Why the Statenment, “Obama can’t fix the mess caused in 8 years in only 2” is a Load of Crap…

I am still hearing that sound bite from Obama supporters, “You cannot fix in 2 years, what was messed up in 8 years.”  As usual, liberals don’t know have any facts to back it up and just rely on talking points.  I guess the old addage, “If you say it enough, eventually it becomes true”, is first in their playbook.  So, for the record, below is a chart of the unemployment rate.  When Bush took office with a Republican Congress in 2000 (Except for a brief time when Senator James Jeffords ® of Vermont decided to become an Independent thus giving the Democrats a one vote advantage, although Jeffords was fiscally more conservative than the rank and file Democrats.), unemployment was at an even 5% – considered very good in economic terms. It rose to about 6.66% in the middle of 2003, and then it went down steadily to 5% in 2006, the year when the Democrats took over Congress and the housing market bubble burst. 

That bubble burst due to bad sub-prime loans given out by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the encouragement of Democratic leaders so that the poor and minority groups could get mortgages at low interest rates – below the prime interest rate.  However, eventually when there were balloon payments required by those that had taken out loans, many people could not afford them and eventually their homes went into foreclosure. And, when the housing market is in trouble the rest of the economy follows suit.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are HUGE contributors to the Democratic party, and there is an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” attitude that goes along with them, as with many politicians, both Democrat and Republican, and their contributors. 

Up until 2007, we had a Republican president and a Republican Congress with an unemployment rate of 5%, which is very good economically speaking. By the beginning of 2008, the unemployment rate was back up to just under 6%; and during that year, when we started feeling the effects of the bad housing market, it rose to 10% by 2009.  2008 was also the year that Barak Obama was elected yet maintained a Democratic Congress.  And, despite a trillion dollar stimulus plan and medical care reform, the unemployment rate has risen to over 10% between 2008 to 2010.  It dropped to 9.6% and has pretty much stayed that way until today.

So, to recap, this “mess” that the Obama supporters keep talking about, started while there was a Republican president, yet a Democratic Congress.  So, if they want to point the finger at the previous 8 years, it would also have to be at the Democratic Congress as well.  However, the real problem was not anything that neither George W. Bush, nor the Democratic Congress did.  It was at the Democratic leaders who urged the sub-prime loans back in the 1990s, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for going along with that idea, the banks who agreed to make these loans to people who could not afford them and the people who took them out knowing they could not afford them.  So, put the blame where the blame is due.

Now onto the Republican tsunami that just occurred.  Under Obama and the Democratic Congress, the economic situation continued to get worse and now is just remaining constantly bad.  Mr. Obama likes to talk about all of the jobs he created, but he fails to mention how many were lost during his tenure.  If his stimulus plan was to create all of these jobs for the people, where are they?  In his two years he has been in power, there have been no signs of improvement whatsoever, yet Obama keeps spending and spending and our debt is rising to astronomical proportions.  So, this Republican tsunami was not the result of an impatient voting public who won’t allow for the president’s economic plan to save our country from the disaster of the 8 years preceding him.  For 6 of those 8 years, we were doing very well economically.  If the mess were created during the previous administration, it was when the Democrats took over Congress.  But, this is moot since the real reason for this “mess” has nothing to do at all with the preceding 8 years.  It is the fact that his economic plans have done absolutely nothing to help our economy but threaten the future of our country for our children, and America simply said “no more”.

Unemployment Rate, 2000-2010

Screw Manners…I Wanna Be Famous!

I just got back from running some errands, and while I was going from the pharmacy to the grocery store it I stopped behind a car where a woman was at the wheel of a 1980-something Toyota Tercel, all decked out with rust and duct tape.  Its rear bumper was covered in stickers, like “Feminists Rock!”, “Pro-Choice” and one with just the word “woman” on it, but spelled “WOMYN”.  Then off to the right there was a sticker all by itself which read “Well-mannered women don’t make history.”  And right after I saw the women lean out the window to spit something onto the street,  grab a handful of French fries out of a fast food bag and  stuff them into her mouth.  Then, wipe her mouth with the sleeve of her best grey sweatshirt, and light up Marlboro cigarette, I thought to myself – just like Fred Savage used to do in The Wonder Years – “Ya know she’s right.  If women like Lizzie Borden, Eva Braun and even Lindsay Lohan were well-behaved I never would have heard of them.

Lizzie Borden, woman of history

What I Means To Be Human

My friend, Ice

Having been tacitly accused of being one of the “grumpy old men” because of my previous posts, I am going to write a short story about something I witnessed the other day about what it means to be a human.

I own two dogs.  One is a 5 year old Siberian Husky male named “Ice”, and the other is a 12 year old West highland White Terrier female named “Max” (actually “Maxie”, but “Max” for short).  Now, Ice is your typical Husky:  very pack-oriented, likes to be with me all of the time, a lot of energy, guardful of his food and extremely playful with everyone.  Max is your typical terrier:  craaaaaaaves attention 24/7, also very people-oriented, too smart for her own good and was once very playful as well.  Because she is older she has developed poor hearing and arthritis in her back legs.  So, she is not as playful as she once was, but still full of life.  I have to carry her up the stairs if she wants to come to the second floor and carry her outside and back into the house when she needs to do her business.  Also, she tends to stay in one spot for a while as it can be difficult for her stiff legs to get up and move.  I give her glucosomine which helps ease her discomfort and every now and then I can see some of her energetic youth come back in her.  However, most of the time she walks very slowly as her arthritis prevents her from being what she once was.

Both dogs sleep with me in the bed.  Being that no human is in there with me, this makes for a likeable substitution.  I sleep in a double bed.  My spot is on the left and the dogs lay on the right.  I set up five pillows laying flat on the dogs’ side because the dogs like to lay on pillows and this way they don’t fight to get the two I had there up until a few months ago.  Nine times out of 10 Max sleeps on the top two pillows near my head, and Ice sleeps in various positions on the bottom three – both dogs making sure that they are touching me with some part of their bodies at all times.  I assume that they want to be touching me because this gives them comfort to know that they are with their master and not alone.  The one in 10 times that Max doesn’t sleep on the top two pillows she sleeps on the third one, right in the middle.  She is always first on the bed as I put her there early in the evening because she sleeps a lot due to her age.  When she sleeps in the middle, and after I crawl into bed, Ice knows that it is bedtime for the day and looks to jump up to find his spot.  However, he won’t do it when Max is sleeping in the middle because he knows that he will probably step on her with his monster-like paws and hurt her.  I have to move Max myself to her regular spot on the top two pillows, and then and only then will he jump up, cirle three times on the bottom three pillows to make a nest and curls up to fall asleep, usually with his butt touching my legs. 

I have gotten after Ice when he first came into this house to watch where he jumped on the bed because the few times he did land on Max after which she yelped in pain.  So, after he began to make sure there was enough room for him to land safely I assumed that he was trained to look out for her on the bed and make sure that he had enough room to land so as not to step on Max.

Then the other day, as with our normal morning routine after we all wake up, I carry Max downstairs for her to go outside and do her business first because she has an old bladder, and then I hook Ice on a leash attached to a runner for him to relieve himself.  Normally, Ice goes and sits by the couch and waits for Max to come inside and then he knows it is his turn.  However, this one morning Ice was standing right in front of the door as I walked towards it carrying Max, signaling that he had to go BAD!!!!!!!  So, since Max can no longer run and does not go out of sight from the back door due to her arthritic, old leggies, I hooked Ice up on the runner and just let Max out without any type of leash on, although I kept watch at the back door.

Huskies and terriers pee very differently.  Terriers are very curious dogs and they like to sniff and smell for just the right spot to pee, and it is usually several different spots because – I don’t really know why – I guess they like to spead their urine around in as many spots as they can.  Huskies, on the other hand, just go out, do their thing and then are finished.  Since they were bred to pull sleds in the arctic tundra, they don’t have time to stop and find a good spot to relieve themselves…they do it while running with their team and without missing a stride.

Well, on this particular morning, Max was sniffing around right outside the back door and looking for her usual nine places to pee, and Ice went further into the back yard where he always goes, releives himself and then is ready to come back in.  I always give the dogs a treat after they make their morning pee because they do it quicker and that way and I can get to my coffee or pee myself if I have to.  So, coming back inside after peeing is something they look forward to because they know they are going to get a treat.  As Ice starts to run back inside I see him running on the leash past where Max is smelling, and that if Ice keeps running on that path – which is the path he follows every time he goes out – the leash he is attached to is going to slide underneath Max and yank her legs out from under her, most notably her arthritic, painful legs which are extremely stiff in the morning.  As I yank open the back screen door to yell for Ice to stop running what do I see before a sounds leaves my mouth?  I see Ice stop running right before the leash reaches Max’s legs, look back over his right shoulder to watch Max slowly step over the leash and then resume his run to go inside to get his morning treat.  That dumb ass dog knew that Max was hurting with arthritic legs, knew enough to stop before the leash tripped her, waited for her to walk over it at which time he knew it was okay to run again.  He actually thought about her welfare first and delayed getting his treat, even if it was just for three seconds.

I have to say that small, brief act of kindness, thoughfullness, selflessness…of charity…was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life.  And it was done by an ANIMAL!!!!!!  One would almost want to cry about how amazingly human that dog behaved in an effort to spare his friend pain.  I relized that when I trained Ice to not jump up on the bed right away, to make sure that he would not step on Max, it was not merely trained conditioning as Pavlov did when ringing a bell for his dog at dinnertime.  There was something more there that Ice knew.  He knew that she was “sick” and to look out for her.  He was able to understand that all on his own, and that what it means to treat another being well and that the key to any type of relationship is to think about the other guy just a little sonner than to think about yourself.  He could teach us humans a thing or too, huh? 

Animals are not people, and I don’t believe in putting animals on an equal level with humans.  However, when it sometimes appears that all around you are people who only care about themselves and what they want (Don’Ye, this is why I wrote what I did about Usher.) maybe one can see why people such as myself, a “grumpy old man”, doesn’t particularly like the world around him and are at a point in their lives to where they are tired of trying to change it for the better.  If ALL of us, every human on this planet, took just three seconds like Ice did – heck, I’ll take just one – to make sure that what they are saying and/or doing doesn’t hurt the people around us, what kind of world do you think this would be? 

Ice may be frozen water, but it is also a warm, loving dog who acts more humane than a lot of humans do.

The Wahoo and the Va-Jay-Jay

Vikings player Visanthe Shiancoe is accidenty caught on tape in his birthday suit.

The recent “scandal” about female reporter, Ines Sainz, being acosted by a male athlete in the New York Jets’ locker room has created some discussion about where America actualy stands on gender equality in the law and society.  In 1985, the NFL adopted the policy that women reporters were allowed to go into players’ locker rooms to interview said players in the same manner as male reporters are.  This position had be upheld by previous court ruilings, most nopteably by the U.S. District Court for Southern New York, stating that not allowing women to do as such is discriminatory because it would not allow women equal access to work.  Since male reporters are allowed to go into male locker rooms, they are able to get interviews and comments for their columns and broadcasts that women may not be able to get after the players are dressed and ready to leave a sports arena. 

Ever since the NFL made this their official policy, there have been a plethora of instances of women reporters being  harrassed by male athletes, and the male athletes reacting negatively to women going around asking questions while these guys are showering and half naked.  There even have been instances when broadcast reporters were videotaping an interview in a locker room only to catch another player in the background fully naked with his genitals in full view and it ending up being posted on the internet. (However, this could be the result of a male or female broadcast reporter.)  Some players have reponded by taking the stand to not even speak to female reporters or reporters altogether in the locker room and will only do so outside of it.  Others have done much harsher things to female reporters such as sending them dead rats – a la the mafia’s dead fish – breaking into their homes and even death threats.  No matter which side of the argument one is on, methods such as these harsher ones are deplorable by any standards, and any athlete who behaves in this manner should not only face sanctions by their perspective professional sports leagues but also criminal charges for harrassment at the very least.

Of course, feminists groups have been in favor of female reporters being allowed access into men’s locker rooms, and criticized players and teams who have been resistent to this.  But again the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Women Sports Foundation are only addressing half of the issue.  Would the women in these groups be as zealous in the changing of social norms if men wanted to be allowed access to the locker rooms of female athletes?  Would they accept male reporters interviewing a woman athlete in the buff in order to get equal access to a sports story that normally only women could get?  Why wouldn’t they be in favor of this change since they proclaim to be in favor of equl rights for both genders.  After surfing the net for over an hour I could not find one comment by these womens’ groups on the issue of male reporters in women’s locker rooms.  In fact, articles on NOW web sites have had a lot of negative reponses by women themselves who say that they are naturally curious as to what feminist leaders think of the converse for equal access by male reporters.  It appears that maybe it is a part of human nature to wonder why only one particular group is given rights while another group is left out.  One may also argue that it is within modern American culture to not give rights to all people equally, and not just one special interest.  So why isnt NOW and their ilk looking at the full picture?

I have argued for a long time that the feminist movement was never about treating women as equal to men, but it has been about women gaining power.  More specifically, women gaining power without any regard for equality with men.   Just take a look at the current laws regarding “reproductive rights”.  Feminists argued that legalized abortion is necessary to “level the playing field” for women to determine whether or not they wish to be a parent, just as men had been doing over the years when they decide to either stick around and be a father and husband, or to act as if their children and mothers of their children don’t even exist without hardly any reprocussions.  Well, since the inception of the feminist movement we have had Roe vs. Wade and stricter laws requiring fathers to at least pay child support if they father a child.  In fact, with the current state of affairs a woman can decide completely on her own – “my body, my choice” – whether or not to to give her baby life without any say from the father whatsoever.  The father of the child can do absolutely nothing to stop a woman from aborting their child.  So, if a woman is pregnant and she decides she doesnt’t want to be a mother, yet the man does want to be a father, the law does not do anything to represent the man’s interest in the matter.  The woman can simply go to Planned Parenthood and destroy the child.  Conversely, if the woman does want to be a mother, and the man doesn’t want to be a father, there is nothing he can do to force her to have an abortion – and here is where anyone with a strong sense of equality starts to have their blood boil – but the mother can force the father into paying child support for 18 years in order to raise the child.  They simply petition the courts to do so.  There is no equality here, there is no “level playing field”.  In fact, now its the women who have all of the power.  They have the final say in what is going to happen, whereas before 1970 a woman practically had to give birth to a child because abortion was illegal, and the fathers could accept their responsibility or not.  Instead of feminism creating equality, the “level playing field”, they have succeeded in gaining power over men the same power that the men had over women over 40 years ago.

If NOW and the Womens Sports Foundation were truly concerned about the pro-American value of equality then they would be just as earnest about allowing equal access if male reporters wanted to go into women’s locker rooms.  It is true that womens’ sports is no way near as popular as men’s, and therefore its subject matter is no way near as high on the list for sports reporters, as is men’s sports.  So, the demand for interviews with female athletes is significantly less.  However, one cannot ignore such venues as women’s tennis, the WNBA and Olympic sports.  There are indeed sports related news stories in the field of women’s sports in which both male and female reporters would want to get.  Would the feminist groups be applauding male reporters and annoucers,  such as the panty-wearing, back-biting basketball announcer Marv Albert – the so called “voice of basketball” – seeking their rights to enter into a WNBA team’s locker room to interview a point guard?  My guess is no.

What could possibly be an argument against allowing male reporters to do as such, while still maintaining that female reporters should be allowed to entrance into men’s locker rooms?  After reading other blogs and postings, the only argument that I have seen is that the male of the human species are the persuers of female sexuality, whereas women are the gender which either accepts a males overtures or staves them off.  In short, men seek to “storm the gates” and women are the “gate keepers”.  Therefore, for male reporters to be in a locker room with naked women walking around makes it uncomfortable for the women athletes due to the fact that the women are in a state of vulnerability due to their nakedness and men will view them as objects to satisfy their libidos.  Conversely, men do not feel uncomfortable by females coming into their locker rooms because they do not feel vulnerable by their nakedness since they desire to be in that state with them anyway.  In a way, the men athletes are half way there to their goal of storming the gates.  The female reporters have to show their strength and resiliance by entering into “an arena of hungry hounds”, but aslo need the help of the law and protective policies by the sports’ leagues to make sure that they are not taken advantage of.

If any so-called “feminist” would say that, what a hypocrite she would be.  For an organization, built upon changing traditional generder sterotypes and the belief that the capability of women in the workplace is equal to that of men, to say that men could not control themselves in a women’s locker room is equivalent to men saying that women could never have any valid opinions on male sports and that women in general are the “weaker sex” incapable of doing a traditionally male occupation.  If a feminist wants to claim that women are able to act professionally in a room full of muscle-bound, testosterone-ridden male athletes, and not shrink or quiver because there are a herd of penises within view, then it stands to reason that men can control themselves and not turn into sexual wolfmen who cannot control their cravings by the light of a full moon.

Personally, I don’t think that any reporters should be allowed in locker rooms, and that athletes – no matter what gender – ought to have time to be addressed by their coaches, shower and dress in privacy.  Then and only then, once they leave the locker room, they can choose to talk to reporters in the hallways, a press area or some other designated spot for said interviews.  I know if I were a professional athlete, I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone after a game except for my coaches and fellow teammates.  I also know that I would strongly object to women being allowed into the locker room to see my wahoo right after leaving the shower.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think there are certain things which should be kept private from the opposite sex unless there is an intimate, romantic relationship going on with one of them.  Otherwise there can no longer be a personal, intimate side of a man to share with a women.  And, nowhere have I seen the issue addressed about the concerns of the male athletes’ girlfriends or wives for very attractive female reporters like Ines Sainz seeing their boyfriends/husbands in the buff.  I would bet that the majority of them would not like it at all that other women get to see their mates in the buff.  If I was married to a female athlete, I would be guarding her locker room like a soldier guarding Fort Knox, and no man would dare even think of trying to enter.  And, like it or not, if I were one of those male athletes whose league allowed female reporters to come into my team’s locker room I would refuse to speak to any female reporter in there.  I am more than happy to give a female sports reporter an interview, but not in an area designated for privacy and safety even if only on a personal level.  When I start seeing John McEnroe interviewing Serena Williams with her va-jay-jay in plain view after a U.S. Open match, then maybe I will reconsider this position of mine.  And, hey, if we are going this far, why bother having seperate lockers rooms at the gym and YMCA?  In fact, why bother having spereate rest rooms in public places for us non-athletes?  Why are athletes the only ones who are supposed to repress their modesty?  In this post-feminist age WE SHOULD ALL BE FORED TO BE REPRESSED EQUALLY!!!!

“I’ll show her!!!!!”

The shark story actually happened when I was about 10 years old. My family had an apartment down in Ship Bottom, NJ and we would go down there for a good part of the summer. So, my mother decided that when I was about 5 or so to give me swimming lessons so she would feel more secure since I spent almost every day in the ocean. Consequently, I got to be a very good swimmer at a young age.

Now, if you have ever been to the beach with your mother when you were a kid you know how she makes you wait for a certain period of time after you eat something, e.g. 30 minutes after an ice cream, an hour after lunch and if you have a whole bucket of KFC…never. And, as I would be walking into the ocean, she would always say “Stay close enough to where I can see you!” And, if you went out too far she would come into the water and yell at you in front of everyone. Well I used to get pissed when I had to wait to go swimming and she embarrassed me like that. So, one time I was going to get back at my mother. After waiting the required 30 minutes after eating an ice cream I decided that I was going to swim out as far as I could and drive my mother crazy. So, I went into the Atlantic Ocean and swam out to that group of adults who are the furthest out into the water, and then decided to swim out further. I swam and swam until I got tired and when I had stopped I turned to look back and see exactly how far I had come. When I did I noticed that there was no one else in the water! Everyone was lined up on the beach yelling at me with the lifeguard standing on the tower blowing his whistle. BEing confused I started to look aorund and when I turned my head I saw a shark fin skimming out of the water about 10 feet away.

Being the dumb kid that I was I decided that I was going to out-swim the shark, and started swimming as fast as my 10 year old body could take me towards shore. The entire time I was waiting to feel the shark bite down on my legs as I thought he would be coming up behind me and that was the place he would first attack. I swam and swam until I finally caught a wave and body surfed the rest of the way in.

As I approached the shore I saw my mother trudging out, breaking into the waves yelling at me to “Get in here!”, all the while carrying a beach chair with her supposedly to beat the shark to death. When we reached each other in the water she grabbed my arm and dragged me onto shore and onto our blanket, and then screamed “I did not carry you in my body for nine months for you to end up as fish food!”, and then slapped me across the face. A minute later the lifeguard came over and started yelling at me for swimming out too far. My mother turned to him and screamed, “Don’t you think he’s been through enough?” I guess its okay for a mother to yell at her son, but not someone else.

Ever since that day I have always had a slight phobia of sharks, but I do like to see them in aquariums and study about them.

Hope you enjoyed the fish story.

The Angry Catholic

Another person with another blog.  Honestly, I don’t really care if anyone reads this or not.  I am doing this for the practice of writing, as I need it more and more because I  want to get into writing professionally…or at least get some things published to save for my retirement.

To be honest, I don’t like most people.   Ninety-nine percent of the people in this world are stupid, crazy, delusional or some combination of the three.  I think I have finally reached the point where I can say I am “old” because I would rather not deal with people for the most part; or at least on the level of being interpersonal where the above three qualities show themselves.  No longer do I have the ideals that I had when I first graduated college about changing the world.  Let it rot.  It is apparent that this country is headed for the “Big Flush”.  I just want to be dead by the time it happens – at least before Obamacare starts to tell old people that they won’t be getting medical treatment because they have already exceeded the mean life expectancy – or if I am still alive to be able to hold on to one side of the bowl.

I don’t care about changing peoples’ minds anymore.  Most have their minds made up on very shallow, superficial bumper sticker philosophies regarding life, politics and God.  The reasons for what people believe have become so cliche that it is easy to mouth the words as they speak them.

“I am spiritual but I don’t believe in organized religion.”  “I’ll decide what to do with my own body.”  “No one tells me what is right and what is wrong.  I just believe in being good.”  “Why should I listen to these Cahtolic priests when all they do is go around having sex with little children.”

When I hear this knee jerk explanations for what ends up being excuses for living a self-serving lifestyle, all I can do is roll my eyes and move on.  The calories that anyone would expel to try and talk some sense into these people can be much better spent for, say, clipping one’s toenails.

Yes, I am an angry Catholic.  I hate the fact that being anti-Catholic is the one form of bigotry that is still permissible in this country.  In fact, some of the cultural elite see it as being en vogue.  I hate the fact that less than 1% of the priests in this country – a proportion less than single laymen found to have molested young children – have caused such a scandal and given those on the side of secular humanism weapons to fight the Church.  I am tired of watching TV programs and listening to music and going to the theater and see human beings being reduced to what they do below their waist.  (I almost makes me long for the Ozzie & Harriet days.)  I hate to see that every year over 1.2 million children are killed through legalized abortion, with approximately 95% being for purposes of contraception.  I get angry when I see a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine is called “art”…and my tax dollars are funding it.  I also hate it that if one were to do that to a star of David or a likeness of Mohammad, there would be a hue and cry about the artist being anti-Semetic or a bigot, but with a Christian symbol it is “pushing the envelope” and “ground-breaking”.  I hate it that academia tells people not to call December 25th “Christmas” and seeks to take away all religious meaning to a 200o year old holiday so that our culture becomes what the Soviet Union’s was three decade ago.  Furthermore, I hate it when businesses love to profit off of Christmas but then refuse to call it as such.

Well, that’s enough for now…

No, I no longer like this world.  I find very little in it that truly leads to happiness.  When I do find someone who is intelligent, real and sane I truly treasure whatever degree of friendship I have with them.  I try to rid my life of those things that serve no purpose and even get in the way of living it to true peace and joy.  Maybe it’s sad, or maybe its a sign of wisom to get disgusted with most of the things in this world. All I know is that it is a very freeing experience, and I cannot wait until I move on to the next one.