For one cannot say that a gay man is of good enough stature to be on the highest court in the state, but is not of good enough stature to marry the man of his dreams. It’s just political pandering – to whom, it’s hard to tell. For why would he nominate the hitherto obscure Mr. Harris to such an esteemed position and then tell him he’s not worthy of a legal marriage? Here’s the article from which I feed: http://news.yahoo.com/nj-gov-says-hed-veto-gay-marriage-bill-182600917.html

It’s clear that Christie, who deigned to run for president, would certainly love to be vice-president, and I guess he’s got to appease the voters of New Jersey and the Republican faithful – my, what a tight rope the man must wander. And for a man of girth, a man who has abandoned all thought of the sin of gluttony, that’s astounding. For I doubt Mr. Harris was the only qualified person to be found among the 8 million people of New Jersey to sit on the high court at this moment. For what purpose would he nominate Mr. Harris? Surely it is for some political reason? Or could Mr. Harris, toiling in obscurity lo these many years all of a sudden be the wisest man in the land?

And when the whole issue comes before the state’s Supreme Court, as it will do, one way or the other, by one side or the other, perhaps as to whether the touted amendment passes muster, or is required, or is something or else, or should be stricken or upheld if it passes or fails, no doubt the forces arrayed against gay people will of course demand he recuse himself – for these heathens are sure that no gay judge shall ever have a right to rule on a gay matter – they have made that clear in state after state, case after case. Indeed, no doubt the forces against gay folk’s very existence will be enraged that a gay man is on the court at all, rather than in some religious “reparative” therapy center at the age of 65 or whatever Mr. Harris is. He’s not a young’un that’s for sure.

So Christie says: “Let the people of New Jersey decide what is right for the state.” Yes, well, what else then should be put to the people’s vote? After all, if this is so important that the duly constituted legislature is not to be trusted, no doubt no other matter can be trusted to the Representative Republic in which we live – and not the Athenean Democracy which Mr. Christie now seems to think we live in. Hell, Mr. Christie, of “lower the taxes” fame, and “cut the union’s” power demeanor – why not put those matters to be decided by the people? You have not called for one other thing to be put to the people – but have cajoled the legislature to do your bidding. You haven’t called for a vote of the people on one single matter in your tenure as governor – and now, of a sudden, the people are paramount and the governor and legislature is to be shunted aside? Then resign, and let every matter be a people’s vote. Be consistent — on truly important matters — and not the tiny thing of gay marriage – for we cannot be this important.

From the article: “Christie told a town hall audience that an issue of such magnitude should be decided by residents and shouldn’t be treated as ‘ political football.’” Oh really? Don’t make it a “political football.” Well, sir, how on earth could making a political referendum for the people’s vote on a constitutional amendment not be a political football? You will have to launch the campaign – a year or two prior to the vote – with politicking galore! With gay folks to be kicked around in unholy nastiness and vitriol by political figures of all sundry and sordid sort. Do you think, sir, that there will be no politicking about the issue? Will not every political group, PAC, political hack, political ads, political campaigns, political advisers, and every politician in the state being importuned by every two-bit NO GAYS! nit wit in the land come to the Garden State to politic? Of course they will. Please, spare me the “no political football” nonsense – we have long been out of the huddle, and under the steely gaze of the front-line men to be unaware of the politicking to come on the issue.

Indeed, to take the football away from the politics you should sign the bill and shush. But to say you don’t want it to be political and then throw it into the political arena is astounding mush. Particularly, the day after you nominate a gay man to be on the state’s highest court which will wind up ruling somehow someday on the very matter of the referendum. Not to mention, New Jersey doesn’t really have a referendum process – I can recall not once in my 45 years of cogent life that New Jersey ever put any matter before the entire electorate to be decided – perhaps I’m wrong, but I dare say no.

“He said a proposed constitutional amendment should be drafted and put to a referendum, a position he also held when he campaigned for office in 2009.” Yes, well, again, I can’t recall a single other amendment to the constitution of New Jersey ever put to the vote of the entire people – which usually means some 35% or so – for that’s the usual turnout in elections in that fair state.

“Of such magnitude…”? Really? What magnitude? Who will be affected by gay marriage? Gay folks of course, will get to have a little legal protections and benefits now denied, though they pay the extortionate tax rates of New Jersey that Mr. Christie is trying to quell. This buggaboo about heteros being “impacted” by gay marriage – I keep pointing out: are heteros so unsure of their sexuality? Are their marriages so built on sand (seems so, given the divorce rate and the adulterous bed-hopping) that they must deny “marriage” to gay folks lest their own marriages fall by the wayside like a seed on stony ground? Is the happiness, even bliss, of gay couples so inimical to the hetero conscience that only preventing the legal recognition of the practical on-the-ground reality that necessary?

And he’s all for civil unions, this Mr. Christie is, and so apparently the good heteros can handle the concept, but what, not the word “marriage”? Are heteros that unsure and unsteady of themselves? Meanwhile, we gays are clamoring for marriage in ways and strengths that the “conservative” Mr. Christie should marvel at. Indeed, as some commentators at National Review and the American Spectator, hardly pro-gay publications, and Christie lovers of note, have marveled at the strongly professed desires and commitments to marriage that gays demand and insist upon – as we have been doing so since Frank Kameny stood before the gates of the White House in the late 1950s. Gay groups have been insisting on this for decades, this is nothing new.

“Whether or not to redefine hundreds of years of societal and religious traditions should not be decided by 121 people in the Statehouse,” he said. Oh really? Besides the fact that nothing is being “redefined” but a hitherto matter of equality expanded to cover more people, the erstwhile reason for this Republic. Or was “voting” redefined” by letting women vote? Was “freedom” redefined by getting rid of slavery – and in one fell swoop with nary 121 legislators of any sort or style, state or federal, did Mr. Lincoln, first Republican president, of Mr. Christie’s own party, get rid of slavery — and certainly no public referendum. Poof, gone. By imperial writ even, of a sort never before or since contemplated. The Emancipation Proclamation was the most far reaching single act of a single man ever carried out in this Republic of legislatures. Nary a public referendum, court order, legislative vote or even consultation with anyone more, apparently, than a few cabinet members of the time and Mrs. Lincoln – and poof, Mr. Lincoln got rid of slavery. 121 now deciding would be some 120 more than Mr. Lincoln did to rid a most pernicious “societal and religious tradition” of the land.

Not to mention – religion doesn’t belong in the law. Strange how it seems only gay folks are subject to religious reasons for laws – no other matter is of “religious tradition” that should be enshrined in law, or any law subject to it. But apparently for gays there’s a religious test for mere citizenship, and everyone else free to throw their Bibles into the swamps of the Meadowlands. Where was the public vote on gambling? On divorce? On allowing women to vote? On lowering the voting age? On getting rid of the adultery laws? Of changing any law indeed — no matter was ever as important as the use of the word “marriage” by gay folks? Pshaw, it just can’t be so. Where were those votes, Mr. Christie?

Not to mention, but I shall, over 350 years of societal and religious traditions about women voting, gambling, divorce, adultery, liquor, the state income tax, abortion, welfare, slavery, black voting rights – all of them highly contentious “societal and religious traditions” and of quite a “magnitude” indeed – ones affecting every citizen of New Jersey – not a one of them were ever put to a referendum for a constitutional amendment. Not once did any “societal or religious” figures ever come to the fore and demand a public vote of everyone (or such as could be mustered,) to preserve the previous arrangements and the 121 people in the statehouse were deemed well qualified, as they should be, to deal with the matter. And legal “marriage” – the mere use of the word even, for Mr. Christie says, in effect, that “civil unions” are “just like marriage” – only affects gays, for no hetero will go down to the local gay bar (from which taxes are paid to pay Mr. Christie’s ample salary, public home and perks, and food galore,) and find a gay guy to hitch.

And, since I always like to point out that gayness is such a different thing, that it’s never “Republicans hate it, Democrats like it” nonsense of the gay chattering classes and the big media – Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat sponsoring the bill, said civil rights issues like the right to marry are guaranteed under the state constitution and do not require a public vote.” “Civil rights is not to be placed on the ballot,” Sweeney said – just several years after he was quite against it – well, if Sweeny swept away his concerns, so could Christie cross the aisle and join the future, instead of being mired in the past, when his own state, following societal traditions, used to incarcerate gay folks, never mind let them buss at the altar or the “civil union” clerk’s office.

Indeed, where does one get this vaunted “civil union” piece of paper in New Jersey? Is there a separate office from the Marriage Office? Do we get a special window, for we’re special? Are we conferred with this “special right” while all the heteros go to some other bureaucrat for their paper? Indeed, it must perforce even be a different form, a different drawer, even, in the desk of some flunky, for the form to be pulled. How unequal, how special, how ridiculous.

Even more astounding, here and now, in this time of growing acceptance of gay folks – spurred, directed, insisted, demanded by gay folks ourselves, starting with our very families, still denied to see us in matrimony while our siblings – paying the same taxes, and to vote on the same proffered referendum no doubt – are accepted into the fold with one word, we are given another –> what a thing to tell a mother – “your gay son is less worthy than your hetero son” – so much for societal and religious traditions about the equal love and worth of a mother’s two sons — and the utter abdication of family reality – now comes this: Earlier Tuesday, 127 professors from 48 law schools around the country signed a letter saying New Jersey’s civil union law cannot be fixed. No, the whole concept of “civil union” is mush – it’s “marriage” without the word, supposedly.

Is the word that sacred? A mere word? Why, the Supreme Court already recently ruled that anyone in the land might say “God hates fags” and I’m sure all the religious fanatics of New Jersey can bar the church house doors and say “God Hates Fags” to their great delight and safety and gays go get married elsewhere. Is the mere word the thing? Is this only then what “marriage” is, a word? Seems so, what with the astounding disregard heteros use towards it. Why, they stand, in traditional and societal approbation galore on altars from High Point to Cape May and solemnly swear to God and State, family and spouse: “till death do us part” and within the fortnight or twenty years are down at the never-referendumed (if I may coin a term, for such are these times of mush) divorce courts; themselves paid for with gay tax dollars – which divorce was illegal and not sanctioned in New Jersey from inception of statehood until the 1960s – when 121 people in the statehouse threw those laws out. And now you all but clearly state: “separate, and unequal” — so much for our nation’s traditions — and not some church’s.

Come now Mr. Christie – you have not only made this a political football – you have picked it up and thrown it to the rabid rioting fans who are sure that gay people have not only no right to marriage, but no right to existence itself. For your Catholic Church, which was mentioned, which you referenced as the font of your beliefs that the mere word “marriage” shall not be sullied by gay folks, while heteros disdain it with alacrity — and which all the anti-gay forces will mention – the Church want us gone from this earth. So much for their societal traditions: eradication! Let us vote, the people, on their tax exempt status.

And while we’re at it, let us put every legislative act to the people’s vote – and let us merely make the legislature a law proposing body, and the governor a rubber stamp – of what need we you anymore if the “People” are to decide everything? – rather than the representative body of the people it is supposed to be? One that was designed specifically by the founders of this nation to remove the rule of the mob, to forestall the politicizing of every issue by base emotions of the moment, and place them squarely in the hands of 121 people in Trenton to make decisions for the state. Ah, but now you propose to get rid of the legislative purpose, and bring about the mob, which shall be frenzied up in a riot that only fans of English football love. And gay folks will be kicked and punted and chased off the field. Bah, sir, Bah!

Cut the pandering, cut the politicizing – and lead. You claim to be a leader of your state, and now, like a callow dog, you seek to follow. You sought your position to make New Jersey a better place, and now you throw gay folks like a split pig skin to the very forces that would have us removed from society – for tradition, they say. That sir, is not leadership – putting the matter of gay happiness to the public’s preference is nothing but “political football” of the lowest sort. For not individuals will be involved as individuals – but the concept of “homosexuality” – that’s what will be put to the public – not John & Joe, or Jane & Mary in bliss – but “homosexuality” – and not a happy couple will be seen (hell, the media can still with impunity ban us from the airwaves and printed press), but the preconceived notions of what any voter will think of some abstract – rather than a man like Bruce Harris, who just the day before you utter mush, you nominated to the highest court of the land. How you can say he’s worthy and unworthy within twenty-four hours is beyond me, truly it is.

And particularly come to this conclusion as I am spending some six weeks going through my family’s history – some 2000+ photos, 300+ letters, and some 300+ ephemera, or items that don’t particularly fit any category. I’m the owner of these things, having inherited them from my recently departed mother. And I’m the one sending out photos to the relatives and speaking to aunts and uncles and cousins galore to relay to them what I have found. And I can trace my family – on many branches – back to at least the late 1700s, and some a tad earlier. Since they started out in the Czech Republic – itself longer under the thumb of the Catholic monarchs known as the Hapsburgs of Austria – many of the letters and items are in Czech. I’m the only one here on these shores among my family who can translate these things. And all my family awaits eagerly the next installment.

I read recently that Rick Santorum has family in Italy – turns out they are all Communists – die hard so. They seem to be appalled at Rick’s “conservative” stances – only he’s no conservative, he’s a radical religionist hellbent on making this nation an outpost of the Catholic Church. Sure, he doesn’t say so – but virtually every thing he says is right out of the Pope’s policy book. And that’s scary. I find it hysterical, that while his family is a bunch of Communists in so-called Capitalist Democracy Italy (no, not really, it’s a socialist country, and hence, of course, broke and going broker,) – my family in former Communist Czechoslovakia are staunch true capitalists and for a freedom of conscience that Santorum is ill-prepared to consider. For he seems to think if one does not think like him and the Pope one is “evil” and somehow “Against” whatever it is he is for. And what he seems to be for is a Medieval mindset worthy of Catholic Hapsburgs.

I’ve not had time or inclination to publish on this blog for a number of weeks now – for I am busy pulling together and making sense of my family’s history. And then, from time to time, I go read some news stories of the current political scene all I keep finding is this anti-gay mush about we gay folks being “anti-family.” Frankly, it is infuriating. It’s disheartening that no one in the press simply says “What on earth are you talking about?” Instead, the mush heads of the press seem to wish to indulge the morons running for office and attempting the passage of all sorts of anti-gay laws. From Tennessee’s attempt to outlaw the use of the word “gay” – a perfectly fine 800 year old English word meaning, well, meaning “gay” and instead instituting some nonsense of a modern 1890s German scientific word “homosexual.” It’s mind boggling.

Then there’s the efforts in North Carolina and Minnesota to “protect” marriages by passing State Constitutional Amendments banning marriages – while permitting divorces and wife and child abandonment with, um, wild abandon. All because these heteros are so fearful that they will all of a sudden wake tomorrow and want to be gay if a nice word is said about us.

Then there’s a creep of this “Ex-gay” (or more rightly, “re-heteroized” since our opponents are quite clear in the belief, without fact, that we either “choose” to be gay, or are “made” or “recruited” to be gay – despite all our protestations to the contrary – and thus, in fact, by their own nefariously ludicrous logic – start out as heteros – so we’re not becoming “ex-gay” so much as returning to hetero. As if.) This guy, who’s name escapes me, but who is the head of Exodus, some cockamamie organization that in nearly three decades of attempts has changed not one homo to hetero. The concept being so absurd, so beyond reality, that one wonders why they keep trying – but try they do. And now, he’s all of a sudden, come to realize that of all the “sins” of this world, only gay folks – which he continues to call inherent continuous sinners merely for waking up in the morning – have parades and political programs. Does it them occur to him that therefore we are not “sinners” but entirely something else – like, oh, something akin to Autism? The parallels I’ve made and seen between gayness and autism I’ve commented on before – it’s astounding. Replete with the reality that the same small percentage is gay in every culture, race and society on earth, regardless of where and when that milieu ever existed. Does it occur to this man then that we are not “sinners” and in need of change, but just a quirk of mankind in need of some mollycoddling? No, apparently it does not.

Meanwhile, politicians the land over are working diligently in castigating and excoriating us for every ill known to the heterosexual family – from infidelity, abortion, wife-beating and child-abuse. And gay men are not responsible for this – either directly or indirectly or by any other logic connection. Those hetero problems are strictly hetero – and all the pounding and harassment of gay folks will do absolutely nothing to alter that reality. These heteros are responsible, not us.

And then there’s the poseurs for the presidency, making noises about loathsome laws and amendments to our Constitution to “protect” the 95%+ who are heterosexuals from us few gays. The idea is so beyond my ability to grasp that I can’t describe the feelings of anger I get when I hear that I am “Anti-family.” Whose family am I against? They can point to none. Certainly not to mine. Not a one of my family is of the opinion that I’m against them, or “Anti-” them. They find the “debate” bonkers. But there they are, Bachmann, Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Perry, going on and on and on about the perils of gay folks. It’s unbecoming a free land. It’s out of character for any supposedly intelligent person to hold such ideas. And yet, there they are, day in and day out, lambasting gay folks for the ills of the nation. It’s so mystical, so Medieval, so – well, I run out of adjectives of the nonsensical nature of it.

And it’s time for this nation to stop treating gay folks as some political problem – and start treating those who wish to install a theocracy as the political problem. They are cruising for a constitutional crisis over us. We keep begging to be accepted just the way we are, and we have won over our own families and friends and most co-workers. We have simply disproved every contention against us – and all are so blatantly false and illogical that it points to a certain willful blindness on the part of these politicians to keep up their unholy and unAmerican rhetoric of assault upon us. Really, now, get a grip folks. It’s beyond the pale of humanhood to keep saying something so abysmally stupid that your foolishness is apparent to nearly everyone in the nation already.

Still, this presidential election will bring the gay “issue” to the forefront like no other election in our nation’s history. And time will tell whether gay men will continue to be hounded, and perhaps, if some get their way, to be rounded up and incarcerated forever on the heterosexual dime – or if the whole blistering stupidity will come to an end. And yes, gay folks will hold no grudges – we never have. We will simply welcome you anti-gay folks to the modern world, to the real world, to the decency which is called for and never utter a word about your past transgressions into the world of thoughtlessness.

Still, keep it up, my dear Republicans and not a few Democrats, and you will find yourselves such a beaten minority party that it will make your head swim. For of all the troubles of this nation – gay folks are just not one of them. Only in your own fetid minds is this the case. And really, you should come to your senses and get a grip and join the decent world and stop freaking out over the box of rocks known as gay folks. We are a great boon to this nation, and a helping hand – and we are not a hindrance or threat. And we are not “Anti-family” – and this I know, from, like I said, being my family’s historian and actually, strangely, probably the only one in the whole family who talks to everyone – for the heteros of course, they all have this baggage over who did or said what some time ago. Come to the right conclusion and solve the nation’s troubles – and stop picking on gay folks. It’s the right thing to do.

On Christmas Day – one of the most holy days of the year – your made such nasty and insolent comments that we gay folks rose up in righteous indignation – as we are required to do when we are viciously attacked. And now, two weeks later – and only after our defensive outcry of rage – you “apologize.” Well, sir, not good enough.

No, your apology is not enough. Sure, it’s a start. You have far further to go. You have taken but a tiny baby step – and now must take a leap the likes of which you still can’t and won’t contemplate. Let me make it clear – this is why an “Apology” is not enough: Your church still considers me “intrinsically evil” and a threat to my own family, my nation and the society in which I live.

Your apology is nothing but an old fashioned “CYA” – cover your ass. – No sir. The Church must alter it’s teachings and beliefs on gay people – all over this globe. It is not enough for you to say we are not like the KKK when you still believe that I am “evil” and “sick” and “demented” and a “threat” to all that is holy and good. No sir, you are a typical politician – you throw out despicable comments in the hope that no one will notice – and when noticed – apologize merely for the words, but keep the sentiment. Well, frankly, sir, I don’t care that you now “apologize” for comparing me and my gay fellows to the KKK – for you still insist that I am “evil.”

Your church has considered Jews “evil” for two thousand years. Your church has finally relented only this year on that issue. I don’t want an “apology” for the KKK reference – for you will merely seek another more pernicious comparison. No sir, I want acceptance. I want appreciation. I want your Church to admit that gay folks – especially gay men, with whom you have the most trouble – are decent fine folks the world over. Not only in this nation. But in every nation on earth. I want your Church to say “Gay people are part of God’s plan. We don’t know why, but we will embrace our gay brethren.” I want your Church to stop it’s unholy war against me and my mom, my dad, my aunts and uncles and cousins. Not just your own – but mine.

You know sir – my mother tried to be a good Catholic – one of the few in my family – for we are mostly Hussites – another bunch of people to whom you all have never “apologized.” You burnt Jan Hus at the stake in 1415 – and my family rose up in righteous indignation. While my mother joined the Catholic faith, mostly for the fine schools which you run – and she became a nurse at St. Catherine’s Hospital in Brooklyn – because of the fine hospitals you run – when she, many years later learned that I was gay – she could never quite grasp the Church’s disregard for my existence.

We fought over this, my mom and I. She’s passed away now, just over a year ago. And now I, as family historian, am going through her collected things. One thing I found this very day is a 1952 tourist book for the Cenacle of St. Regis. It’s a fine little picture book. Most people, especially gay people, in their rage against your Church’s immoral verbal attack upon us gay folks would have simply tossed it into the garbage. I did not, for my mom would not have liked that – and honoring one’s mother is a tenet of God. Instead I looked up the Cenacle on the Internet – for I decided that such a historic and probably not often saved item would be best in the hands of the successors of the Cenacle of St. Regis on 140^th Street in New York City.

I discovered that the Cenacle is now out in Ronkonkoma, Long Island, New York. And so I have put that little picture book aside to mail to the successors of the Manhattan group – for their history. That’s what sort of gay man I am – a man who appreciates history. And so I will send it to them, in the memory of my mom – and actually ask them to say some prayers for her soul. For she saved it for nearly 60 years – and well, the successors deserve a bit of their history. Well, the history of gay men has been one of travail and devastation at the hands of the Catholic Church. The KKK would have burned the book – not me – I’ll send it off, despite your unholy comments.

But an “apology” is merely your political nonsense to avoid further angst for yourself – it is most certainly not to accept gay folks – for you cannot accept what is “Intrinsically evil” – neither can I. And let me tell you, sir – until your Church joins my mom, my dad, my aunts and uncles and cousins and even my grandparents and my siblings in accepting me as the fine man I am – the very sort of fine man you have stated lives within your own family bosom – your own nephew I hear – how can he be a “fine man” and “intrinsically evil” at the same time – as you yourself doth proclaim? I can’t wrap my head around such opposing views of the same person. Until then your apology is nothing. It is a political maneuver.

No sir, ACCEPTANCE and LOVE and the word of Jesus is the only solution. Apologies are given when one breaks a cookie jar or spills some wine upon a carpet – and your apology still leaves us gay folks as “evil” – no Sir, not on your life will a mere “Apology” be enough. I want you and the Pope himself to recognize that God Himself put me here for His purpose – as a gay man – and not listen once more or again to any nonsense that I’m a threat, evil, dangerous or against anything whatsoever.

I want you to tell Maggie Gallagher and Rick Santorum and the rest of such political figures to whom you minister from your pulpit to stop their unholy and unAmerican verbal and psychological assault on gay Americans – and gay people all over this world. I want you and your Pope and your Church and your fellow cardinals and bishops and priests to rise up against the evil perpetrated against gay men and women in nearly every country on earth. I want you to instruct your pastors in every congregation, from every parish, from every basilica and cathedral and monastery on this earth to say “Gays are good and fine people and are part of God’s plan, love them as Jesus would.”

Here, sir, let me quote you from the Cenacle’s front piece to their little tourist book:

“As Divine Providence orders all things, this Cenacle must now give place to more modern structures for the general good, but its work will continue in another area of the Archdiocese.” – well, sir – it’s time for you and the Church to accept Divine Providence in the creation of gay folks, and to give place to modern structures of thought and place to us – so that your otherwise good works might include us gay folks – and nothing less than full acceptance is called for. Come to your senses and join us gay folks in the reality of our existence and the decency we deserve.

But don’t give me “apologies” for the KKK comments when you still consider me “evil” and a threat to my own family and nation and to every other family and nation under Heaven. No sir, it’s going to take far more than an “Apology.”

Thank you, in the love of Christ.

Jim Hlavac

We could bomb Iran round the clock for weeks and never put a soldier on the ground. We could stop their oil exports. We could seize and freeze their assets outside of Iran, and probably sitting in Europe, which might have the gumption to do the work required to simply stop Iran from spending a dime.

In the long history of war those nations without the wherewithal to feed themselves during the conflict have lost. In this same history those nations with the wherewithal to bring the war to the home front while the belligerent nation has no such ability those nations have lost big time.

Meanwhile, there are millions of Iranians who are fed up with their own government, ready at a moment’s notice to go to the streets, as has been amply proved in the past two or three years, and the students are sure to want to riot rather than go to some front which doesn’t exist. For there would be no ground war, and their needn’t be. We could simply do what we did to Serbia – bomb them from 35,000 feet. We could wreck so much damage on the military pipsqueak of their nation that they wouldn’t know what hit them. We could remove their command and control centers, no matter how deeply buried, for things that are buried can be taken out with both bunker buster bombs and simply destroying the entrances to the underground warrens and the air vents required to keep them functioning.

Is Iran crazy enough to attack a US aircraft carrier? Probably. Would the president of this nation sit back and let it happen? Doubtful. Even a Nobel Prize winning wimp (though he is not such a wimp when it comes to sending in the drones, actually,) would be constrained by our own political reality to wreck that havoc as we are capable of doing. We could sink the Iranian navy in a fortnight – for how many ships could it have, a 100, 200? And they mostly being aging destroyers and coastal cruisers

Not to mention that the Iraqis might well want to join in the fray just to have some fun. And too the Saudis and even the Indians and Pakistanis might send in some forces. England, France, and other Europeans would almost certainly join in to. Is Iran ready to take on the entire world?

China is already stopping the buying of Iranian oil, cutting into the flow of money to the despised and lunatic regime. And I wonder for how long the saner elements of the Iranian polity would want to see their army, air force and navy destroyed. And what of the political forces there sitting in the dark? Does one think that they will all commit a suicide of sorts, and watch their nation be destroyed so that some mullahs, ayatollahs and a lunatic president can reap some ill-fated glory for the 12^th Imam? No, I think not. The forces within Iran will step up to the plate and take out the offending parties.

Meanwhile, the people, dark, cold or hot (depending on the season in which the war starts,) and driven to hunger and the already lackluster economy suffering under years of strange mismanagement will rise up in righteous indignation? Don’t think so? Ah, au contraire, for already the Iranian people are heading to the banks, running on them, to demand US dollars and Euros – and getting rid of their already inflated mush of a currency.

Oh, Iran, don’t be so stupid as to rattle a saber which you are not strong enough to pick up and wield against an “enemy” you can’t see or strike at. And if Iran, by some miracle, should use their one or two subs or ocean going vessels to attack say Baltimore, Miami or New York, the people of this nation will simply demand the utter destruction of Iran. Oh, ayatollahs, can you really be that crazy?

And as for Germany, Russia, Norway, China and the other wimpy nations of the world, who will of course accuse the United States of Lord knows what in the conflagration to come from such a stupid thing as attacking a US carrier, they too will be shunted to the sidelines in sputtering and spewing out their nonsense, and perhaps the “non-aligned” and the United Nations will pass a resolution to resounding majority votes condemning the United States, ergo sealing their own doom as a united organization, for the people of this nation are not going to listen to a bunch of nuts and be cowed by some third rate near third world dictatorship.

And what of Iran’s nuclear ambitions? Well, I dare say, besides the already well advanced efforts at disruption that the Israelis or someone did with the Stuxnet virus on their computers, will be ramped up to simply bomb any and every conceivable and imagined nuclear facility, with no mercy, not just some Clintonesque pinpricks, or Carterian waffling, but will simply give the hold heave ho to every potential weapon in the vast arsenal at the ready to bring down the arrant and errant regime in flames.

And the Iranian people, long suffering under the yoke of Religious Tyranny will not long join their own government in their own destruction, but would rise up in revolution and a slaughtering of those who brought the misery upon them.

No, I have some faith that Iran can be dealt with so swiftly that little will be left military-wise and little in the way of danger to the region, and Iran brought back into the community of nations.

Perhaps they are emboldened by their memories of the Embassy thing back in the 1970s – ah, but seizing an embassy is easy – taking on the USA in a war is quite another matter. Ask Serbia, ask Iraq, ask anyone. The days of Vietnam era hand wringing is gone. And the might of our military is so huge – larger than the rest of the world combined – that the 70 million Iranians won’t know what hit them. And if they survive for more than a month of constant pounding I’d be surprised.

Does the current administration have the chutzpah to do the deed? Actually, I think so. For Mr. Obama could use every bit of help to get elected that he can find. And a good thrashing of a long time enemy would be just the campaign would want. Not to mention that American presidents in wartime always get a little boost by those who put aside domestic concerns for the sake of national defense – which well they perhaps should. And Mr. Obama has shown no unwillingness to send in the drones, special ops and cruise missiles to take out our enemies in nations with which we are at ostensible peace, like Yemen and Oman and Pakistan. I dare say, he’d almost relish the opportunity to declare to the nation “We start the bombing in five minutes.” And the Republicans of the House, and those in the Senate, would be loathe to stop him or complain – especially if Iran shoots so much as a spit ball at the US Carl Stennis, which is the carrier which just left the Persian Gulf and the Iranians declared is not welcome back.

Perhaps the Iranians are too fixated upon the world name for the Persian Gulf, a name long settled, but which are in fact international waters. Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which are on the Gulf waters there, would be more than happy to invite the Stennis and the Reagan and any other US carrier in the Indian Ocean to come on in and enjoy the sites. Oh, Iran, don’t be stupid. Now’s not the time to be wagging fingers at us in a vain attempt to conquer us and throw us out of a region we’ve been in since Jefferson was president. So I’m just not worried – for even if the worse case scenario happens and the Iranians attack our ships – that would be an open Act of War, and the US Congress, Democrats included, would be well within our rights to declare war – and not just some police action, or some tit-for-tat “Well, we took out a little thing” in even handed equal retaliation – but no, I could well imagine the Congress voting a War Resolution and demanding the Commander in Chief to command the end of the current Iranian regime and bring about a little happiness for those people there and peace within the region like hasn’t been seen since the misbegotten Medievalists took over the place some 30 years ago.

It’s not only a Bill of Attainder – it’s an ex-post facto law – another Constitutional No-No. Is this man so craven and devoid of real thought as to believe he’s got the power to simply eliminate legal contracts through a legal concept of his own fetid mind’s creation? I really can’t believe he’s serious – though, yet, I guess he is, for he is fixated on gay folks and our relationships in a most unhealthy manner. He’s ludicrous, of course. From proposing to arrest us and incarcerate us all, to banning us from existence – no man in the political firmament is more absurd and childlike. To simply “want” without reason, without thought, without a shred of decency or logic, is simply childish, laughably so. That he’s still on the hustings for president shows the depth of stupidity to which our political process has descended.

Here’s the two reports to far, of which I write late at night, before I go to bed with sweet dreams:

http://izzoiz.com/2012/01/first-douchebag-of-the-day-of-2012-rick-santorum-wants-to-make-all-gay-marriages-invalid/

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/12/31/396012/surging-santorum-would-annul-all-same-sex-marriages/

I would think that if such a “marriage amendment” of the sort of he would like is proposed – that one could ban any possibility of the use of the word “marriage” by government in referring to gay couples – that the numbers of lawsuits flung against it in every federal court in the land would lead every single last federal judge to simply strike down the very verbiage itself before it goes anywhere. His entire first term, if God-forbid he gets elected, would simply be consumed with this issue – to the great detriment of the populace that face real problems, and not the non-problem of sissy smooching with a little government approval – to which gay taxpayers are of right guaranteed in our nation whether he or anyone else likes it or not. We are not a theology, nor some dictatorship where presidents simply annul legal contracts. I’m almost certain that if his dream-administration gets into office and he proposes such an amendment that even Republican controlled House and Senate judiciary committees would see the absurdity and illegality of such a thing before the ink got dry on the paper.

I can’t imagine either that the great thinkers on Constitutional issues in the ¾s of the states required to approve the move wouldn’t see the utter lack of reality in such a measure, or the other ¼ which wouldn’t vote for the passage of such a stupid concept no matter what.

I can’t imagine that he could word any amendment to pass constitutional muster from the get go. The whole thing is so preposterous that I have to wonder at the stupidity of the press people to whom he said this didn’t just break out laughing and point out the obvious – the federal government simply cannot abrogate, annul, abridge, alter or amend legal contracts entered into at the state level.

Even more farcical – there’s no legal nor logical way for him to deny gay folks – or prevent us – from the use of the word “marriage.” Which is why I always wonder, too, at people who think that DOMA – the odious, Orwellian and malicious “Defense of Marriage Act” “bans” gay marriage – it does not do any such thing – it merely prevents the federal government from recognizing the duly constituted acts of sovereign states within the Union – itself unconstitutional on the face of it. Furthermore, it does not prevent any state from recognizing the marriage acts of other states. It only prevents the federal government from giving fair and equal access to the laws of the federal government to all the citizens of the nation as is required by the Constitution itself.

One does not have to be a lawyer to read the very plain language of the fabled document which guides our nation: No Bills of Attainder and No Ex-post facto laws. What does it take for one to conclude that Santorum is simply an idiot with a craven disregard for the niceties of our governmental system? Not much. Not much for me at all. I have never heard a presidential candidate utter such inane mush as this man – and why he’s “surging” in Iowa is beyond my comprehension.

But one thing for certain – Mr. Santorum, with this sort of bizarre unAmerican and Unconstitutional talk is brewing a constitutional crisis over gay Americans that even the Jim Crow laws didn’t achieve over freed slaves. He’s pushing for some stripping of basic rights of a group of Americans based on his theology – that right being the right to enter contracts of romantic relationships – and that theology comes from a foreign power in a sovereign nation called the Vatican. If Mr. Santorum is so sure of his stance, that I suggest he find lodging with his family in the ample residence of the Pope and leave us Americans the hell alone.

And I’d suggest that all gay folks – and our legal mavens (wimps though I often think they are) – just hound this man into the woodwork from which he crawled on the simple reality of his Bill of Attainder and Ex-Post Facto Law ideas that he seeks to push upon the good citizens of this nation. He’s this short of abrogating his right to call himself an American. Frankly, he’s a scary man who is out to destroy this nation – and nothing short of a constant legal reasoned assault on his unconstitutional position is warranted. Mr. Santorum, go away, and leave America to Americans, and return to wherever you think you came from. Shoo, sir, shoo – you are a lunatic – and you are obsessed with my life in a way that is unwholesome and indecent.

The Cardinal is a very confused man. For the very tenets of the two forces – the KKK and gay folks – are opposite to each other. The KKK sought exclusion of various people – obviously the newly freed slaves – but also Catholics (which is why the Klan never quite gained support in South Louisiana; it was simply too Catholic – how could these people join the very forces against them?) They sought a political regime whereby which White Christian Male Fundamentalists would have power forever and that they would pass laws enshrining their ideas and forcing what is actually the majority of the country into kowtowing to the glory of the WCMF. It was never workable from the beginning – and the Klan never gained true public support – and it gained quite a lot of enmity, most particularly from players in the government and moral persuaders. Ultimately the Abolitionist position was going to, and did, prevail. It had to – for the WCMF has never been but a small, yet vocal, and rich even (though not nearly all the rich, indeed,) group of aristocratic-pretending feudal thinking lords. In a sense unAmerican – for they do not believe and know that “All men are created equal…”

The Catholic Church, oddly, is of a similar vein – but different because they claim the ideas of the Pope in Rome are the best – which for centuries has been to hound and exclude and legislate against and suppress non-Catholics, and even less-than-solid Catholics, or lapsed Catholics, or just those who disagreed with the Pope of the times. Henry II of Germany, a 1,000 years ago, famously knelt in the snow at the Pope’s front door to beg forgiveness and be communicated, if I may call it, for he had been ex-communicated for doing as he damn well pleased, and the Pope was not amused. He let Henry wait for three days like that. That the Catholics wanted to suppress the “protestants” – which they came to be called – is merely the same concept that the Protestants of the Klan wish to suppress the Catholics, or Communists wish to suppress Capitalists, or Muslims wish to suppress infidels. It’s a tiny bunch, still free to do as they wish, but just not use the power of the state to make the 85% of the people not in league with them do only as they wish. They’re just arguing over whom shall be suppressed – and whom shall carry out the suppression. It’s why America has strong prohibitions in law and culture against the combining of Church and State, to keep these people out of power.

That’s why it’s funny to hear people like Alabama’s Judge Moore, who had to resign from his state’s Supreme Court over the issue, complain about the lack of the Ten Commandments in the courts and public buildings. For there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from posting the Ten Commandments anywhere else they may well please. I know a doctor’s office, used by the old man I tended, which prominently posts them at the receptionist desk. Judge Moore and his fellows can post the Ten Commandments from Coast to Coast in every place in the Union where anyone may be willing to post them – except government buildings – and many people do. Indeed, in a way, nearly every hotel room in the nation has a copy of not only the Ten Commandments but also the entire  Bible. The Gideons raise their funds and donate their time and give out Bibles by the millions. I have one or two myself – taken when I thought I could use a copy of the Bible. You can’t steal them – they’re free – the hotel simply waits for the Gideon to arrive and hand over more Bibles. Perhaps the good judge should print up his placards on his own dime and get on the road and hand them out. Why, there’s people handing out copies of the Constitution – and I’ve been known to hand out Declarations of Independence – get to work Judge, and leave the public sector alone. The best religion is persuasion, not force. Jesus did it, try it, Judge.

And so the Cardinal compared gay folks with the KKK – and this is but one of the various assaults upon us. Oh, not physical, not so much, just occasionally a little bullying – though some politicians and religious figures now call for us to be rounded up and incarcerated, and our very smooching made a felony – which is a bit of physicality, violence even, no? Yet, the hazing of heteros to join a club is illegal in every state – while hazing a homo is to be allowed in a public school, trying to learn and grown up to make something of himself. This is somehow to be permitted, if all the hub hub of the “stop the homosexuals stop us beating them up” school of thought is followed.

And it’s said, repeatedly, that supposedly we’re out to destroy the family and civilization itself by the simple recognition that for some reason known only to God Himself are there those of us persistent few who simply say we and only we are the gay folks and leave us the hell alone and deal with us and accept us into the commonwealth. But no, these fundamentalist and Catholics are calling us a threat to society – and call our very defense of ourselves as whom we are and of right ought to be as an attack upon them.

The major difference, my dear Cardinal George – ye with the “fine man” of a gay nephew – of whom you have spoken publicly and lauded as simply wonderful in the very same session while you call him “intrinsically evil” – your very sister’s son, her oldest (so much for the birth order theory, eh?) – of which you utter both sentiments in an astoundingly willfully blind hypocrisy as glaring as the space between Rome and Tahiti – the difference, sir, between gay folks and the KKK is that we seek your friendship. We seek our inclusion. We welcome you to our gatherings, to share some common ground. We seek your blessing, even. We seek your final understanding that God, in His wisdom, put the same tiny percentage of gay folks in the midst of you all, and all over the world, in every society, in every culture, in every place on God’s great starship of Earth. And that you then accommodate us to the degree that is necessary for us to stop this defense of ourselves against nothing more than your attack upon us for reasons we cannot understand. You are the KKK sir, not us.

We seek your comity with us in society. We seek your purpose, even those of us who are not Catholic, and I am not, there are Catholic gay folks – gay folks seek the very reason for your being – a shepherd to the flock. And Jesus, sir, and gay folks like Him, brought people together, and commanded “Love thy fellow man.” And you do not. You despise gay folks. You resent our being. Oh, well, too friggin’ bad, here we are – and a Happy New Year to you – but you folks, KKK, Fundamentalists and you Catholics, are brewing a constitutional crisis over gay folks – for you all are calling for a genocide of sorts to be enshrined in law. You are wishing for a Medieval pogrom to convert or slaughter gay folks – it’s obvious to any who listen to the likes of the  Bachmanns, Rick Santorum, Maggie Gallagher, Peter Sprigg, and yourself – the entire constellation of people who simply want no gay folks to exist or rear our heads in society. You want us gone. And you will fail.

But more to the point, to the reality of my personal existence this very New Year, the beginning of our really intense time of political posturing as the presidential election gears up to head splitting mush, 2012 is going to be a very gay year. Not a political race in the nation will go without the question: “what about the gays?” It’s impossible this political go-round to escape this reality. And the conclusion legally and politically will be soon upon us: with nothing against gay folks, and a way to include us. Even those who are fighting this reality have lost already. It’s a rearguard retreat, a rout even. For this very moment millions of gay folks are talking to people who really matter in such a decision. And that is our families. Law? We don’t need to stinkin’ law. We have simply gone home for the holidays and said “Now, com’n, what some in the GOP propose to do is ridiculous.” And our families are agreeing. You politicians cannot stop this. You cannot make – as you must do to succeed in your nefarious plan – our families reject us anymore.

And this being a new year, and thus a time for a new start, and resolutions – you, Cardinal George, should resolve to say nice things about gay folks, as your position demands of you by the faith of Jesus, and not the Pope in Rome. And you should look into your nephew’s eyes and tell him he’s “Evil” and the “KKK” and a “threat to family.” Do it at the family New Year’s dinner. And if that doesn’t change your heart, well, then, there’s no hope for you in Jesus. You should retire and go to some monastery to repent of your miscreant thoughts and hypocrisy and refusal to recognize reality: we are a cog in the wheel of our families, and we are the exact opposite of what you blindly believe we are. Resolve, sir, to be decent and get a grip on reality. Have a Happy New Year, too.

Not a creature was stirring, ‘cept some miscreant politician.

Our economy was hung in the balance without care,

We had hopes that our deliverance would soon come to bear.

The people were nestled all worried in our beds,

While visions of prosperity danced in our heads.

While momma prayed in the kitchen and I drank a night cap,

They were just settling in like a poisonous sap.

When out of the Senate there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my fretting to see what was the matter.

Away to the internet I flew like a flash,

Opened up a browser and drew a great gasp.

The dollar had fallen, with Europe a new row,

It gave gold some new luster; too, the oil below.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But some miniature cretins, spreading some big fear.

With a little old drivel, so dead and so slow,

I knew in a minute we’d come to a new low.

More rapid than raptors, we cursed when they came,

While the House hissed and pandered, we called them by name.

Now Boehner, now Cantor, on Pelosi and Santorum,

Let’s vomit, so stupid, more blunders than Nixon.

From the well of the House, to the edge of our great fall,

Please go away, go away, go away all.

As dry heaves befell us, our fine people did cry,

When we meet with an agency we shout to the sky.

So up to the elections, we cursed and we spewed,

With a ballot full of voids, we still felt we were screwed.

And then with the tinkling I heard up on our roof,

Came gnashing and banging, which we wished were a spoof.

As we drew in our breaths while fighting our ground,

Down our cold chimneys Obama came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his boot,

Like royalty in ermine, tarnished with ill gotten loot.

A bundle of laws, they had flung from their sacks,

They seemed more like dope peddlers riding hard on our backs.

Their eyes, how they twinkled, their Big Government so merry,

Their ideas were like floozy’s, they words poisoned berry.

Their droll mouths were drawn up to say to us “So?”

Our fear from their spin was like bile did flow.

The stumps of our lives they held tight in their teeth,

While most things were banned for us little plebes,

They had wrecked our great nation, their brains filled with jelly,

We shook with anger, and when we did scarf they called us all nelly.

They were thin or fat chumps, like lefty Mao the old elf,

We screamed when we heard them despite our best self.

A stab in our eyes, and a raise of their head,

Soon gave us to know we had so much to dread.

They spoke not a sound word without a teleprompter’s work,

They cut down our stock market, and called us a jerk.

And snorting some cocaine right up their nose,

They took all our money and the taxes they rose.

They said to us “Nay,” their teams gave us thistle,

And away they’d not fly, nor jump to our whistle.

But I heard them exclaim, as they drove down our might,

Oh screw you America, we’ve given you blight.

With apologies and thanks to Clement Clarke Moore.

Czechoslovakia had suffered under the Nazis and then the Communists for 50 years, its people hobbled and harassed by their own government, until finally the “Occupy Prague” (and every other city in that benighted land,) simply told the communists to get out. In the Velvet Revolution — a peaceful gathering of some 80% of the nation in the streets until the Communist Party realized they had no choice but to abandon the pretense of power — Havel led the Czechs and Slovaks back into the modern world. Kim and his successor keeps their people in the mists of olden times.

Within a few years the Czechs and Slovaks sought a “divorce” (which is the word they themselves used to describe the only peaceful division of a nation in the history of the world,) and on January 1st, 1993 the two halves of Czechoslovakia went their ways into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. And then the great outpouring of capitalism brought new found wealth and banks and businesses and real news (and not the stilted “everything is wonderful” nonsense of the controlled press.)

Havel was probably the world’s first and only playwright & writer and philosopher to ever attain the presidency of a nation — and he launched the Czechs into a prosperity they hadn’t seen since the 1920s. And now Prague and the rest of the nation is a sort of boom town; and Slovakia not far behind. Half the globe away, Kim kept his people in the dark. Literally. Satellite photos of the earth at night shows a big dark splotch in Asia that keeps some 17 million people hobbled in utter destitution.

Kim is now dead — though as is typical of all dictatorships, he had the nation’s wealth, such as it is, in his hands, while the people are starving and live in a national-prison. Supposedly, if reports are true, one of Kim’s sons is now the new “great-something or other” and North Korea, a fake nation created by the dreams of Communists in China and Russia to create some nirvana on earth, which never works, but the dream lives on. Indeed, many in our own “occupy” movement are still deluded into thinking that communism is the be all and end all of society — when instead it is the place that people escape from (no one swims to Cuba, but away from it, no one sneaks into the lingering socialism of Mexico, but away from it.) The steady flow of people away from communist and socialist regimes should tell the world that these systems don’t work — but no, our illustrious home-grown communists still insist it will work — with they as the leaders of course.

And so while Havel goes down in history as a great man, a great thinker, a humble man who let his people go and do as they wish, while the Kims stand athwart the tide of history as men who seem to think they are the only font of wisdom and thought that their nation needs, and woe betide those who disagree. The prison camps of the North Koreans are the stuff of legends. Who knows how many are suffering for trying to earn a buck (or the NK equivalent,) and think for themselves. I’m sure our own Occupy Movement — if it is even around anymore, for having forsaken the news for a month or more, I’m not sure — but surely they are much diminished — would glorify Kim far more than they would appreciate Havel.

And so 10 million Czechs and 5 million Slovaks joined the world and have gotten richer then they ever were, while the 17 million Koreans north of the DMZ suffer like cattle on the way to slaughter and live in a poverty like few other people on earth. Even poor indigenous people or Africans are vastly freer and richer than any in North Korea. Meanwhile, the Czechs and Slovaks live in peace with their neighbors, even the Russians, and make money and move about their lives in a new found sense of purpose, the Koreans of the North barely survive, hungry and limited in everything they do.

One hopes the kid who takes over North Korea will see this reality and give up the ghost of Marx and Lenin, Mao and Chou En-Lai. Remember that guy? He’s the one who killed so many so that the Communist Party of China could keep control — and from all indications they’re losing it, for the people there in China are setting up their own “occupy” movement — to rid themselves of the cold wet blanket of communism. The news is filled daily, if one seeks it out, of the 1,000s of demonstrations against the regime in Beijing.

Why our Occupy Movement and any politician here who supports it would want such a system is a mystery to me — other than the old hoary phrase: “It’s good to be the king.” Sure, sure, let the government run everything — from the oil to the banks to the health care and more, and we shall suffer soon like the Czechs and Slovaks did, and the Koreans do. Alas, our own president and the Democratic Party, chock full of Socialist thoughts, don’t seem to grasp — and our Republicans seem to like the Theocratic version, which merely uses a different old book from a continent far away.

About the only thing that could come good from the death of the elder Kim (and his father before him — it is always true that communist leaders seeks to pass their power down to their sons, like kings of old in hereditary monarchies, despite all protestations to the contrary that the best and brightest would be sought out,) is that this new and younger Kim will come to his senses, give up his power, and hand his “nation” over to the South so that Pyongyang can have the gleaming skyscrapers and fantabulous wealth and internet access that Seoul has. But no, so far, the worry is that he will seek to keep up the armed standoff that is called the “Korean Peace” which is merely a war in abeyance.

Many such dictators seek to raid their neighbors for their wealth, so that they can maintain their power a bit longer. One can only hope that it will come to a peaceful resolution. Yes, it will cost billions of dollars for the South to absorb the North, but it will be well worth it. For they will automatically spend less on arms and weapons and more on the things of a real life. Perhaps a war will still break out there along the DMZ, where we keep some 34,000 troops — but one can hope for peace.

And that’s the lessons of free markets and freedoms of press and conscience versus the controlled markets and limitations on thoughts and actions. And our politicians, and those miscreants living in the hovels of the Occupy Movement and the politicians who support them, will come to grasp: the chaos of capitalism brings peace and wealth and the end of poverty, while the control and order of communism brings violence and poverty of a type not seen since Louis XVI lost his head.

Yes, two presidents die a day or so apart, one a hero, the other the goat. And our media spend more time glorifying the latter idiot, and his ideas, but proclaim it will work better here, of course, without so much saying so, but merely hinting and avoiding the painful truth: the ideals of America are worldwide and the world has grown richer than ever before in history — while the ideals of Marx bring nothing but pain, mayhem and a poverty that is beyond imagining. I would like to think, in this Christmastide, and when a new year dawns, that the people in this nation who push Marx’s mush will come to their senses and embrace Havel, and give up on the Kims of the world. But to listen to Obama say once that he wishes he was like the president of China is disconcerting, while to listen to Gingrich and pals of the theocracy they seek to impose like ancient popes are just as dangerous.

Perhaps a third party will come along, or perhaps we Americans will abandon the two parties which have gone so far to the fringes, supposedly Left and Right, and pretending to be opposites, but which thus become the same control freaks, that we will return to a booming economy instead of awaiting the next shoe to drop — for the Left and Right extremes are like millipedes, with far too many boots to do their stomping. Maybe, just maybe, we will have to tolerate one more term of this nonsense of “government knows best,” and then we shall wake up and get rid of these two parties we have which are leading our nation to ruin.

I see that Herman Cain has more or less dropped out of the race — something about his family values being askew, and the lies and hypocrisy just too deep a chasm for him to jump across. Of course, he made the choice to cheat on his wife and abandon his kids, and lie to the public, and treat women as mere sex outlets and objects — while still blithely accusing us gay folks of whatever “immorality” he thinks we’re doing — nothing like nonsensical nonsense to destroy a presidential campaign, eh?

Santorum is still blaming gay folks for everything wrong in the nation — in his mad delusion — though where he keeps getting the money to keep up his desultory campaign when he’s still in the 1 to 2 percent popularity range is not said. Indeed — where does he get the rather substantial funds to keep up the traveling around the nation getting succor from gay flight attendants, gay hotel clerks and gay waiters while he keeps up his steady drumbeat of “arrest all of them and incarcerate them for the rest of their lives” is hard to say. Perhaps the Catholic Church funds him. I have yet to hear a Kennedyesque speech from him about how he will not push the Pope’s plans on America — for he, alas, actually wants to push the Pope’s plans. I would imagine in some sort of anti-American values program he will rush off to Rome to get his marching orders. I can’t imagine anyone with a brain is donating to him the million or two or more every month it must take to keep on the hustings.

Michelle Bachmann is also apparently still running, as is Rich Perry — Lord knows why, for they stand the snowball’s chance in hell of getting into the office — but still, there they are, spending like drunken sailors and just as productively. Perhaps they are pushing book sales and a claim to some cabinet position, or angling for the Vice-Presidency. From just a cursory glance at their policy proscriptions it is to alter nothing but the peaceful existence of gay folks and arrest us all for the good of the nation. If they are that delusional thank heavens they are going nowhere. But what else do they offer? I can’t figure it out at all — “values” is what they say, while being very factually incorrect on a daily basis that even I can’t keep track.

Then there’s the newly Catholic hypocrite Newt Gingrich — and the Church and he in unholy bedroom hypocrisy by being multi-times divorced yet in good standing with the Church which claims that divorced folks have no business in the Church — but that Popish bunch has never had a problem with the foibles of mankind so long as it keeps the coffers filled and the archbishops with enough cash to pay off the kiddy-molesting claims which have not gone away yet, and lord knows they need tons of money for that — 1/2 the dioceses in the nation have declared bankruptcy already, I do believe. He is of course, well versed with the Democratic Party program of ever more massive government since he likes the Global Warming garbage as I froze my tuckus off there in Mississippi and now in Pennsylvania — can we say “garbage”? Sure we can.Turn up the heat for heaven’s sake, and stop telling me there’s going to be palm trees in Central Park NYC before long if we don’t turn off the economy.

And apparently Mitt Romney is still floating around waiting for the rest to just go away and he be the anointed one because he has been around the longest and is next in line, like heir apparent to Louis XIV — that being the XV, who was his great grandson after all, the son and grandson having died during the 75 years ol’ Louis was on the throne. Does Mitt have a clue as to what is to be done? Nope. And it seems he is Obama lite. Oh well, so much for the “difference” between the two political parties.

Meanwhile, I hear tell that Obama is just waiting around for the erstwhile Republicans to self-destruct, which they do apace or faster, and he thinks he’s going to get a second term no matter what he does, and how he goes back on every single campaign promise he made, and how he bollixed up the economy so bad that the unemployment rate remains the same — oh, no, it “falls” because less people give a damn to look for a job, so they go to the social welfare programs to survive in their new found poverty, and since the Democrats love the poor, they say, they are making as many as they can, so they can be oh so helpful, indeed, and keep their perks — And then he says he’s got a commission and a plan, so that he can fight the deficit by keeping up his $1.5 trillion a year in deficit spending and bleating about taking every dime from the rich and giving it to his cronies on Wall Street.

Perhaps one such crony, Jon Corzine, can escape the wrath which should come down upon him for losing a Trillion Bucks or so in his failed scheme to make money off the hemorrhage that is known as the EuroZone — which I read in a Newsweek is supposedly quite necessary to the United States — sure, in the way bullets are required for Russian Roulette, without a doubt. We should be getting far away from Europe, not sidling up to them. For they are going down, for the same reason that Obama’s Trillion and a Half Buck deficits are going to wreck this country – for it is axiomatic in math and finance that one simply cannot spend twice what one earns for very long. Oh sure, a year or two — but forever? No, it cannot be done.

Alas, the politicians of the world have jumped on the Hapsburg Concept — which is to keep building palaces in the hope that the poor and the workers, the taxpayers and the regular people will be impressed with their majesties, and thus try a little harder so that more taxes might be paid — for the blessed poor are encouraged to become the evil rich — though why a blessed person would wish now to become an evil person is not often said — and yet perhaps though, that’s why so few are trying — for why work hard for wealth when the politicians have already said they will take it — and as Marie Theresa said about Schonbrun, that 1000 room edifice in Vienna — “it’s economic development.” Sure, sure it is, in the same way that burning $20 bills taken out of one’s wallet helps you to encourage thyself to get thee to work in the morn, and earn some more.

China, I saw briefly on CNN while awaiting a plane the other day, is still slowly collapsing as the state run banks lend funny money to the state run enterprises and the state run oil company and the state run everything keeps swishing the money around the incense pot in the hopes that the stench of their rotten economy based on the rest of the world buying trinkets continues to erect empty skyscrapers that do look nice on the skyline. Alas, as Europe, and then America, go further in the doldrums, poor China will learn all about free trade, which they are loath to practice, since apparently the word “free trade” is not translatable into Mandarin or Han, and only “we make funny money” is approximate to the concept.

Meanwhile, Arab North Africa is a seething mess of violence and revolution as the various players in the game of “Who wants to be the next president-for-life” continues. Well, yes, it often does take a year or two for the music to stop and to see who is left sitting in the chairs and who went crashing to the floor. Of course, the Swiss are busy making sure that the ill-gotten billions of stolen wealth is kept well hidden in Zurich and Bern, lest the Swiss banks run into trouble themselves. Can’t be giving back ill-gotten gains, now can we? No we cannot — they never have. Hell, the Swiss still can’t find old Mrs. Rosenblum’s $100,000 French Francs she tried to hide before she was hustled off to the killing camps of Adolph. Something about a lost password, it is said.

What other mess is the world in? On the usual. Nothing much has changed. Most people are oblivious. Most people don’t seem to even care, for they are sure the government will bail them out and the appropriate people be blamed. Why, mortgage holders who can’t pay them are now clamoring for the government to take money from those who can pay their mortgages and give it to them, so that all the  mortgage holders will be unable to pay any mortgages, but keep their houses, and perhaps the money supply inflated just enough to make it look like there’s enough money while the banks are given bailouts to cover the mortgages not collected, and everyone lives happily ever after in communist bliss, perhaps.

All I can say it was nice to be away from it all, and I might well stay away some more. For never before have I seen so many so befuddled and so clueless, and so willingly so, and so bereft of logic and reality as I have among friends and family and complete strangers I meet on the net and in real life as I have in these times.

It’s simple really: every government on earth is spending every dime they can manufacture, borrow, print and cajole out of their economies and the economy next door, such that the governments of the world are spending $2 or $3 in funny money for every $1 in real wealth — just like happened in the time leading up to the Great Depression — apparently it is still true that you can fool most of the people all the time — and well, it’s going to collapse, and get ugly, and well, enjoy it while it lasts — and when the stuff hits the fan, oh my, not pretty — but, the Great Correction will be a wholesome cleansing of the balance books of companies and politician alike, and then maybe,  just maybe, we can all get back to living within our means and not promising everything to everyone so that we can enjoy the gravy train before the ultimate financial collapse.

I tell these things to people, and I put it into start human terms: how long can you spend $40,000 a year when you only earn $20,000? Or better, for how long can you spend $40 for every $20 you earn before the fan is hit with stuff? Oh, I don’t care what your goals and desires are — reality interferes with such things. I don’t care how you want to help the poor — it is how the poor are to be helped that is the issue. I love it when everyone is happy, and wealth is spread, but alas, it must be done on a 2+2=4 basis — and not on a 2+2=8 basis. You can argue all day long what the priorities are — but the math is irreducible to dreams, and is rock solid, and immutable.

And I see precious few folks, on any side of the political divides, which seem to see this. I’m happy though; I’m a survivor, and quite the reasonable fellow, and so I shall be invited to advise and help those without the brains, and I shall make money. I think there was a song about that — let me think: “You got the brawn, I got the brains, let’s make lots of money.” The question is, whom shall I assist and for what price? And who shall simply flounder and cry and collapse. Go read Gone With The Wind — for that time is coming, and Reconstruction is going to be good for some, and terrible for the rest.

They have gone too far. The elderly man I help — and gave up two years of my life to assist — is simply demanding I live according to his dictates — yeah, well, that won’t work. He’s a WWII Navy Vet — and he just sunk his ship. I’m fed up. So I called a friend in rural Mississippi — he will come pick me up within 72 hours — and I will be gone from here. During this time, at this house in Baton Rouge, I had time to blog and commentate , I enjoyed it — and well, I’m done. It’s not the first time I’m fed up — and the people who attack me think they can do so because I “have no other options” — hahahaha! — No one has a clue as to my resources and abilities. They think I am simply beholden to them and thus shall kiss their ass or else — and it’s their else or tuckus. And I shall thus suffer their nastiness  and demands and STFU — hahahaha! — They have no clue.

Throughout my life I have met these sorts of people — and just as quickly as I appeared — I disappear – and they never know what hits them — other than the reality that this Hlavac has more friends, family and resources to simply whoosh my way away to wherever — than they ever thought possible. They are always like, “How can he do that?” Let me tell you — I got a brain!

Now is one such time. Blah. I’m just pissed.

I will not be harassed, or harangued, for the good of some friggin’ jerk who seems to think I am dependent on anyone. Oh no. There was long ago a test in Readers Digest: “can you move to a city where you know no one with just a $100 bucks in your pocket ” — hahahaha I’ve done it with less than $50 and still made it — I am a cockroach, with survival skills like no other. And without “Occupying” anything by demanding sustenance — but finding new ways and means.

And so — until I figure something else out — this might be my last post in a few weeks, who knows, maybe months — I don’t need this — I got a life.

I just find it strange that some folks — all safely ensconced in their homes for decades — so stable, they say – think that I’m an idiot because I disagree with them and I don’t own a house right now. Well, then, let me say – hahahaha!

So, this might well be the last post for a while, and I don’t care — if folks want to be smug-self morons they are entitled to do so — but there is no requirement upon me to aid and abet them. Oh, they think their smugness is the ruling dictate, eh? hahahaha!

Well, you all with survive — so will I. Cheers — tally ho.

We’ll see what happens — but some folks need be taught a lesson — and I aim to teach it.

Jim Hlavac