Bloggers shouldn’t care how many people visit their websites on a daily basis, but the hard-core (myself included) do. That’s why there’s frequently a hit counter somewhere on a blogger’s website, including mine. If you’re reading this entry, chances are you’ve been routed to this website by a search engine that picked up one of the names I’m about to mention as part of my own blogging experiment.
I love Emily Blunt. I think she’s hot. The same goes for Anna Kendrick. Both have wonderful voices and were great in “Into the Woods.” Justin Bieber is an idiotic punk who ought to be deported back to Canada, where he came from. Miley Cyrus has some serious behavioral issues that will probably kill her by the time she’s thirty. I wanted to write “twenty-eight,” but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. Katy Perry has serious talent; maybe one day she’ll start to show it. The Kardashians have no talent; maybe one day they’ll take leave of our airways and find real jobs.
I think Pope Francis is a wonderful breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant and morally corrupt Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has allowed its views on abortion and homosexuality to obscure the most important message of Christ’s social gospel – compassion for the poor, oppressed and the downtrodden. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz have no human empathy whatsoever. It’s not right to equate their heartless attitudes with butchers like Adolph Hitler, Attila the Hun, or the ISIS guys running wild across the Middle East, but it’s tempting, and it wouldn’t be a big leap. Despite all the criticism, President Obama is doing a good job. Hillary Clinton will be a great President, possibly even a greater one than Bill. When winter temperatures reach 70 degrees at the North Pole, millions of Republicans will still deny the existence of global warming. Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is a racist bigot and a dictator, masking as a pious Jew with an interest in serving the God of Abraham. Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran is a racist bigot and a dictator, masking as a pious Muslim with an interest in serving in serving the God of Abraham. Netanyahu and the Ayatollah call the God of Abraham by different names, but God is not pleased with either of them. I don’t care whether Vladimir Putin of Russia has a girlfriend or not. He’s gay. He just doesn’t want to admit it. And while I’m on the subject of gay folks, discriminating against them is a sin and ought to be a crime punishable by death – and I’m an opponent of the death penalty. There’s also a better argument that Jesus was gay than there is that he was married to Mary Magdalene, Dan Brown novels notwithstanding.
The New York Yankees will be pitiful this year; so will the Florida Marlins. The Green Bay Packers will win next year’s Super Bowl. Bank on it.
Did I mention that the NRA is having its annual convention in Tennessee? All the GOP presidential candidates, minus Chris Christie and Rand Paul will be there. The NRA thinks those two are too liberal. Speaking of guys with guns, I recently read that Vladimir Putin is looking to strengthen diplomatic relations with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. There’s a match made in hell.
There’s a beautiful spring day outside. Go out and enjoy it!
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Saturday, April 18, 2015
AN OPEN LETTER TO PUTIN
An Open Letter to the Leader of Russia:
Dear Mr. Putin…
It has come to my attention while observing your nuclear threats against my country (America) and its NATO allies that you may not fully understand the workings of America’s political system and the implications that has for your mother, Russia. Thus, I am writing to bring your attention to two features of our democracy – the infestation of war mongering Republicans in our government and the spread of gun-toting wing nuts who adore them - which you should seriously consider if you ever become so deranged that you carry through on your threat to use nuclear weapons against America or its allies.
First, under our constitutionally-permitted practice of gerrymandering, while the Congress is supposed to reflect the views of the majority of its citizens, our legislatures have rigged our political system so that war mongering Republicans and their NRA followers hold the balance of power in their grasp and are looking for any justification to draw the United States into a full-scale nuclear exchange with your country. You might think this is sheer folly, but I assure you there are millions of gun-happy Americans who wouldn’t think twice about using their personal arsenal to take out a few “Ruskies” in their tracks. In fact, the number of times your photo appears on shooting range targets here in America is second only to the photo of President Obama.
Second, the people in this country have different characteristics. For example, some people favor reasonable gun control regulations to maintain peace and safety in their communities, whereas others prefer to maintain a policy where everyone openly carries AK47 assault rifles wherever they go. If you’re going to bomb our country, might I suggest you start with the places where the latter group lives, like Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and any states where the Confederate Flag still waves, which means any state south of the Mason-Dixon line, except California. I would also implore you to ignore Washington, D.C., because although it is the home of our federal government, it is also home to an overwhelming number of peace-loving Democrats who favor gun control legislation, and a city should not be judged by the number of war mongering zealots who travel there whenever Congress is in session.
What these two features of our democracy mean is that gun-loving Republicans in America will consider any threat by you or your henchmen in America’s direction as an affront to America’s superiority, and will use those threats to justify the production and sale of more guns in America, thus making our streets a considerably less safe place to be. I do not see the wisdom in such nonsense and hope to see the flood of advanced weaponry on American streets eliminated.
I hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our political system and promotes a mutual understanding of what it takes to make this world a more peaceful community.
Sincerely,
Steven Zorbaugh
p.s. I tried to get 30 GOP Senators to sign this letter with me, but they were too busy attending the NRA convention in Tennessee.
Dear Mr. Putin…
It has come to my attention while observing your nuclear threats against my country (America) and its NATO allies that you may not fully understand the workings of America’s political system and the implications that has for your mother, Russia. Thus, I am writing to bring your attention to two features of our democracy – the infestation of war mongering Republicans in our government and the spread of gun-toting wing nuts who adore them - which you should seriously consider if you ever become so deranged that you carry through on your threat to use nuclear weapons against America or its allies.
First, under our constitutionally-permitted practice of gerrymandering, while the Congress is supposed to reflect the views of the majority of its citizens, our legislatures have rigged our political system so that war mongering Republicans and their NRA followers hold the balance of power in their grasp and are looking for any justification to draw the United States into a full-scale nuclear exchange with your country. You might think this is sheer folly, but I assure you there are millions of gun-happy Americans who wouldn’t think twice about using their personal arsenal to take out a few “Ruskies” in their tracks. In fact, the number of times your photo appears on shooting range targets here in America is second only to the photo of President Obama.
Second, the people in this country have different characteristics. For example, some people favor reasonable gun control regulations to maintain peace and safety in their communities, whereas others prefer to maintain a policy where everyone openly carries AK47 assault rifles wherever they go. If you’re going to bomb our country, might I suggest you start with the places where the latter group lives, like Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and any states where the Confederate Flag still waves, which means any state south of the Mason-Dixon line, except California. I would also implore you to ignore Washington, D.C., because although it is the home of our federal government, it is also home to an overwhelming number of peace-loving Democrats who favor gun control legislation, and a city should not be judged by the number of war mongering zealots who travel there whenever Congress is in session.
What these two features of our democracy mean is that gun-loving Republicans in America will consider any threat by you or your henchmen in America’s direction as an affront to America’s superiority, and will use those threats to justify the production and sale of more guns in America, thus making our streets a considerably less safe place to be. I do not see the wisdom in such nonsense and hope to see the flood of advanced weaponry on American streets eliminated.
I hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our political system and promotes a mutual understanding of what it takes to make this world a more peaceful community.
Sincerely,
Steven Zorbaugh
p.s. I tried to get 30 GOP Senators to sign this letter with me, but they were too busy attending the NRA convention in Tennessee.
Monday, April 13, 2015
NO SPUDS FOR THE KIDS TONIGHT
Deadbeat dads have a new Mecca for avoiding child support payments. It’s called Idaho, the land of guns, plural marriages and the home to more “sovereign freemen” than the rest of the other 49 states put together.
If you think about it, Idaho as a child support haven makes a lot of sense. After all, child support orders are a government-issued order for the dad to pay the mom money for the kids’ upkeep, and nothing gets in an Idaho dad’s crawl more than the government trying to tell him what to do. That’s why the Idaho legislature just refused to pass a law requiring Idaho courts to enforce foreign child support orders, and in doing so, thumbed their noses at the federal government agency that helps states track down deadbeat dads and helps collect child support payments.
Of course, the Idaho legislature doesn’t couch the defeat of the child support bill as an effort to bring more people to their northwest paradise, but that’s what will happen when the word gets out that the potato capital of the United States will not enforce child support orders.
What prompted this uprising, you ask? Well, apparently the good folks in Idaho were worried that the federal government would require Republican judges in their state to enforce Sharia law child support orders from Muslim countries, as if any self-respecting Muslim immigrant would move to Idaho just to avoid paying child support, so the Idaho Legislature decided it was time to act to avoid any further federal entanglement.
If you think about it, Idaho as a child support haven makes a lot of sense. After all, child support orders are a government-issued order for the dad to pay the mom money for the kids’ upkeep, and nothing gets in an Idaho dad’s crawl more than the government trying to tell him what to do. That’s why the Idaho legislature just refused to pass a law requiring Idaho courts to enforce foreign child support orders, and in doing so, thumbed their noses at the federal government agency that helps states track down deadbeat dads and helps collect child support payments.
Of course, the Idaho legislature doesn’t couch the defeat of the child support bill as an effort to bring more people to their northwest paradise, but that’s what will happen when the word gets out that the potato capital of the United States will not enforce child support orders.
What prompted this uprising, you ask? Well, apparently the good folks in Idaho were worried that the federal government would require Republican judges in their state to enforce Sharia law child support orders from Muslim countries, as if any self-respecting Muslim immigrant would move to Idaho just to avoid paying child support, so the Idaho Legislature decided it was time to act to avoid any further federal entanglement.
Friday, April 10, 2015
THE BATTLE AGAINST RACISM - A LIFETIME JOURNEY
I am a 58 year-old white man, the product of poor, white and racist parents. I’m not proud about that racist part, but that’s what they were, and it does no good to hide or try to sugar-coat the truth.
From an early age, I struggled with how to respond to racism’s ugly underside. I knew racism was wrong, and I knew it caused unspeakable pain and anguish in people of color, but it was difficult for a kid like me to make a stand against racism in a home so steeped in racial animosity. Plus, my dad was a dictator, so saving my own hide was always my chief concern.
Fortunately, there were people that crossed my path over the years, both literally and figuratively, who demonstrated that there was an alternative path leading away from racial bigotry, and that made my own racial journey possible. During my journey, I’ve learned numerous important lessons, but the most important one is that fighting racism is a lifetime endeavor, even for those with the best of intentions.
My journey in racial understanding began on a sunny afternoon during the summer of 1963, on the cement steps of my inner-city childhood home, where two six-year old youngsters were in hot pursuit of the Candy Castle, the winning destination of the childhood board game known as Candyland. One of those youngsters was an adorable little black girl named, Sharon, who wore her ebony hair in pigtails and brightly colored bows, and never missed an opportunity to flash her million-dollar smile; the other youngster was me. Sharon was having an unusually good run of luck that afternoon, and I was not well-schooled in the art of good sportsmanship or managing my growing frustration. When Sharon reached the Candy Castle for the fourth time in a row, I’d had my share of losing for one afternoon and retaliated in the worst way possible – I called Sharon the N-word and threw the game board down on the sidewalk.
A second later, Sharon’s face melted into tears, and in the milliseconds that followed, I learned a gut-wrenching lesson about the pain that hateful words can inflict on another human being. I’ve seen a lot of pain during the fifty-eight years that I’ve walked this earth, but none of it shattered my world worse than the sight of my childhood buddy sobbing uncontrollably as she ran down the street towards her home.
I picked up the game pieces and quietly went inside my house, hoping that the dust would settle and all would be forgotten in a day or so, but I was wrong, and fifty-two years later, that memory it still as strong as ever. You see, I hadn’t counted on Sharon’s father being the fiercely principled man that he was, and I certainly never expected to see him at my front door, but minutes after my vicious verbal attack on Sharon, there he was, proud and tall, knocking on the screen, demanding justice, demanding an apology and demanding respect. Lesson learned – there are some things in life worth making a stand against.
My dad went outside first and I heard him talking with Sharon’s father, who relayed the facts as he’d been told, with total accuracy I must confess, and it pained me to listen to that story all over again, and hear what I’d done to hurt his daughter. My father yelled for me to come outside, which I did, and he told me that I owed Sharon and her father an apology. I gave them one, but I’m not sure whether they thought I was sincere or not. I do remember Sharon’s father looking at me with a stern expression on his face and saying, “Young man, you’re better than that!” and then he walked away.
That could have been the end of that incident, but it wasn’t. When I followed my father back into our house, and we were well out of range of any outside ears, he turned to my mother and said, “Who does that [N-word] think he is, coming up here telling me how to raise my kid?” The next lesson I learned that day was one of parental hypocrisy. Sadly, it would rear its ugly head again five years later.
On the night of April 4th, 1968, my twelve year old sister and I sat huddled together in tears at the top of the stairs in our inner-city row house. We were supposed to be sleeping, since it was long past bedtime, but neither of us could sleep given the jubilation that was happening downstairs. What was the reason for the celebration? Well, my parents were watching news reports of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. You’d think they’d won the lottery, although I’m pretty sure the lottery didn’t exist back then, except perhaps in the Shirley Jackson short story bearing that name. It was hard to hear my parents cheer about another person’s death, and another family’s agony, and hear the depth of hatred emanating from their mouths. My sister and I knew we’d lost a kindred soul in Dr. King’s death, we just didn’t know how to express the words, and so we wept, and never spoke of that night until decades later.
On morning, approximately two years after the King assassination, I was in the process of delivering our local Sunday newspaper morning when a young black man in his mid-twenties conned me into showing him the way to a nearby bus station. He said he wasn’t from the area and needed assistance because he was bad at remembering directions. Because the station was on my paper route, I altered my delivery routine and agreed to guide him while I continued delivering papers. About halfway into our journey to the bus station, the young black man withdrew a knife from his coat, wrapped his arm around my neck and dragged me into a nearby breezeway, where he raped me at knife-point, and then left me naked to find my way back home. Despite the subsequent efforts by police to identify and apprehend my attacker, the man was never found.
Last summer, as I was driving through the downtown community where I live, I was stopped at a traffic light and a young black male in his mid-twenties started crossing the street in the crosswalk. I studied his face absentmindedly for a hint of recognition of the man who raped me, and that’s when something profound struck me. For the past forty-four years, I’ve been scrutinizing the face of every mid-twenties black man I’ve ever met to determine whether he was my attacker. You can do the math. If my attacker were still alive today, he’d be around seventy years old, and yet for all these years I’ve been subconsciously questioning the guilt of every young black male who crossed my path. That’s how latent and automatic racism can be, even in a person who understands its ill effects and strives to battle racism’s ugly head whenever possible.
I’m constantly reminded that there’s still a long way to go in the battle against racism. It’s a lifetime endeavor.
From an early age, I struggled with how to respond to racism’s ugly underside. I knew racism was wrong, and I knew it caused unspeakable pain and anguish in people of color, but it was difficult for a kid like me to make a stand against racism in a home so steeped in racial animosity. Plus, my dad was a dictator, so saving my own hide was always my chief concern.
Fortunately, there were people that crossed my path over the years, both literally and figuratively, who demonstrated that there was an alternative path leading away from racial bigotry, and that made my own racial journey possible. During my journey, I’ve learned numerous important lessons, but the most important one is that fighting racism is a lifetime endeavor, even for those with the best of intentions.
My journey in racial understanding began on a sunny afternoon during the summer of 1963, on the cement steps of my inner-city childhood home, where two six-year old youngsters were in hot pursuit of the Candy Castle, the winning destination of the childhood board game known as Candyland. One of those youngsters was an adorable little black girl named, Sharon, who wore her ebony hair in pigtails and brightly colored bows, and never missed an opportunity to flash her million-dollar smile; the other youngster was me. Sharon was having an unusually good run of luck that afternoon, and I was not well-schooled in the art of good sportsmanship or managing my growing frustration. When Sharon reached the Candy Castle for the fourth time in a row, I’d had my share of losing for one afternoon and retaliated in the worst way possible – I called Sharon the N-word and threw the game board down on the sidewalk.
A second later, Sharon’s face melted into tears, and in the milliseconds that followed, I learned a gut-wrenching lesson about the pain that hateful words can inflict on another human being. I’ve seen a lot of pain during the fifty-eight years that I’ve walked this earth, but none of it shattered my world worse than the sight of my childhood buddy sobbing uncontrollably as she ran down the street towards her home.
I picked up the game pieces and quietly went inside my house, hoping that the dust would settle and all would be forgotten in a day or so, but I was wrong, and fifty-two years later, that memory it still as strong as ever. You see, I hadn’t counted on Sharon’s father being the fiercely principled man that he was, and I certainly never expected to see him at my front door, but minutes after my vicious verbal attack on Sharon, there he was, proud and tall, knocking on the screen, demanding justice, demanding an apology and demanding respect. Lesson learned – there are some things in life worth making a stand against.
My dad went outside first and I heard him talking with Sharon’s father, who relayed the facts as he’d been told, with total accuracy I must confess, and it pained me to listen to that story all over again, and hear what I’d done to hurt his daughter. My father yelled for me to come outside, which I did, and he told me that I owed Sharon and her father an apology. I gave them one, but I’m not sure whether they thought I was sincere or not. I do remember Sharon’s father looking at me with a stern expression on his face and saying, “Young man, you’re better than that!” and then he walked away.
That could have been the end of that incident, but it wasn’t. When I followed my father back into our house, and we were well out of range of any outside ears, he turned to my mother and said, “Who does that [N-word] think he is, coming up here telling me how to raise my kid?” The next lesson I learned that day was one of parental hypocrisy. Sadly, it would rear its ugly head again five years later.
On the night of April 4th, 1968, my twelve year old sister and I sat huddled together in tears at the top of the stairs in our inner-city row house. We were supposed to be sleeping, since it was long past bedtime, but neither of us could sleep given the jubilation that was happening downstairs. What was the reason for the celebration? Well, my parents were watching news reports of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. You’d think they’d won the lottery, although I’m pretty sure the lottery didn’t exist back then, except perhaps in the Shirley Jackson short story bearing that name. It was hard to hear my parents cheer about another person’s death, and another family’s agony, and hear the depth of hatred emanating from their mouths. My sister and I knew we’d lost a kindred soul in Dr. King’s death, we just didn’t know how to express the words, and so we wept, and never spoke of that night until decades later.
On morning, approximately two years after the King assassination, I was in the process of delivering our local Sunday newspaper morning when a young black man in his mid-twenties conned me into showing him the way to a nearby bus station. He said he wasn’t from the area and needed assistance because he was bad at remembering directions. Because the station was on my paper route, I altered my delivery routine and agreed to guide him while I continued delivering papers. About halfway into our journey to the bus station, the young black man withdrew a knife from his coat, wrapped his arm around my neck and dragged me into a nearby breezeway, where he raped me at knife-point, and then left me naked to find my way back home. Despite the subsequent efforts by police to identify and apprehend my attacker, the man was never found.
Last summer, as I was driving through the downtown community where I live, I was stopped at a traffic light and a young black male in his mid-twenties started crossing the street in the crosswalk. I studied his face absentmindedly for a hint of recognition of the man who raped me, and that’s when something profound struck me. For the past forty-four years, I’ve been scrutinizing the face of every mid-twenties black man I’ve ever met to determine whether he was my attacker. You can do the math. If my attacker were still alive today, he’d be around seventy years old, and yet for all these years I’ve been subconsciously questioning the guilt of every young black male who crossed my path. That’s how latent and automatic racism can be, even in a person who understands its ill effects and strives to battle racism’s ugly head whenever possible.
I’m constantly reminded that there’s still a long way to go in the battle against racism. It’s a lifetime endeavor.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
SAVING JOBS...ONE MURDER AT A TIME
A few of my Republican friends think they’ve never met a government regulation on business they didn’t like. If you get one of them started, they’ll rail for hours about all the jobs government regulation supposedly squashes, and every one of them has a piece of anecdotal evidence to back up their claim. Most of my G.O.P. buddies know better than to rant at me about government regulations though, because I’m a liberal Democrat (a 4-letter word in these parts) and I’m one of those folks who think that government regulation of commerce is more of a help than a hindrance. Then, the other day I had an epiphany of sorts, and I thought of a great example to prove my Republican friends’ argument that government regulation squashes jobs.
What job, you ask? Hit man!
If it weren’t for the government’s ban (the strongest regulation possible) on the killing of fellow citizens, a guy (or girl) could probably earn a decent living whacking divorcing spouses, business rivals, the elderly parent who’s holding up the inheritance and the neighborhood bully who’s terrorizing your youngster. I purposely avoided the inclusion of political opponents, but I guess there could be a market there, too. Anyway, my point is – murder statutes kill jobs (pardon the pun)!
Consider what would happen if the government ended its regulation of murder. Tens of thousands of gun and ammunition manufacturing jobs would be created overnight. Security guard positions would mushroom, and let’s not forget the construction industry. Think of the new jobs the economy would add as Americans install bullet-proof glass in their homes and high tech security systems to keep armed outsiders at bay. Funeral directors and cemetery owners would make a killing (another pun I couldn’t resist), and all the haggling over the Second Amendment would disappear overnight.
Of course, there would probably be a few unsavory consequences to the end of government regulation of homicide, but I’m not going to bore anybody with the details, especially given all the jobs we’d be creating. That is the party line, right?
What job, you ask? Hit man!
If it weren’t for the government’s ban (the strongest regulation possible) on the killing of fellow citizens, a guy (or girl) could probably earn a decent living whacking divorcing spouses, business rivals, the elderly parent who’s holding up the inheritance and the neighborhood bully who’s terrorizing your youngster. I purposely avoided the inclusion of political opponents, but I guess there could be a market there, too. Anyway, my point is – murder statutes kill jobs (pardon the pun)!
Consider what would happen if the government ended its regulation of murder. Tens of thousands of gun and ammunition manufacturing jobs would be created overnight. Security guard positions would mushroom, and let’s not forget the construction industry. Think of the new jobs the economy would add as Americans install bullet-proof glass in their homes and high tech security systems to keep armed outsiders at bay. Funeral directors and cemetery owners would make a killing (another pun I couldn’t resist), and all the haggling over the Second Amendment would disappear overnight.
Of course, there would probably be a few unsavory consequences to the end of government regulation of homicide, but I’m not going to bore anybody with the details, especially given all the jobs we’d be creating. That is the party line, right?
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