. We gays don’t exactly require contraception – we are, um, sort of a very natural method of preventing babies indeed.
What is the gay position on the failed Chevy Volt? Well, if you are a lefty gay you think all of sudden that “What is good for General Motors is good for America,” even if but a decade ago “What is good for General Motors is good for America” was some evil capitalist plot to let corporations run rampant everywhere. If you are gay and want to save the environment, well, by all means, do your part, do what you can. If you want the government to run the car companies, and mandate this and that, well, then, argue for that on economics (though it’s hard, try at least.) But there’s nothing in gayness that requires one to love government run or controlled companies, that’s for sure. I’m against government run car companies, regardless of whether the control is direct or indirect – and the difference there being a sort of socialism or a sort of fascism. I’m still gay, however.
What is the gay position on the IRS and the confounded tax code? Could we really be for 67,000 pages of tax code because we’re gay? Youse got’s to be kidding, right? And since so many gay men own their own businesses (since we were fired from so many jobs or can’t get hired, well, it just made sense to be entrepreneurial,) one would think that gay business owners would lean towards the right side in wanting to dismember the IRS. Of all the things I had hoped Obama would change, it was the IRS. Alas, all he did was give more power to them to run the healthcare system, with purportedly 16,000 new IRS agents needed to police Obamacare’s many mandates and new taxes, and added a few thousand more pages to the convoluted mess. And nothing says “healthcare” like the IRS, eh?
What is the gay position on whether to drill, baby, drill (get your minds out of the gutter those who think we’re sex crazed slut-bunnies,) or whether to plow endless billions into failed green technologies? There can be none. Partly because energy is simply unrelated to whether gays can live in peace in our own nations without being castigated for destroying the place. Partly because gay taxpayers are being just as screwed by government as heterosexual taxpayers over this issue of whether to go for the pie in the sky dreamland of algae and wind and solar power making us live in clean energy nirvana. Still, on gay sites this is a debate, while on heterosexual sites it’s all one side or the other. Quite illuminating, actually, to see the differences between gay and hetero sites on energy that’s for sure.
Of course, just like on heterosexual sites – Republicans call Democrats demons, and Democrats call Republicans repugnant. And they don’t even bother to try to see if they have common ground. While on gay sites, well, there’s so much more nuance. Perhaps we gays have something to teach the heterosexuals on decent discussion. Though too, it does seem that the left-gays like to call the right-gays “idiots” and “morons” and such. And all because the Republicans are more persnicketty about their evolving on the gay thing. While Obama, who is famously “evolving” on the gay thing because of some smooth words. Yes, but what good is gay marriage when we’re all broke and the government runs everything? Oh, socialists, the left, communists, Democrats, whatever, they don’t give a damn about gay folks, though they do give a damn about gay votes. Perhaps the Republicans, righties, conservatives, should give a damn about the gay votes, even if they don’t give a damn about the gay folks. Well, that’s what happens when one side claims it’s evolving, and the other side simply is without trumpeting the reality.
Face it gay folks, both Left and Right, both Democrats and Republicans, are evolving on gay folks. Hell, the entire world is evolving, or devolving if you wish, on gay folks. For gayness is not some American political problem – it’s a worldwide phenomenon that those poor pitiful folks at the “Occupy” tents could only dream of. There’s not a country on earth that doesn’t have it’s “gay problem” – and we are an ornery bunch, no longer willing to put up with the nonsense, lies, fabrications and sheer delusions said about us. In Iraq, Iran, Egypt, gay rights is an issue. In India, Indonesia and Istanbul, gays are an issue. In South America and Australia and all the little islands betwixt that twain, gays are an issue. Why? Why have we pariahs of the world simply decided to stand up now and say “Oh the hell with this attack on us. We’re not going to take it anymore”? Well, it’s precisely because gayness is not a political issue.
Gay is. It just is. All the theologians are simply wrong that we are attacking families, that we are a threat to societies, that we are a danger to families and all that is holy and good. Never before have one single group of people been so dispersed over the globe with one single message. And it behooves gay folks, left and right, to point this out – this is not some American issue only. It is not a Christian issue. It’s not anything but “will heteros finally come to accept the reality of a few gay folks – or kills us all?”
We gays are simply fed up with the crap that’s called thought about us. Oddly – well, not so oddly, since we are God ordained to exist – we are the exact same percentage in every country on earth. Makes no difference which rock you look under or around or on top of – there we are, the same measly 5% or less of the world is gay. And heterosexuals are panicked, absolutely panicked! Frankly, we can’t figure out why. What do heterosexuals know about each other that we can’t grasp? Are they that unsure of themselves? Beats us.
Oh, science hasn’t figured it out, not that they’re trying. Theologians are quite sure we’re hell bent on making them gay, which shows how weak they think heterosexuality is, that heterosexuals can be changed to be gay. And how deluded are they to think we can be changed to heterosexual, eh? We keep telling everyone – “not going to happen.” And their recommendation is that we “pray away the gay.” Yes, well, we would much prefer to pray away the gay hate, and perhaps we’re getting somewhere. The nations of this world are not going to get rid of some 300,000,000 of us, that’s for sure – not without a well coordinated genocide, which some would seem to be willing to coordinate. Uganda is among the top contenders for the “Me, me, I want to run the genocide!” Many Christian Americans, such as they style themselves to give themselves a bad name are working with the Ugandans – and someone said White Christian Evangelicals are racists? Hahaha! They both want to kill us all.
Still, here in this nation some gays are all for Obama the Evolver, while some are all for the more rational side of the non-genocidal Right Evolvers. And well, it’s entertaining to see the play between the two sides on economics and the IRS and the environment etc etc, while all of us, in the end, finally, do agree on one thing – we’re gay, and that’s it. So now, what about you screaming heterosexuals? The ball’s in your court. We got ours in our hands.
The Pope, a foreign leader, interferes in US internal affairs Sunday, Mar 11 2012
Uncategorized 4:55 pm
So, on a Sunday, a day set aside for a bit more love than usually is dispensed, a foreign head of state, Pope Benedict XVI, has butted his head into the internal affairs of the United States with illogical & nasty attacks upon citizens of this nation, and citizens who are not Catholic to boot. Citizens such as I, a non-Catholic, as all gay men are non-Catholics, for the Vatican is sure that gay folks cannot be members of the Catholic Church. That’s their business, for I fully respect the rights of any nation to control its borders, and I do not seek to live within the borders of the Vatican. But the USA is not within the borders of the Vatican, that’s for sure. I read of this unlawful intrusion here: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-condemns-gay-marriage-speech-us-bishops-141437350.html
And any club or cult might say “No, you cannot be a member of our club.” But he directs his lobbyists working in this nation – all unregistered employees of a foreign government – to condemn the duly enacted legislative acts of legislatures in this nation pertaining to citizens of this nation. Frankly, he’s got some hell of a nerve. Let us explore this issue.
The Vatican is a sovereign nation. The pope is the head of state of that foreign sovereign nation; in a sense he is “president for life” of that nation. That nation is no democracy, not in the least. It even restricts its voters to a relative handful of its own citizens within the Vatican. Too bad for the not-allowed to vote folks, eh? Meanwhile, the United States maintains diplomatic relations with the Vatican, exchanging ambassadors. As near as I can recall it is incumbent upon foreign nations to register their lobbyists in this nation with the State Department. As far as I know, the Vatican has not registered its priests, bishops and cardinals as Americans working for a foreign government. But that’s exactly what they are. And while the pope is busy trying to influence my nation’s laws from afar, I now demand of my government, to which I pay taxes, of which I am a citizen, to follow our own laws and make the Catholic Church register is employees as paid lobbyists of a foreign nation. Which is exactly what they are.
Indeed, the pope is quite insistent that he is in command of said priests, bishops and cardinals working within this nation. If they are not lobbying for a foreign government then what does one call this? If these priests, bishops and cardinals are so sure that the dictates of the pope are more important than the duly passed laws of the legislatures of this nation, then they are foreign agents working to undermine the very basis of our Republic. A republic, mind you, that has clear words in our founding documents that religion is not to be used as a test for office or citizenship, and that our government can’t enforce the religious dictates of one religion over another. But the pope seeks to instill Catholic law, Vatican law, here within this nation.
The Vatican has the right to be all Catholic, much as Israel can be Jewish and Saudi Arabia can be Muslim. While I disagree with the concept of a religious based state, as a citizen of this nation it’s not really not my business if that’s what they do there. Many nations have national religions, even Germany and the Scandinavian nations, with their state supported Lutheran Churches, or England with its state supported Anglican Church, or any of the other many nations of this world with state supported religions. This nation has a strict prohibition against state supported religions. That’s not hard to grasp for Americans. The pope, not being an American, obviously can’t grasp this. His lobbyists and paid employees, American citizens even, obviously also have a problem with this concept.
And so the pope this weekend has sought not only to condemn the acts of American legislatures, which I suppose any nation can complain of another nation (yes, the US complains about the acts of other nations; that’s what nations have always done,) but has directed its paid lobbyists within this nation to argue for the establishment of the Catholic religion within our borders. And it has further directed its employees, its lobbyists, its minions, to condemn citizens of this nation who are not Catholic – not Catholic by the very definition set forth by the Vatican itself: one cannot be a Catholic and gay at the same time. OK, then, I’m not Catholic. Frankly, my family hasn’t really been Catholic since the year 1415, when the Catholic Church burnt Jan Hus at the stake for not following the teachings of the Catholic Church. Indeed, the popes of those times actually launched armies in war against the sovereign nation of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Would the pope launch an army against the USA, if he had one, for not following his dictates as previous popes did against my forefathers in Prague?
I don’t care what the Catholic Church does, or whom it allows into its sanctuaries, or what criteria it espouses to be a Catholic. But I certainly give a damn when that foreign nation seeks to influence my own nation against me. And to influence my own family against me. Talk about an abandonment of family values, eh? Sure, Mr. Ratzinger, go ahead, tell my family to hate and despise me, but gosh darnit, I’m going to speak up about that bit of anti-family mush you call your religion. That you abjure marriage, and then seek to condemn any I might have is all the more galling. I don’t care if you don’t want to get married, but I certainly do. And I don’t care that you live in a 1500 room gold encrusted palace while crying poverty; the hypocrisy of churches and politicians is legion.
And so the pope has directed his paid employees working within this nation, employees who are not properly registered as agents of a foreign government, as they are in actuality, to condemn me, an American citizen, for refusing adamantly to join the Catholic faith and abjure my American citizenship and join a club I not only seek not to join, but wouldn’t let me join if I wished to. Well, I dare say, the man has got a pair, eh? Somewhere under the folds of his dress I’m sure he’s quite the man. Somewhere above the neck line he’s a bit confused. And I dare say I’m a bit more moral for I seek not a fight with that man in his ruby red slippers and funny hats, but he seeks a fight with me, and he knows me not.
As a gay man, as all gay men do, we do not seek to join that church. We don’t want to use their sanctuaries for any of our religious services, nor to alter the precepts of that church. They may believe as they wish for all I care. I think they are wrong, wholly, but I’m not in the business of influencing foreign governments. As a guy specifically precluded from joining that church I have upheld my end of the bargain the Catholic Church has laid at my feet – if gay, not Catholic. Good enough for me. But I certainly can’t tolerate or accept that a foreign religious based government with a limited bunch of voters now demands I follow its laws, follow its beliefs, follow its demands for me to give up my American Constitutional Rights and the concept that All Men Are Created Equal, and to abandon my religious beliefs and tell my religion they have no right to minister whatever sacrament they wish to minister unto me and I would accept.
The pope does not think I am equal to him, but instead somewhat less than equal, and not entitled to American laws and American beliefs. Yep, that’s nervy. I wouldn’t tolerate it from an imam of Islam, nor a rabbi of Israel. I wouldn’t tolerate it from the Queen of England demanding I adhere to the conventions of Canterbury. I certainly won’t tolerate it from an unmarried man in a dress now complaining that I seek to get legally married in my own nation, to which I pay taxes, in which I have equality, and which the pope is not a citizen of and pays not a cent of taxes to.
And yet, this man has now demanded his paid employees and lobbyists – and with far more resources than I could ever muster – to demand of my government that I be stripped of my American Constitutional rights – rights still denied on many fronts and in many places, and rights being fought over in our own American way – so that we all here might follow what the Pope in the Vatican decides is best for this nation. Even more astoundingly, the pope demands I follow the dictates of the Catholic Church – while at the same time saying I simply cannot be a Catholic. Well, sir, you are out of your ever lovin’ mind.
I have never sought to enter a Catholic Church to make them change, but I have sought to influence my own legislative process, as I am free to do as an American citizen. I have not sought to impose my beliefs or ideas upon the Catholic Church, but that church has sought to impose itself on me. I have not asked the Catholic Church to do anything, or think anything, nor do I tell any American who wishes to follow the ideas of that Church to do as I say or suffer legislative acts against them. But the pope feels it’s his business to come to my nation, to put his paid lobbyists, unregistered at that, and therefore, to me, illegally acting within my nation, and demand of my legislatures to pass laws against me, or to prevent laws for me. And I’m just flummoxed that the head of state of a foreign nation, an undemocratic dictatorship at that, thinks he has the right to do so.
And that the Catholic Church has engaged in a widespread worldwide criminal enterprise of child molesting is all the more galling. It has engaged in financial chicanery to hide its assets within this nation to prevent proper restitution to the victims of its evil trafficking in perverts and child molesters. That Church has simply played loose with American laws in a way no other nation has ever done. It has infiltrated our nation in an attempt to create a Catholic state religion here on these shores – shores to which my grandparents fled from the maw of that Church in Europe. That Church has seen fit to condemn my forefathers in the Czech lands, it has invaded that nation repeatedly. Frankly, I’m fed up with that Church’s hubris and lack of understanding the command of Jesus: love they neighbor as thyself, and mind your own business.
Furthermore, that Church has condemned Jews and non-Catholic Christians for 2,000 years. And now it seeks to continue its nefarious plans for a worldwide Catholic government headed by the president-for-life in the Vatican. And while its current bleating is said to be just against gay Americans (as it has also sought to condemn other nations for allowing their gay citizens to live in peace) it is no different than what that Church did for 2,000 years in harassing Jews and non-Catholics. That Church has committed genocide against any and all who refuse to join the Church. And now what? When they are done with the gays, will the pope of a sudden denounce America and her 50 states for allowing Jews to practice their religion or get married? Will it all of a sudden come to condemn Protestants of all sorts here and elsewhere? Will they come and tell the legislative bodies of this nation and others that marriage is to be by Catholic rules and no other? That is the logical inference of this current mush.
The logic is the same. So what if the Church refuses to bless Jewish couples? That is their right, as much as Jewish temples need not bless Catholic unions. But does Israel come and say to American states, “Don’t allow gay marriages, for it’s against the laws of Israel”? We would laugh at such a contention. We would simply tell Jerusalem to take a hike. And it’s time for this nation to tell the Catholic Church to take a hike and mind its own business.
Would this nation’s legislative bodies allow the prelates and dictators and foreign potentates of other nations to decide what laws shall be made for or about this nation’s gay citizens? Well, it’s time for this nation’s legislatures to tell the Catholic Church that what non-Catholics do is not their business. The Church may maintain vast amounts of tax free property here, and it’s paid employees and lobbyists earn tax free incomes – and now these foreigners who are free from American taxation come to tell the taxpaying citizens of this nation to expel, condemn, perhaps even outlaw some of her citizens who refuse to knuckle under to the dictates of a man in a dress who bitches about drag queens? Its preposterous.
Again, my complaint is not that the Vatican is a dictatorship, with a politburo not much different than the Soviet Empire’s. Nor is it a complaint against the ideas and laws and precepts of what goes on in the Vatican. Nor it is against any American who seeks to lessen their own Americanness so that they might follow the dictates of some foreign land. My complaint is that this pope, this man who has allowed unholy actions by its own employees against innocent children, and who has beliefs that I find ridiculous and even abhorrent in so many ways I can’t catalog them here, a nation who lives by a strange superstition that my family gave up nearly 600 years ago, has now decided to come to these shores, and hire Americans without registering them as required as paid lobbyists for a foreign government, to seek to make my own legislature pass laws against me that are more to some foreign rulers dictator’s liking. It is, frankly, simply, irrevocably unAmerican.
My email to the monumentally wrong Kirk Cameron Saturday, Mar 10 2012
Uncategorized 4:52 pm
This is an email I sent today to Kirk Cameron, some small time actor who thinks he has the right to disparage me and mine by fabricating lies and delusions to make his day better for himself. Frankly I’m fed up with the stupidity and lack of Christian and American values this sort of little minded man expresses. So I will tell my readers what I wrote this man who insists my own family should hate me because he erroneously believes I hate or attack my family or any other family in this nation.
Dear Mr. Cameron,
As a taxpaying American, with my own business, with my creative efforts not much different than yours (though less lucrative, alas,) and being nearly the same age as you, and being a rather productive, helpful, courteous and kind person, with a vibrant and huge family who has loved me just as much as they ever did since they figured out I was gay when I was oh, 14 or 15, (or right about when you figured out you were not gay,) well, I’m simply appalled, as all my large family are (over 100 members) that you think I am destructive to my own family and my own country. Really now sir, do you really think that the nearly 1,000,000 gay business owners in this nation are wrecking it? Do you really think we are “attacking” your heterosexual lifestyle? Are you really that obtuse to not see reality? Say it ain’t so.
I find you and your kind’s constant bleating that I’m “anti-family” and “anti-society” and “anti-American” to be, frankly, so brain dead and disgusting I can no long fathom the depth of your hatred, your lack of knowledge, and your inability to grasp the elemental truth of God — He wanted a few of us to be gay. That you are so blind as to just fabricate lies is astounding to me, I had expected better of you. You disappoint me yet again. You are, um, Monumentally Wrong about gay Americans.
You have wandered so far afield from the word of Jesus you are not a Christian anymore. it is “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” It is NOT “stir up hate against those you don’t like.” Frankly, sir, you need a better sort of Christianity.
Frankly, sir, that you would want my own family to hate me is simply beyond any Christian concept I and my family could ever hold. That you think I hate them or seek their destruction is simply wrong.
Sir, let my people go. Mind your own business. And learn something about we tiny few who are gay before you go off on your mush headed nonsense — and stop asking my family to hate me.
Thank you
Jim Hlavac
PS, I really did think you were a cute guy when you were on that ridiculous TV show years ago; it’s the only reason I bothered to watch an episode or two.
The Stockton CA and North Korean Bankruptcies Wednesday, Feb 29 2012
Uncategorized 7:33 pm
Well, there’s a lot of bankruptcy in the twin sagas of Stockton California and North Korea. Oh sure, two different places, but yet, well, not all that dissimilar in the results of their operations. North Korea might be a fourth world dictatorship building nuclear weapons, and Stockton a regular California, USA city with extraordinary high crime, foreclosure and unemployment rates – but still, they are the same in this: they spent themselves into bankruptcy. It’s easy to do, and it doesn’t make a difference whether you spend it on nuclear weapons or on pension plans and benefit packages for union employees, or even if you are a person who likes tomorrow’s gadgets but you make yesterday’s salary. Just like Greece spent itself into bankruptcy with the public employee sector consuming the national wealth, and the USA is spending itself into bankruptcy with $1.5 trillion dollar annual deficits.
For bankruptcy is simply owing more money than one earns, has saved, or can borrow on top of the distended credit one already has. It makes no difference on what the money is spent, or whether for good or bad things. And it makes no difference the size of the entity which bankrupts itself. One person earning $15,000 a year can bankrupt himself as well as one country earning $15,000,000,000,000 a year. For bankruptcy is one of those things that is exceedingly clear in definition and observance: if you earn 15 whatevers, but spend 30, year in and year out, you will go bankrupt. That’s rather simple, no?
Ah, apparently one can fool many people with the “full faith and credit” of the borrower to make believe it can’t happen. “Oh, don’t worry, he’ll earn the money next year, when things get good.” Yah, sure, right, ask Greece, and the Germans who are bailing them out before we must bailout the Germans. I have to love this bizarre notion of stupidity and uneconomic thought from our own government. For contrary to the assertion of one Valerie Jarred (or Jarret? Oh, who cares, the idiot,) adviser to the president, unemployment does not help the economy. For one person winds up supporting two: himself and the unemployed guy next door. And that’s just going to bankrupt the one earning the money. Well, it’s the same for nations. Even good guys like Greece, or pariahs like North Korea. And certainly for cities like Stockton which can’t print their own money or counterfeit another country’s, like Greece and North Korea love to do, respectively.
Here are the stories.
http://news.yahoo.com/stockton-could-become-biggest-city-bankrupt-024108696.html
And I read this drivel:
“However, thanks to a new California law, the City Council’s move also could be the first step toward avoiding such a dramatic move. Under the state law, municipalities considering bankruptcy must first seek mediation with creditors, with the goal of settling debts without filing for Chapter 9 protection.”
Yes, well, one does not need a new law to do that. That should go without saying. What, you’d declare bankruptcy before begging and pleading for a little debt settling? Hell, I thought everyone would plead to reschedule, reduce, waive, cancel, extend, hold off, renegotiate, etc etc, a debt before just walking away from it and going to a bankruptcy court. What cities in California could not do a little, um “Debt Counseling” as it’s called? Indeed, it’s probably a service provided or paid for by the debt inducing policies and programs of the good government of Stockton which seeks to help its people, no doubt, deal with their foreclosures and their unemployment.
But suppose the banks and bond holders agree to “settle the debt”? – that means, somehow, they are either going to be giving up repayment, thus earning a loss, thus cutting their income, thus making paying their own debts a bit rougher, or they are going to lower the interest rates or extend the payments, perhaps even wait a year to get the paying back up again. Well, it makes no difference. The outcome is that the debt holder is out some money now, and possibly forever, which negatively impacts on their own debt situation.
And this mush: “Dozens of residents attended Tuesday’s six-hour council meeting to oppose the vote to enter mediation, saying they feared it would push Stockton further into trouble. The river port city of 290,000 already has the second-highest foreclosure rate in the nation and one of the highest crime and unemployment rates.”
The problems of the city are not from home foreclosures, those are individual people problems. Indeed, the city even still gets the taxes on the houses, for the banks which foreclose must still keep paying those.
Instead, the reporter breathlessly goes on with still more mush:
“In recent years, thousands of new homes mushroomed in Stockton, part of a housing boom in suburban development that attracted buyers from the San Francisco Bay area and beyond. But when the economy crashed and the construction bubble burst, Stockton was battered by foreclosures and lost income from property taxes and other fees. Multi-year labor contracts with escalating costs added to the burden, forcing officials to make deep emergency cuts to the city payroll, including its police department.”
So, in recent years, the city took in much more money from ample fees and taxes no doubt, for new construction, but either neglected to charge enough for the services rendered in return (doubtful,) or they gave “Multi-year labor contracts with escalating costs.” Yes, that’s it. For again, whomever foreclosed is still paying the taxes. Or the city itself will seize the property, which is doubtful, for they’d rather the tax money on empty houses with no kids in the public school system to pay for. Still, the fees from the construction was collected up front, and the fees for garbage not picked up anymore from the lack of people, well, of what use are those fees, except to pay for the bloated labor budgets of non-working garbage men on the public payroll?
Then mush from the politician, at direct contradiction to the reporter’s claim that the magical new law for mediation will prevent the bankruptcy by passing along the loss to other people outside of the city who may then face their own financial troubles and even bankruptcy. Imagine the poor schnook who has his life savings in City of Stockton bonds? Well, go greet at Walmart till he’s 75, oh well, while city employees earn some big bucks for doing less since there’s less people. More than a few are quoted in the article “I’m outta’ here.”
“If they vote for mediation, it is the first step towards bankruptcy,” former City Manager Dwane Milnes told KCRA-TV. “That means 1,000 people could lose retirement benefits.”
Aw, a 1,000 people could lose their retirement benefits. Well, someone will lose them. Either the schnooks who bought city bonds, the businessman owed money by the city, the banks kissing off a loan. The money isn’t there. So who along the famous multiplier chain of dollars will be out the dollars? If the city retirees keep their benefits, someone else will lose a like amount of cash to cover the new found resources to keep the retirement benefits. Which is why cities shouldn’t be in the retirement business. In fact, if city employees were given their money to put into their own accounts, they’d have the money, and more importantly, the city wouldn’t have had that cash pile to borrow from and replace with good faith and credit bonds of the city. Egad, what a mush pit, eh?
“Stockton will be the first city to test the state law, Assembly Bill 506, which is less than two months old. It requires local government agencies to undergo mediation or hold a public hearing and declare a fiscal emergency before filing for bankruptcy”
Well, yes, nice of the new law to require the city to tell the people, “We screwed up, you lose.” And formally with an “emergency”! Wonderful! The people are duly informed. And the former city manager (which is a pretty powerful position for California cities; you know, the person who actually runs the place while the mayor is out cutting ribbons and kissing babies,) is so sure that the mediation will push the city into bankruptcy. Well, sure, it must, for the city is, um, bankrupt. Perhaps the debt holders won’t agree to any terms and demand their money. Hell, perhaps they’ll go seize and claim some of the assets of the city so they can sell them for real cash to the highest bidder. Hell, put the city employment office building on the auction block and sell it. There’s just too many high paid employees anyway, ones the city clearly can’t afford. Or they’ll just kiss off the debt, and add it to their loss column. Shuffling debts, what a concept, eh?
And then there’s the international bankruptcy mush: North Korea is so broke that they must trade some lying about their nuclear ambitions for hundreds of thousands of tons of food. It’s not their first time, no. Oh, going back to Clinton, hell, maybe Reagan, maybe Eisenhower for all I know. But it seems every few years for “astounding breakthroughs” of “agreements” with North Korea’s despotic lunatic leaders the USA gives them food in return for “ending” their current programs for nuclear weapons. Yes, well, at least the ones we know about which are included in the agreements.
Oh, this is no new story; this is but the latest charade given by the clever Kim family, kings of North Korea, (and when you hand power from father to son to son’s son, well, very Louis-lou-ah, if you ask me, and with three Kims in a row, just put Roman numerals already, and spare us the confusion; current man at bat? Kim III.) Now let’s watch the muttering mushrooms pop up at the State Department with a piece of paper in their hands for “peace in our times.” And then the next president is faced with the same dilemma. Oh, there’s a “humanitarian” crisis – whimper! North Korean’s starving, let’s help those who create the starvation, for sovereignty’s sake, I’m sure. So, let’s feed the bankrupt nation’s people in return for the King Kim III’s promises, not a one of which has ever been kept. Here, the story:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/u-announces-diplomatic-breakthrough-north-korea-152331635.html
Under an agreement reached in direct talks in Beijing last week, North Korea has agreed to allow the return of nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile tests, nuclear tests, and nuclear activities at Yongbyon, including uranium enrichment activities, the State Department said. In return, the United States will provide North Korea with a large food aid package.
Yes, well, now that the North Koreans know the price of a “large food aid package” is some lies and fake moratoriums, why, there’s no incentive to tell the truth or make a real end to the nuclear ambitions. Why use up the currency you pay for your food with? After all, if they were truly to end their nuclear programs, why, they’d have nothing to buy food with when this food runs out. We wouldn’t take the Won or whatever it is, for it’s worth less than the packaging on the food stuffs. And we surely can’t take their dollars, for they print them up, counterfeiting with wild and public abandon, and quite good, if truth be told.
“To improve the atmosphere for dialogue and demonstrate its commitment to de-nuclearization, the DPRK has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile launches, nuclear tests and nuclear activities at Yongbyon, including uranium enrichment activities,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a press statement Wednesday. “The DPRK has also agreed to the return of IAEA inspectors to verify and monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment activities at Yongbyon and confirm the disablement of the 5-MW reactor and associated facilities.”
Yes, well, I’m sure when the DPRK (oh, please, must we really go by the fictitious “democratic people’s republic of Korea”? Just call it the Kingdom of Kim and be done with it,) are done doing all they wish at Yongbyon they’ll move to more charming place. But I bet we shall soon discover at oh, “Dum Nuts” or perhaps “Screw you” some other nuclear efforts running apace. And then, oh the horrors, we shall have to have a new round of negotiations. Perhaps the current King Kim can say that the previous two King Kims had not told him of Dum Nuts or Screw You, and thus, well, for a few hundred thousand tons of food he’d be glad to forgo the efforts there too. Why, since the need for food is never ending for the 17 million in the world’s biggest prison camp, I’m sure the Kim family has facilities and moratoriums and fancy hotel rooms for international inspectors galore to pay for the food.
Then the self-delusional, let’s help Obama and the Nobel Prize committee, doggerel mush:
“Despite the stunning breakthrough, “the United States still has profound concerns regarding North Korean behavior across a wide range of areas,” Nuland’s statement cautioned, but added that “today’s announcement reflects important, if limited, progress in addressing some of these.” In return, the United States will “move forward with our proposed package of 240,000 metric tons of nutritional assistance along with the intensive monitoring required for the delivery of such assistance,” she said.
Ah, yes, “important, but limited” – yes, well, so does an alcohol make important, but limited progress by buying two fifths instead of a half gallon. Surely it’s a stunning breakthrough in blind stupidity on the part of our erstwhile Foggy Bottom representatives for peace in our times. Sure. And just how many times does it take for the North Koreans to fool us into a few hundred thousand pounds of food stuffs, to be diligently monitored in being given out to the prison population, before we recognize it all for what it is?: Mush and Lies. Egad, and this umpteenth time of being paid for food with empty promises and lie is “stunning” alright, in a most depressing way. Ah, but I suppose we can claim jobs here in America! Why, it’s helps the immigrant farm laborers here in the US get paid by growing free food for the North Koreans, while the citizen taxpayer is taxed to pay for the military stationed ever on alert just across the border in Non-Kim Korea. Egad, what a tangled web, no?
It’s stunning alright, right up there with the new California law which will prevent civic bankruptcy by calling it mediation. Let’s just define things out of existence, that’s the bankrupt model.
