The Juice Ball Era

Last week the Mitchell Report concerning the use steroids and Human Growth Hormone was released and much of the sports world has gone into the vapours concerning the allegations.

It was a given that Barry Bonds was a juicer. and that Mark McGuire was pumping the stuff. But when it was charged that Roger Clemens, Andy Petitt and Eric Gange had been using either steroids or HGH many of the sports writer were "shocked, shocked," while the remainder claimed to know that such nonsense had been going on for many years. In either case, the sports writers have proven themselves to be craven in either claiming not to know while actually knowing, or knowing and not reporting because they didn't want to burn their sources.
Whatever the case, baseball has been regarded the sacramental sport in the United States. Certain eggheads have even claimed that in order to understand the United States one must understand baseball. But, of course, that was said before so many players were recruited from the Caribbean. But there is a certain mythic quality to baseball that must at least we must pretend to exist -- the late spring afternoon played in a newly mown field by farmers' strapping sons or hardscrabble coal miners' sons making the professional league because of their strength and talent.

The great game, unfortunately, has long gone beyond those myths (not unlike the old Playboy myth that the centerfold is a graduate philosophy student at Oxford who poses nude in front of a camera just for the hell of it). But one finds oneself hoping that the players will at least play without the help of steroids and HGH in the same way that a young man hopes that the figure of a Playboy center fold is natural and not the result of implants or air brushing.

The difference, of course, is that baseball has always held itself to be a reflection of truth, justice and the American way. Playboy has held it's photographic endeavors as representations of "the girl next door", which is great unless it is your daughter who is the girl next door.

But to get back to cases, there are men in baseball who have used steroids or HGH. Some of them have been named. Major League Baseball has not condemned them. The owners have not condemned them. The players union has not disowned them. No player who has been named has had a Marion Jones moment. And those players who have admitted to using HGH (never steroids) have claimed that they only used HGH to recover from an injury (ask yourself this question: have any of your co-workers been prescribe HGH to recover from an industrial injury? Your co-worker lost more, percentage-wise and in real terms, more money than the recovering baseball player, as did your co-workers' employer due to his absence).

The juicers have tainted baseball, the Great Game. And as much as the protest that they haven't been goosed by a hypodermic needle, they have wrecked the image of the game. Let's face it. Politicians are expected to be rotten, cheats and corrupt. We, the populace have no choice but to pay them through our taxes. But the pay of ball players is based on our disposable income. We have, in theory, control of the game, and we have been led to believe that the game is clean. There may be drunks or womanizers or just plain jerks, but on the field we expect every player to play without performance enhancing drugs. Is it not a strange thing that Babe Ruth, a known souse, knocked in so many run runs, while Barry Bonds had to surpass his record while using steroids. Hank Aaron managed to break the record on his own talent.

Many years ago Brett Butler of the Los Angeles Dodgers was sidelined by throat cancer. At the time it was assumed that his cancer was caused by the use of chewing tobacco or Copenhagen snuff. The result of Mr. Butler's malady was that the use of chaw or snuff in the major leagues was pretty much ended in favor of the use of sunflower seeds. MLB did not want to be associated with a substance that might (and very rarely might) be associated with cancer. So instead of players perhaps getting cancer from chaw or snuff, they have deigned to use a substance that will more likely give them cancer later in life such as steroids and HGH.They have not learned the lesson of the NFL players, such as Lyle Alzado and John Matuzeck, who, being steroids users, succumbed to cancer at early ages. Chaw and demon rum are benign compared to the wonders or modern chemistry. The chances of a player getting cancer from Red Man or Meyers' Rum are much less than his getting cancer from a Balco product, but since the the effects of chaw or booze ( spitting or stumbling) are not as apparent as steroids. MLB has ignored the use of the Juice because an uneducated fan base expects home runs instead of good in the park ball and homers make money while getting upset over an honest brown stream of tobacco juice spit over home plate that results in no improvement of a player's performance.

Let's face it. Baseball will never be what it was or what we hope it was. There have always been cheaters in baseball and there always will. But we, as fans, can shun or shame the dirty players. Can you imagine what a bunch of fans would do to Roger Clemens by shouting "Juicer!" the ext time he goes on the mound?

Kudos to Curt Schilling, a truly honorable and ball player with heart (remember his World Series victory pitching while bleeding into his sock) who has called out the juicers. If only more players had his sense of honor.

Let's take "my bad" to a new level

As regular readers of this space are well aware, your faithful correspondent is not a writer of the most elegant or proper English prose. But he does try to write proper English. By "proper English" he means the Queen's English or standard American English as was spoken and/or written in the English speaking world up until twenty years ago.
This is the English that was regularly in the popular press, in literature and in the electronic media. It was the English as taught by Webster, Fowler, and Strunk and White. It was English meant to be used as a lingua franca among English speakers. It was free of dialect, cant, occupational terms and slang in general.
In those days slang was written with quotation marks to signify that the slang term was rather suspect and dialect was identified as so. There was an assumption that there was a proper way to speak English and an improper way to speak English. Proper English was the language spoken in public or among those outside of one's social or occupational group. In other words, a machinist would refer to one thousandth of an inch a a "thou" among other machinists, while using the term "one thousandth of an inch" among those outside the trade. Or Japanese-Americans would refer to elastic as "gommu" among other Japanese-Americans while using the word "elastic" among the gaijin.
About twenty years ago, the various new media and the entertainment industry decided that they wanted to appeal to youth instead of conveying clear information that would be understood by all English speakers. They began using street slang and business slang. The result, more recently has been the regular use of such terms as "my bad", "gettin' real (or makin' it real)", "hottie" and "taking it to the next level." What do these terms mean? They are so loose in definition as to mean nothing. Does "my bad" mean that one has been bad, done something bad, made a mistake or is "bad" in the street sense? Does "gettin' real" mean being sincere, a genuine item or feeling or getting down to brass tacks? Is Monica Belluci a "hottie?" Was Deborah Kerr? Was Audrey Hepburn? What exactly is a "hottie"? When a young man and young woman have been kissing one another good night for several weeks and one suggests that they take their relationship to the next level does that mean that they should go back to holding hands? Or start going to bed together? One wonders if, in announcing the declaration of war against Japan, if had the current trend toward the use of street language had become popular, Franklin Roosevelt would have announced to the nation, "Yesterday, December seventh, the shit hit the fan in Pearl Harbor."
Here's the gist of the matter. English is a difficult language to master. For some it is a difficult language to attain competency in. But these are not reasons for the various media to lower the standards of the usage of the language to appeal to those who cannot tell a preposition and a noun. One would think that those in the various media would want to try to raise the standard of the use of the language for no other reason than to allow more nuance in their stories and programs. But the hunger for money trumps what is proper and more and more while reading the newspapers and watching television and the movies we will be subjected to such terms as "MILF" or "googling."
It's all enough to gag a maggot.

Two Topics for the Price of One!

We here at the Manor are baseball fans. We are not rabid baseball fans; we cannot recite statistics, but we do believe that it is God's own game. We often encourage the hired men to play ball on the verdant fields during Christmas and Easter, as well as those late afternoons when they've finished the sheep shearing.
Having said that, your faithful correspondent has heard that the Mitchell Commission dealing with the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs will be making their findings public soon. According to Arte Moreno, the owner of the Angels and an opponent of juicing, despite the fact that one of his players is a know user of human growth hormone, says that the commission report will name names. In other words, it will name players who have been using steroids.
We here at the Manor hope that Moreno is correct in his prediction. Major League Baseball seems to be unwilling to enforce its own rules against steroid use. Perhaps the Mitchell Commission report will shame the juicers into either quitting the great game or quit using steroids. The likelihood of either event taking place is, admittedly, slight. But one can always hope that someone will do the right thing.
The steroid controversy has excited your faithful correspondent to consider the fact that baseball was not the game that it once was. Let's face it, baseball is a game that children play for free or pay to play and which adult men are played enormous amounts of money to play. Something is a bit out of balance in the equation. It's somewhat tantamount to one's little daughter playing house for the fun of it and the cast of Desperate Housewives doing the same thing for more money than the average engineer makes.
If your faithful correspondent had just a bit more cash on hand (the majority is tied up in ruby mines in Columbia and tea plantations in Ceylon) he would found a new baseball league called the Real Baseball League. The rule book of the league would be the same rule book used in 1890. The ball used would be the dead ball (making for in the park ball and home runs a real oddity instead of an expectation), gloves would be optional, pitchers could throw spitters, and the only safety equipment would be batting helmets. No batting gloves (what's wrong with friction tape or pine tar?), no elbow or shin guards (these batters are looking more and more like robots instead of men) and no drugs other than alcohol, nicotine or caffeine. And not changing the ball after every time it's hit or touches the ground. As the ball changes the game should change.
Consider the fact that the only thing that has changed in the English game of cricket in the past 200 years is that now the batsman wears a hard helmet. It's the same ball, the same bat and the same game. Baseball is not the same game that it was a hundred years ago. The plethora of home runs has made the game rather boring. Baseball has become a batters' game instead of a pitchers' and fielders' game. And we all lose by the change.
This past week the Los Angeles Times (a truly terrible major city newspaper, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once a day) printed an opinion/entertainment piece about the old television program Mannix. The jist of the article was that the series is a hidden treasure and was pretty much the last gasp of the "cool" private investigator. Apparently the character Mannix was a smoker, a wearer of ties and sports jackets, a listener of jazz and a drinker of scotch. In other words, he was the last of the Peter Gunn type of television P.I.s.
Yours can not remember ever having watched the series. But this may be due to the fact that he was slaving away at the mill on the night shift during the show's run. The only thing that he can remember about Mannix is that Mannix's secretary was named Peggy, which is the name of your faithful correspondent's lovely sister-in-law. Night shift workers get what they can on television and what we got at the time were re-runs of the Rockford Files at 2:30 Monday morning. Rockford was not the cool shamus. He was the common man shamus, but he was pretty entertaining.
In musing over the article it slowly dawned on your faithful correspondent that the private eye series, which was once a staple of network television (the last being the Mike Hammer series starring Stacy Keach), is no more. Instead the networks offer series about trashy suburban women (and if any trashy suburban women are reading make sure to e-mail me and I'll give you directions to the Manor), hospital soap operas and crime shows featuring government operatives in various permutations such as CSI, Missing, NCIS and 24. No private investigators.
What does this mean? While your writer is no sociologist (a truly grim and useless profession) he will take the reins and state that the change from the private detective hero to the government investigator is a signal and disturbing change. Without quoting Raymond Chandler, let it be said that the private eye was a free lancer, a man outside of society working to correct society, a knight walking down the mean streets of society to right the wrongs that the barons ignored. The government operatives work to maintain the society. They do not work to try to fix the society and the government. They ARE the government. They don't smoke. They rarely drink. They agonize about beating up or killing a villain. They are products of the 60s and 70s. They distrust the government and yet do everything they can to maintain it. The old timers like Mannix, Rockford, Gunn et al, while working for what was right did not do so for the state. They did what was right because they knew what was right. And in doing what was right was not always what was legal.
And to think that shows such as Mannix, The Rockford Files and Peter Gunn were written by men who were of the generation called square and sheep. They were more suspicious of the government than are the writers of the current crop of crime shows. Their characters didn't depend on the state to save the day.

Where Have the Men Gone?

To the right we have a photograph from the old movie The Wild Bunch. The actors are, from left to right, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, William Holden and Ernest Borgnine. The film, was, in the opinion of your faithful correspondent, one of the last films that portrayed men and was acted in by men.

We now have films about superheroes played by emotional boys. Consider Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible films. His character survives incidents that would kill any mortal and he does things that a team could not do. Or Matt Damon in the Bourne films. Bourne seems to be able to outsmart a CIA that is more God-like than governmental i.e., lazy time servers. Cruise and Damon, among others of their acting generation, separate themselves from the great unwashed masses and restrict their appearances before the public to movie premieres and film festivals when not pushing silly religions or silly pseudo-scientific causes like man made global warming.

In the past the male actors such as those in the photo proved themselves willing to show themselves as men who believed in something other than pet projects. Borgnine spent two different enlistments in the Navy, one before and one during World War 2, and finished his enlistment as a Chief Gunner's Mate. Holden put his own money into the conversation of African wildlife and didn't stand on the local church steeple shouting "Save the antelope." Johnson lived the life of a decent man asking no recognition, but showing what decency was. Oates, well, was Oates. He lived a rough life but never involved himself in scandal. He was, probably more than we'd like to admit, like most of us.

And we can add others. Glenn Ford preferred to hang out with the workers of his local service station than the Hollywood crowd. Clark Gable knew cars and worked on cars (not hiring someone else to do it like say, Jay Leno) and would even set the timing of a newspaperman's car when the newspaperman had come to interview him. Eddie Albert planted and maintained a large vegetable garden on his Beverly Hills spread and didn't expect a hireling to farm it and he didn't boast about it like, say, Ed Begley Jr.

So what can we learn from this? Simply that there was a time when men who had the good fortune to make a good living as actors never lost their sense that, whatever their degree of talent, they were lucky or fortunate and that they were not special. They never considered themselves among the elite. And they never forgot that they were men more than they were actors. They knew that to be a man was to travel an often difficult road doing things that were not easy, but were right. Like the gang in the Wild Bunch at the end of the movie.

The Prize Gets Gored

There was a time when the Nobel Peace Prize meant something. It was awarded as a reward and for the recognition of someone who had worked for peace or for the relief of suffering in the world. Theodore Roosevelt, considered by some one of the more belligerent American presidents despite that there were no wars in which America was involved during his administration, won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Teresa of Calcutta won for her work among the poor of India.

The Prize has always been a gauge of its time. But there was a time when the Committee at least pretended that it was looking at the influence of the receipt's work over the long term instead of the season. This is evinced by the awarding of the Prize to Henry Kissinger (partially responsible for the fall of Vietnam and the resulting suppression of freedom in that nation as well as Cambodia and Laos), Jimmy Carter (who never met a terrorist he didn't like) and Yasser Arafat (nephew of the vile Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and one of the inventors of modern Arab terrorism), and the United Nations (whose "peacekeeping" forces strand by and watch while innocents are slaughtered in the Congo instead of protecting the helpless). The Prize has turned into a beatification of those who stand opposed to Western values, fellow travellers, sanctimonious poseurs and the clueless.

Now Al Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with "alerting" the world to the dangers of man made global warming. Discounting the fact that the truth of Gore's version of the causes of global warming is in dispute among respected scientists, one wonders what Mr. Gore has done to promote peace in the world with his alarms. The only thing that we at the Manor can assume is that it is Mr. Gore's insistence on bringing down Western technology and engineering to the level of the Third World so that instead of burning fossil fuels or taking advantage of the power of the atom the First World can burn dung to make our morning coffee and move our cargo over the roads with heavy duty bicycles and over the seas with sailing ships. Meanwhile, Mr. Gore flits from place to place like a moth with some sort of attention disorder in private jets using the excuse that he's buying carbon offsets by paying someone to plant a tree for each mile he travels, or some such nonsensical thing.

And here's where the awarding of the Prize makes some sort of sense. The Nobel Peace Prize has become a prize given by the elite to the elite. The people doing the grunt work to make the world a better place are looked down upon. The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Chabad, medical missionaries and teaching missionaries do more to promote peace in nations and in the world than Mr. Gore. But because none of these groups buy into the New Age liberal Gaia nonsense, they are ignored in favor of a self satisfied re-incarnation of the Penguin.

But what can you expect from Sweden? The Swedes sat out World War 2 while others bled so the Swedes could make their name in the manufacture of uncomfortable furniture.

But others, much smarter and more articulate than your correspondent, have addressed the matter more succinctly. Check them out: Public Secrets: from the files of the Irishspy: And the award for the biggest , Union Leader - Gore's prize: A fraud on the people - Sunday, Oct. 14, 2007 .

What a Surprise!

There are still those among the chattering classes who insist that there is no such thing as Islamo-facsism and that the problems that the Western world, what is left of it, has with the Islamic juggernaut is due the "misunderstandings" of the true nature of Islam. Any thinking person with any sort of sense of self-survival knows that this is simply bull corn.
The Orcs are on the march and much of our national leadership, instead of resisting the onslaught, is hoping that the Orcs are wearing soft soled shoes while the trample us instead of golf shoes.
Let's face it. The Orcs have been on the march for for the past 1300 years. Generations of the past have successfully fought back against tide of heathenism while our own spends more time trying to "understand' instead fighting back. Instead of standing for the values of the West we find ourselves at the mercies of politicians who are more concerned about "inclusiveness", i.e. Chamberlainism, than they are about the maintenance of Western mores and values.
But be that as it may, here's a video from Deutsche-Welle television about the grand mufti of Jerusalem and his connection with Nazi Germany: Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: The Grand Mufti, the Nazis and modern Islamism It explains a lot.

Well, Lo! and Behold!

Occasionally one is willing to admit one's garage is infested with termites only after one's garage is a dilapidated heap despite warnings from people who are experts in termites have warned one year after year that one's garage is in danger of becoming useless for anything, even fire wood.

Those in power in Western societies often make the same mistake. They are willing to admit that there is a problem only after the society has fallen around their ears and resulted in a society that is completely antithetical to Western values. They discover that their concept of "inclusiveness" has resulted not so much in inclusiveness as it has the replacement of a better society by a lesser, or worse, society. Those who replace the better society are not willing to offer the same tolerance that the "wise men" of the better society are to offer to the lesser society.

In other words, if the traditional culture of the United States tolerates the culture of illegal aliens from Latin America by allowing the use of the Spanish language in governmental business, the celebration of Mexican patriotic of holidays such as Cinco de Mayo or Sept. 16 by municipal entities or the practicing of Latin American traditions that are antithetical to those of the United States, there is no reason to be surprised when the English language becomes an option instead of the default language, that the celebration of Independence Day becomes a holiday meaning nothing more than fireworks and barbecues and that pure food edicts disappear in favor of the tamale vendor pushing a cart down the street who's food has been thrown together in a roach infested kitchen.

Some people in Europe are finally waking up. Some are finally seeing the quiet invasion by Orcs. This all to short video by Deutsch Wila shows the results of an investigation by an Europeanized Muslim woman concerning the Orc invasion of Belguim:YouTube - Belgium - Militant Muslims

Imagine such an organ such as ABC, CBS or NBC receiving the same reaction among the denizens of Arab Detroit or MacArthur Park in LA. If nothing is not done you will see it.

Methinks someone was cheated

Those in the know are aware that we here at the Manor are rock-ribbed Protestants. This is not to say that we do not consider some of our Roman Catholic brethren Christians, but we do hod to the doctrines of Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide and Sola Gratia.

This being said, we do pay attention to the activities of the Roman Catholic Church in the county in which the Manor has been placed.

After the Northridge earthquake Roger Mahoney deigned that it was imperative for Catholics within his archdiocese to pay for the building of a new cathedral to replace Saint Vibiana's Cathedral, which was dead in the center of downtown Los Angeles. It was so downtown that it wasn't unusual to be hit upon by a drunk or sterno drinker camped outside St. Vibiana's while walking by said cathedral. Said "street people" retreated to the Salvation Army Mission or Union Rescue Mission (both Protestant organizations) when they wanted a bed or a meal. St. Vibiana's offered them nothing. Cardinal Mahoney claimed that the earthquake damaged St. Vibiana's (a Spanish colonial style edifice) to the extent that it would cost more to repair the cathedral and bring it up to current earthquake standards than it would be to build a new cathedral on the other side of the freeway (and outside of downtown).

Of course, Mahoney got his way (after all, he is the price of Los Angeles and every politician has his nose buried in the back of Mahoney's cassock) and a new cathedral, Our Lady the Queen of the Angels (perhaps it's Angles) was built on the west side of the freeway. The resulting edifice looks (despite the alabaster screens and statues) like a sheet metal plants. But it gets Mahoney and his minions away from having to daily confront the homeless, the drunks and the insane camped outside their cathedral.

Be that as it may, the cathedral is there and it was paid for by the tithes of faithful Catholics under the guise that it would be more economical to build a new cathedral than repair the old one.

Well, lo! and behold! The local rag (the L.A. Times) reported the other day that the old cathedral, St. Vibiana's has been refurbished and brought up to the current earthquake standards. In other words, Roger Mahoney has not only built a new cathedral, but has refurbished the old cathedral, as well as paying off the victim of the priest sexual abuse scandal.

It seems awfully odd to us here at the Manor that Roger Mahoney, while crying poor mouth, can pull off such a financial miracle. He must have a hot line to the Almighty. One year he says that the Church cannot afford to repair the old cathedral or any of victims of pervert priest and the next thing one knows the Church in LA is building a new cathedral, repairing the old one and paying off the kids who were sexually abused.

Meanwhile, Mahoney is still sending the homeless, the drunk and the abused to the Salvation Army and the Union Rescue Mission.

Somebody was ripped off and it wasn't the Protestants. Mahoney wears his scarlet beanie and keeps his hand clean while Protestants take care of the poor. The poor and homeless aren't camped outside of the Taj Mahoney.

Two American Icons

We here at Bloody Nib Manor are what some people would call "old fashioned." We don;t listen to rap or hip-hip or corrida music. We don't watch many new movies. We don't speak Spanish. And we know that marriage between a man and a woman is the definition of marriage. Anything other is is a goose disguised as a duck.

NFL football is not popular here. We think of NFL as the National Felons League as is evinced by Michael Vick and Pacman Jones. It is a thuggish sport dominated by thugs. The NBA is made up of players who spend much of their time posing, preening and trash talking. The last NBA player worth any regard was A.C. Green, who was ridiculed by the press for his Christian convictions.

Major League Baseball, on the other hand, is popular here at the manse. While we realize that not a few professional ball players are on paragons of moral behaviour, the game has not fallen to the level of employing dogfighters or rapists or gun toters. Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco may be a steroid pumped slugging machines, but most ball players behave themselves and do not act like idiots when they hit home runs. They hit, they run and then they go back to the dugout.

Baseball is that odd game where the physical size of the player means little. A little guy can hit and run as well as a big man. The perfect pitcher is a noodle with an arm. Sandy Kofax was the perfect pitcher. Watching him pitch was like watching a ballet. Perfect form. And in that way the game is the perfect American game. Genetics mean little in the Great Game. Talent, smarts and work make a ball player. Not size or bulk. The current standing in the America League show that even money doesn't matter. The Yankees, one of the highest paid teams in baseball, were humiliated last week by the Angels, and they are trailing badly behind the Red Sox, another lesser paid team. In the National League the Dodgers ( high paid team) are stumbling trying to find the call let alone cross the plate. Every game is a new game and work and skill make a winner. Just like the good old USA.

On a more prosaic level, consider the Zippo lighter: Zippo - Product Category listing. 75 years old, basic as basic as can be, low tech. No plastic. Just metal, flint and naphtha. The basic thing like what we hope America will be. And still chugging along.

Who could ask for more?

The World Continues to Deteriorate

There is a certain segment of the Western World that seems to suffer from Chamberlainism. Chamberlainism is the philosophy that if one appeases one's enemies one will not be attacked or destryed by one's enemies. In other words, throw your kids to the crocdiles and the crocodiles will not get hungry for your sorry carcass.

In the Netherlands we have a Dutch bishop sugesting that Dutchmen referred to ur Lord God as Allah because it might make the Orcs living in Holland happy: Let's call God Allah - Radio Netherlands Worldwide - Independent thinking, ind . If this suggestion had been made by a politician it would almost be excusable because politicians are a craven bunch who rarely stand for anything other than their maintainance of power and am easy job with a good income. But this man is a Roman Catholic bishop and seems to be calling for a downgrading of the Person of God by referring to Him as the name Mohammedans use to referto their god, who is not the One True God, but a false and fickle deity. Some people commit suicide and some people want their societies to commit suicide. When reading the article note that this man seems to have lived a life of theological confusion. The nest thing you know he'll be calling for the Dutch to follow the silliness of Wayne Dyer and his faux Taoist nonsense because the largest ethnic group in the world are the Chinese.

Meanwhile, from Canada, a group of Mennonites have fallen under the eye of the secularists in Quebec: WorldNetDaily: Christians would rather move than hear evolution The Quebec governement has demanded that evolution be taught in Mennonite schools. This is an example of Right-think as described in Orwell's 1984. Ask yourself this question: In your daily life, if you are not a scientist, does an adherence to the theory of Darwinian evolution mean anything? Does it affect your life? Will it make you a better person? Will it help you be a better farmer, machinist, stockbroker or citizen? The answer is, No. It might make you a worse person. If one thinks of a human being as nothing but an animal then one might tend to treat other humans as animals. But, for some reason government officials seem to think that the teaching of evolution will make a better person. The nonsense is never ending.

As an aside, the farmers and pigeon fanciers (Darwin used the development of various pigeon breeds as proof of evolution despite no pigeon ever developed into another species) knew a lot more about genetics than Darwin ever did. They knew that no cow could be bred into something that was not a cow. Their experience was based on real life, hands on work, not speculation. But Darwinian evolution is nothing but speculation. To be blunt, it's mental masturbation.

It's For the Children!

This week the Solons who govern the State of California have decided to take action to prevent the drinking of alcoholic beverages by people under the age of twenty-one.

"What," you may well ask," have these paragons of wisdom and intelligence decided to do to prevent Justin and Tiffany from getting falling down drunk or driving their cars into the minivan carrying the members of the local baseball team?" Have they perhaps increased the penalty for merchants who sell demon rum to the high school cheer leading squad? Or perhaps have law enforcement descend on the local loud party at which Harold teen and his friends are dead drunk on the front lawn?

Nah. They've decided to try kill two birds with one stone. Discourage teen aged drinking while making money from teen aged drinkers. After a lot of "hard" study, they've decided to increase the tax on "alcopops." Alcopops are those bottled drinks with a fermented malted base ans a fruit flavor. In other words, beer that tastes like lemonade or some other fruit drink. Examples are such drinks as Mike's Hard Lemonade, Zima and Seagrams coolers. The tax on such beverages will be increased three dollars per gallon, or about one and a half dollars per six pack. The thinking is that young people don't like the taste of beer or hard liquor. They like the taste of soda pop. Thus if the price of hootch that tastes like pop goes up them crazy kid's will make a right turn to the nearest ice cream parlour instead of falling under the influence of John Barleycorn.

To be blunt, that's bullcorn.The tax increase punishes those adults who have the misfortune to like the taste of such silly drinks in the name of "the children" while it will do nothing to curb teen aged drinking, binge or otherwise. It's a show, it's a pose. It's a way to say, "We're doing something!" while in reality the legislature is doing nothing but finding another way to bring in the long green. The legislature might as well increase the tax on sweet wines and mixed drinks. It would be much more effective to punish those teenagers found drinking or drunk with jail time or community service or fines. But those actions don't bring money into Sacramento. They cost money.

Any kid who wants to get drunk will do so whether or not he or she can cough up the extra buck and a half for Zima. They'll soon develop a taste for Coors Light or Olde English 800. Meanwhile, their Mom, having to put up with such brats, will find that her nightly bottle of Zima is too much to cover with her Wal-Mart paycheck, and will find it more economical to buy a fifth of vodka and down a couple of screwdrivers while waiting for her little dears to come home from the local fiesta. And then Junior will find the Popov in the bread box and start his day with a screwdriver before heading to school.

On a somewhat similar topic, some idiot in the federal government has decided that it might be a good idea to increase the federal tax on cigarettes by one dollar per pack and on cigars by as much as ten dollars per cigar. The idea behind this is twofold. The first is to "discourage" smoking. The second is to use the tax money to pay for a federal health care scheme to treat children (children in this case means people up to the age of twenty-five. When your faithful correspondent was twenty-five he had been married five years, had served a four year apprenticeship, was a member of the Naval Reserve, was buying a house and had to pay for his health care out of pocket and didn't whine about it).

Other people a lot smarter than yours has looked at this phenomenon of increasing tobacco taxes to "discourage" smoking and have asked one question that has yet to be answered: If the government wants to discourage smoking why doesn't it just outlaw tobacco? Why not just have a tobacco prohibition? And the answer is: because if tobacco is made an illegal substance the government will receive no revenue from tobacco that it sold illegally. Let's face it, you local marijuana dealer, once caught in the act, is likely to suffer a lesser penalty than a cigarette smuggler. There's no money in pot for the Feds. There is money in Camels.

And it's all for the children. Damn brats!

A Little Honesty from Denmark

American politicians are, for the most part, notorious for not wanting to offend anyone. There are a few exceptions. Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter come to mid.. But most pols are not much more than lickspittles to whoever promises to give them money and/or votes.

Recently in Denmark a Danish politician stated some truth about the Muslim community in Denmark and the Orcs decided to sue said politician for slander. The court ruled in favor of the politician. The details are here:Gates of Vienna: The Good News From Denmark

When will an American politician state the truth. Are all Mohammedans bad? Probably not. But enough are bad to make one suspicious of them all in the same way that Shintoist in the US during World War Two were worthy of suspicion.

It is not Arab Christians rioting in the Paris suburbs. It is not the Turkish Christians that are raping Swedish woman with impunity. It is not Methodists and Baptists planting bombs in subways and outside of nightclubs in London. And it wasn't the Amish who flew planes into the World Trade Center. All these acts were carried out but Muslims. We are, in fact, involved in a battle of Helm's Deep against Orcs. And our elected masters refuse to acknowledge who the real enemy is. Their desire for easy money and an easy job is killing us in slow motion. We are being killed by a Kumbaya philosophy. And the proof that their realization of the importance of the "War Against Terrorism" is proved by the very fact that few of their sons or daughters have enlisted in the war. They have refused to make the war a fact of daily life and have doing so have shown that the war is, to them, a phony war to be supported or opposed for their own benefit.

Eh, Wot the Hell?

The past couple of weeks have been interesting ones at Bloody Nib Manor and the surrounding territories.

Paris Hilton served time in the stir, the local media fell all over themselves getting film of Ms Hilton leaving the jail after she had served her time, and she managed to wear a pair of her signature blue jeans while walking out to her ride as the world's media watched her.

Al Gore's son was arrested for drunk driving and speeding the week before his old man, Saint Al, put on his global warming world wide concert which proved to be a bust and a joke.

And David Beckham and his wife, Victoria, came to Los Angeles so Mr. Beckham can play soccer for the Los Angeles Galaxy. Apparently Mr Beckham intends a career in the movie industry as does Mrs. Beckham ( a woman of no known talent or even appearance -- think of the Anne Francis episode of the Twilight Zone)..

The local talk radio talkers have spent a lot of gas talking about about and complaining about the interest the general public finds in the above three stories. ln other words, they talk about the thing they bitch about and that bitching is what they think brings in the listeners because the listeners are bitching about what they are talking about. Or to put it more simply, "I think what you're talking about is stupid and I'll spend my time talking about what you think is stupid and thus talk about the thing you're talking about."

Here's the view from the Manor. Talking about silly stuff is a great thing simply because we, in this great nation, are so confident of the competence of the nation that we can can bitch about Paris, Al Jr. or the Beckhams. Hell, how bad can it be when we worry about our mattresses?

And finally, the media insists that Victoria Beckham is a "hottie". Here's a real "hottie" at the upper right hand corner.

Mohammedans as All About Caring

As regular readers of the Bloody Nib are aware we here at the Manor are Christians of the conservative Protestant type. This does not mean, despite the screeching of the mainstream media, mean that we have any animus against Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Jews, Buddhists (the ever lovely Lady Nib's father is a Buddhist), Hindus, Jains, Taoists, Confucians, Zoroastastrians, New Agers or Wiccans. Up until about 6 years ago we had no ill feeling towards those who followed the teachings of the Arab merchant called Mohammad.

But since the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the USS Cole and the bombing of the night clubs in Indonesia we have developed a weariness concerning those who practice what they call the "Religion of Peace."

Does this mean that we think that all Mohammedans are bad? No more than our fathers and mothers thought that all Germans were bad during World War Two. In other words, unless a Mohammedan is willing to speak out against the people who kill in the name of their religion, they are an unindicted co-conspirator with the nonsense of the Islamist philosophy. We're still waiting for the Mohammedan version of the White Rose.

Until that day comes we have this to judge our Islamic "brothers" by:

What if Israelis had abducted BBC man? Dt Opinion Opinion Telegraph Which, of course shows that the Jews are animals while the Mohammedans are the pinnacle of civilized behaviour.

Baghdad Christians Find New Life in Kurdish North - New York Times Considering the fact that Christianity has had such a long foothold in the Middle East, it's a strange thing that Iraqis would persecute Christians. But that's the philosophy of Mohammad for you. All love for the other. Oddly enough, the Kurds seem to accept the Christians despite the fact that Saladin, the Islamic conqueror of Jerusalem during the Crusades, was a Mohammedan.

Let's stop channeling angry Muslims. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine Chris Hitchens is Chris Hitchens. Sometimes he's really right and sometimes he's really wrong. In this case he's really right. Dan Brown, despite his nonsensical book, only got a verbal slap from the Evangelical Protestants and the Vatican. We here at the Manor are waiting for him to take on Mohammad. It'll be a long, long wait.

On Open Letter to Our Elected Masters

This week the Senator Harry Reid, of Nevada, decided to pull from consideration for the nonce, from the Senate the McCaine-Kennedy (sometimes called the Bush-Kennedy) Immigration Reform Bill. The senior senator from California (home state of Bloody Nib Manor), Diamond Diane Feinstein, claimed that public opposition to the bill was excited by right wing talk radio. Well, ol' Di lives up on Russian Hill in San Francisco and has about as much contact with her constituency as Marie Antoinette had with hers. But, of course, our elected masters know better than we do despite the fact that they claim to represent the voters. A segment of the voters rose up and denounced this immigration reform nonsense and the denouncers were not all right wing radio talk show listeners. They were people concerned about the fate of the nation.

Let's looks at the nonsense that our legislators have foisted upon us over the past twenty years and the results:

1.) The Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform Bill, which gave amnesty to over 2 million illegal immigrants in 1986 was passed with the explicit promise that no such bill would even be considered, let alone passed, by the Senate, the House or signed by the President. Since that time there have been several proposals by the Senate and the President to not only repeat Simpson-Mazzoli, but to exceed it. The latest incarnation would have amnestied 12-20 million illegal aliens, including criminals and potential terrorists.

2.) The legislators and the President passed the North American Free Trade Agreement under the aegis of the idea that free trade between the US and Mexico and Central America would result in the reduction the number of illegal immigrants to the US because there would be more and higher paying jobs in Mexico and Central America. The result has been the loss of good US jobs to Mexico while not stemming the flow of wetbacks to these shores. Consider the fact that the Maytag plant in Illinois has been shut down and the work has been sent to Mexico. The result? Hundreds of United States citizens thrown out of work, a town almost killed, no stoppage of illegal immigration and no reduction of the price of your washer, dryer or dishwasher. Who benefits? It's not the average American?

Also consider the fact that Chinese companies are now having the final assembly of their products done in Mexico so that they can take advantage of NAFTA and the low or non-existent tariffs levied on products from Mexico instead of paying the tariffs on products that have been shipped from Shanghai.

3.) The Chinese Trade Agreement of about ten years ago. This was one of Diamond Diane's causes. Just forget that her husband is a businessman with many trade agreements with the Chinese. What have we gotten? Cheap crap and lost jobs. Go into your local Home Depot or Lowes and look at the country of origin of the products they sell. Nails, tools, lawn mowers; all made in China. Food products of questionable safety and purity ranging from wheat gluten to fish labelled as monkfish that are actually puffer (a poisonous fish that is only allowed to be prepared in Japan by a licensed chef). China has gotten our low skilled factory jobs and our money and we have gotten boxes of nails at 5 cents less a pound.

4,) The failure to enforce the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill has resulted in the flooding of the US with cheap labor. Illegal immigration has busted the dry wall and plasterers union in California, the reduction of wages for carpenters, gardeners, production machinists, the clothing and shoe making industries and the introduction of TB back into the country after it had been thought to have been almost eradicated. Meanwhile, the cost of housing has gone up and the roads have become more congested. Crime has gone up. The numbers of people on the welfare rolls has gone up. School have become overcrowded and over-burdened with children who don't speak English and whose parents don't care if their children speak English or not.

The current talking point among the pro-amnesty crowd is that the current law does not work. They are wrong. The current law is not, and has not been, used. The current law is rusted from lack of use. All it takes to make it work is oiling by a bit of money and use.

One argument by our elected masters to refute the enforcement of the current law is that we cannot, as a nation, separate illegal alien parents from their native born children. But that's not the nation's problem. That's the individual's problem. Illegal immigrants have broken the law. They are criminals. The argument has never been made about a man or woman, having been convicted of selling weed, coke or robbing a bank that to send that person to prison would be the breaking up of that person's family. Family farms, ranches and even homes have been confiscated by the government in the name of the "public good." by eminent domain" with no consideration of the fate of the families involved.

Here's the point. Those we have elected do not seem to represent us. Some represent illegal aliens in the hope that the immigrants, once citizens, will vote for their party. Others represent big business whose only concern is money. We, as the voter, have neither the sympathetic ear nor the jack required to to catch the attention of our Senators. All we have are our voice and vote. We each have to assume the role of Stentor and announce, yell and scream long and loud to make this bunch of idiots take the rolled up dollar bills out of their ears and listen to us.

Finally, there are those who say that in writing, phoning or addressing those officials who are on the opposite side of the immigration issue than we are, that we should be respectful and polite. Why? They hold us in contempt by their positions. Why address them better than they treat you?

Memorial Day

As those in the know are aware, Bloody Nib Manor is located in the United States. It is a bit of Anglophile-Japanophile Americana in a vast sea of the ever seeming rising tide of Mexicana. In other words, The Manor is an Alamo and it is only a matter of time before numbers outweigh right and this outpost will ring with the sounds of corridos instead of the manly and brave songs of the Great Republic.

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend and it is only right to pause to remember the war dead who have sacrificed their lives to maintain the ideals of the American republic despite the efforts of all too many of our leaders to make the nation into a pale imitation of the European Union. The United States may be seen by some as old fashioned, but there's really nothing wrong with that. It is the past that has created the foundation of the present. Once the foundation is ignored the the building becomes a structure that bends and collapses with every passing wind.

A British writer has written an appreciation of the U.S. Americans will die for liberty Dt Opinion Opinion Telegraph Unfortunately none of our leaders has deigned to do the same. Instead some have decided to attend Global Warming Conferences in Greenland.

How About a Little Though From an Unlikely Source?

We here at Bloody Nib Manor have never been big fans of Joan Collins. It is doubted that either you faithful correspondent or the ever lovely Lady Nib. In fact, it is not a matter of argument for yours to say that a complete episode of the television program Dynasty has ever darkened the Curtis Mathis.

But Miss Collins, or Ms Collins or whatever she deigns to title herself as, was, in her youth and middle age, a naturally pleasing looking woman. One recalls the films she appeared in during the fifties and sixties more for her visual presence than her acting ability. As far as conversation is concerned, her younger sister, Jackie, was a much more sparkling conversationalist than Joan. But one never got the idea that Joan was a dolt, despite her various romances that came to failure. More than a few of us can blame our glands for our mistakes instead of our synapses.

A couple of years ago Ms. Collins wrote a piece for the U. K. Mail. It deserves reading and study. And if you are a Yank just substitute the word American for Britain, Briton and English: DrudgeReportArchives.com © 2007

Maybe We Should Ignore Them

This past week a committee of members of the United States Senate has come up with what they call "comprehensive immigration reform." In other words, it's just another amnesty program a'la last year's proposal. Watch your tax rate because you'll be paying for the education, health and welfare of a bunch of mihos from Jalisco. The result of this senatorial idiocy will be the addition of between 24 and 40 million instantly legal people from Latin America in the United States. If this thing goes through you'd better contact Berlitz right quick to learn the lingo to get through the check out line at the local Ralphs.

The only thing your senator has earned from you, as a citizen of the great Republic, is a middle digit shoved up their nose for betraying the ideals of the nation and the legalizing of a crime so that they can either get a future vote from a former illegal alien or his/her kid or get a contribution from Big Business. You, on the other hand, are just someone who populates the senator's state.

Maybe it's time that we, the voters, both native born and naturalized, withdraw from the whole political system and make like the Amish. In other words, carry on our lives and ignore the bastards who claim to represent us and govern us.

Here is a video of a bunch of Frenchies who have, apparently, stopped time in their world: YouTube - Une soirée de pétanque Note three things: They are all French and none are Arab or North African. They all seem to smoke despite nanny state warnings. They are all playing a particularly French sport. We, as American working men and women under a regime that seems to be operated by nothing but representatives of Big Business or Political Correctness, have not only a right, but an obligation, to resist the nonsense from Washington D.C. by expressing our contempt by non-participation.

Let us celebrate out nation while reviling our "leaders"by ignoring their dictates. Let us celebrate our sense of Americanism, in the old sense, while we revile this nonsense of political correctness and economic expediency by separating, as much as possible, by participating in those things that are uniquely American, whether it be showing the Stars and Stripes, singing the old songs of Foster or Berlin or Gershwin, reading and disseminating as much as possible the literature and lingua franca of the traditional and historical canon.

In other words, when you encounter a person at the store, your house or a restaurant a person who insists that you speak the bastard form of Spanish spoken in Mexico or Latin America, tell that person that English is the language of the United States despite the vote of the Congress and that you will only deal with that person in English and that you will not discuss Mexican soccer or American soccer or any other type of soccer because soccer is a girl's game and the American games are baseball, football, basketball and lacrosse. You, as an American, are not a girl (even if you are a girl). You are an American and you consider Latin America and the Arab states as foreign to the Republic that the Founders intended.

Even a Frenchman Can Be Right

Long time readers of the Bloody Nib may recall that your faithful correspondent has several times urged the reader to read Jean Raspail's novel The Camp of the Saints. If, by this time, you haven't read it, do so. It is almost prophetic considering the fact that the novel was written in the 1973 and addresses issues that we, in the US and Europe, are facing now.

Here is an essay by Mr. Raspail that addresses a problem that our elites refuse to face: The Fatherland Betrayed by The Republic

Let us hope that the election of Mr Sarkozy will bode well for Europe and for us.

What's Good for the Goose...

How many times have you turned on the television or gone on the Internet and seen the Muslim monster, in whatever nation, telling you that you, as a Christian, are a bad person, a damned heathen and that you deserved to have your head lopped off because you aren't praying toward a cube in Saudi Arabia instead of to Our Lord God above? And when you saw such reports do you recall the news reader condemning the makers of such statements. I think not (to quote a Finn I once knew).

But when Christians publicly make the claim (which is true) that there is no salvation outside of Our Lord Christ the elite media portrays Christians as unloving, uncaring and just not inclusive. But, let's face the fact that the media, in general, is pretty much a Deist (if that) franchise.

Here's an example of what a Christian church has to say and the media reaction: Church's Sign Against Islam Sparks Controversy :: WRAL.com Note that the writer of the article wastes more ink on the response from the Islamic apologists than she does allowing the preacher, about whom the article is, to state his case.

We're all kumbaya now.

What Are You Talking About?

Your faithful correspondent has been listening to talk radio since he was in knee pants.

The talkers at that time were such long forgotten men such as Marv Grey, Joel A. Spivak, Joe Pyne and Ray Briem. Their politics ranged from left liberal to right conservative. But they all had something in common. They had a knowledge of an English language culture that seems to have been long forgotten and they used that knowledge as a short hand that they presumed was understood by the listener. References to lines from the Bible, Shakespeare, Twain, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Maugham and Hemingway were not unusual. Occasionally there would be references to films such as Casablanca or Citizen Kane, but rarely.

This is a round about way of stating that in days past there was a common language of culture that seems to have been abandoned in public discourse. The present talk radio hosts (Dennis Miller being and exception) seem to have no knowledge of or feel that their listeners have no knowledge of, a literary tradition that at once made up the canon of the English speaking people. And by this ignorance (I may be making an unfair assumption here, but I think not) the hosts of the various talk radio programs have, in effect, denied the wisdom of the past. It seems that everything that is of importance is immediate and new when, in fact, there is really nothing new in the heart of man. To quote Solomon, "There is no new thing under the sun." Technology may change, but the point of technology hasn't changed. Much of the Internet is really nothing more than a method of a Babylonian scribe scratching notes into a tablet of moist clay. Plastic is nothing but a substitute for bronze, tin or iron. The construction of a Boeing Dreamliner is nothing but a faster version of a horse and cart. But to talk radio every damn thing is new. Illegal immigration is new despite the fact that the Romans suffered and fell from the same thing. Bad behaviour by the rich is new despite the writings of Richardson in the 18th century. The invasion of the West by the Islamic monster is new despite the Song of Roland.

We seem, according to the chatterers on talk radio, to be ever made new when in fact we have a tradition in the English language of having faced almost every problem that talk radio addresses many century ago. The most powerful local talk station, KFI, has made a big deal of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests while not knowing that the same problem was addressed by the Lollards in England during the 15th century. The yakkers think that they have found something new, when in fact, they have found the same old sins and concerns that Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens and Conrad addressed. And these same talkers complain about the state of the governmental educational system not teaching the basics while revealing themselves to be not only half educated, but uneducated in what used to be called the "canon" of English Literature. If a caller were to refer to Lewis' novel The Monk while discussing the abuse of priests the caller would be greeted with either one of two responses: "Huh?" or "You're an idiot" because the talk show host is, in reality, an uneducated boob who has no idea of, let alone to have read, the novel.

My whole point is that, in the United States, it seems that there has been a loss of a common cultural touch point that spanned several generations and the idea that the loss of this touch point has resulted in a lack of communication between not only generations, but segments of society. The talk radio example has been used to illustrate this fractionalization. To abandon literature for a moment, ask your local person between the ages of 40 and 15 what he or she thinks of the music of Stephan Foster, Irving Berlin or George Gershwin and you'll get a blank stare despite the fact these composers works were the background music for much of the 20th century. Instead you are expected to know the "nigger" rhythms of rap and hip hop which have done nothing to add to the culture Americana for the simple reason that what is hot this week is dead the next.

It's enough to make a guy want to drink Sterno.

Grab a Cup of Joe!

This past week ten Republican dwarfs had a "debate" over who would be the best Republican Presidential candidate.

Needless to say, there was a lot of more noise than light, a lot of verbal smoke and mirrors. It was as bad as the Democratic Party debate the previous week. But this should not be surprising because the average politician in the United States is a man or woman more concerned with getting the vote than doing what is right for the nation.

But it's a pretty damn sad thing when the sitting President refuses to face the fact that the War in Iraq against Islamic terrorism is not confined only to Iraq. Mr. Bush has refused to proclaim that the nation as a whole is at war; not only the military. In other words, while the military is fighting, we, as a nation, are supposed to behave as if there were no war at all. This is tantamount with equating the "small wars" of Victorian England with the war in Iraq. The "small wars" were colonial wars and meant little to the survival of Great Britain. The War in Iraq and the war against terrorism are battles for the survival of Western Civilization.

Part of the reason for the apparently growing opposition to the war is due to the fact that Mr. Bush has not emphasized the threat that we face. This may be due to a deep seated an apparently sense of political correctness that he harbors because of his patrician background. Maybe it's because he really doesn't consider the Islamic threat as serious as he claims he does. He seems to be waging a "gentleman's war" instead of a war of survival. The enemy, on the other hand, whether they be in Bagdhad, Kabul, Birmingham or Montreal, is trying to wage, as best they can, total war. They want us, along with the Israelis, dead, dead, dead. Mr. Bush seems to want to make them friends. If he would make a study of the Byzantine area he would find that having a friend with a knife in his hand is often the same as having an enemy sleeping in one's guest room.

The only way these idiots will wake up is if we wake them up. And before we wake them up we have to wake up ourselves and quit worrying about Paris Hilton going to jail or Don Imus being fired for being Don Imus.

In other news, Sarkozy has won the election in France: Sarkozy wins French presidency - CNN.com He was the conservative candidate and claims that France will now be a friend of the United States. Let's hope so. Maybe the French have gotten tired of riots in Paris.

Let Us Breathe!

When you were a child taking a long car trip with your family did you sit in the back seat and, between wondering if you had enough money to buy the Sea Monkeys you saw in the advertisement in the Sgt. Rock comic book and trying to poke your brother's eye out with a Wheel-O, ask your father, about every five minutes, "Are we there yet?" This refrain usually started once you were out of your neighborhood, which means about three blocks. And, after the eighth chorus the wise father would tell you to shut up and threaten to drop you off at the side of the road so that you could better spend your time fighting off sidewinders and coyotes.

Let's move forward to today and ask ourselves who is crying "Are we there yet?" Well, lo and behold, the questioners are none other than those politicians who desire to become President of the United States. This week we have been treated with a broadcast debate between eight Democrats who want to park in the Oval Office. The Republican aspirants are falling all over themselves to offer their resumes to the voter. All of them are putting out their hats for the collection of the coins that the populace just cannot restrain themselves from dropping in to maintain the campaigns of their favorites.

And what is the difference between you and the pols. The difference is that the pols haven't even waited until the car is out of the driveway before wondering if they are there yet.

The election is a year and a half away. The campaign for the 2008 election began two months after the 2004 election. Up until this month most of the campaining has been for money (as Jesse Unruh said many years ago, "Money is the mother's milk of politics").

The candidates want you to be excited about them. They want your attention. They want your money. They want to tell you what you should think. The question is: are you excited about the. Any of them? Especially this early?

Whether they be microcephalic Democrats or hydrocephalic Republicans, they are parading themselves about like dominatrix hookers in jackboots and carrying whips while promising you the greatest experiance you've ever had if you'll toss them your pence and give them your vote. And not only are you not feeling randy, you're still recovering from the last election.

All this nonsense makes one nostalic for the days when party conventions really chose the presdential candidates instead of this never ending primary nonsense. If nothing else, then the voter was left alone to get on with his life until election day instead of being bothered with a bunch of beggars knocking at one's door.

This link shows the various presidential candidates waiting for the money and the votes: YouTube - Candidates Waiting for Votes and Donations Remember, you are the person in charge. Once you let them in, it's all over.