In Re Alito

Haven't posted in awhile, work has been getting in the way, but figured this morning was as good as any. With the impending "upperdown" vote on Alito this morning, I feel that I have to express my displeasure at the democrat senators, especially those on the judiciary committee. I also have to express my displeasure with Senator Kerry who is acting on impulse every chance he gets to try and get the grassroots to embrace him. First the democrats on the judiciary committee, except for Russ Feingold at times, obviously put very little effort into researching Alito's case record. They were too focused on a job application from 1985 that stated his views on abortion and that he was a member of a racist organization. I mean it was 19 frickin 85, it just does not resonate with people today. Why not hammer him repeatedly on a few recent decisions he made, especially this one. If there was any coordination, this question should have been hammered over and over again, Mr. Alito do you believe it was reasonable of police to strip search a 10 year old and her mother when they did not have the authority to do so? After he gives a long bloviating answer, a senator replies, so you believe its ok to just strip search 10 year old girls, at least that's what your decision said Mr. Alito. This would have been playing dirty, but if they really wanted to stop Mr. Alito that was one of the cases that should have been repeatedly brought up. The headlines may have read, is Mr. Alito a card-carrying member of NAMBLA.(hopefully I don't get in trouble for googling NAMBLA) Unfortunately our senators were too busy being their bloviating selves, including you Mr. Kerry, why not use some of your warchest to mount an ad campaign, you could even have a 10 year old girl in the commercial asking the question. But you didn't, because you don't care if ALito is on the bench, you just want to become president and you need our support. You must be really out of touch, oh yeah you are, Windsurfing, end of story. Seriously, you failed miserably in organizing and attempting to block this nomination, how does that help your presidential campaign. Mr. Kerry you have become Mr. Irrelevant. I guess that's what happens when I don't post for awhile, it all sort of comes out, hopefully I will be able to post a bit more, it is definitely therapeutic.

Tom Cruise is such a bastard!

Tom Cruise threatens to sue South Park. There you go Tom, SUE ME SUE ME. What is the damage to your reputation Tom? It is fricking satire. The only person damaging your reputation is you Tom Cruise with these nonsensical lawsuit threats. A quote from my girlfriend: " obviously he is either gay or way scared about his reputation, otherwise he would realize it was funny and shrug it off" To add to that I have one more question, what damage does someone saying you are gay have to your image? They were also being critical of his acting, maybe that's why he is threatening a lawsuit, although then he would have to sue all critics of Mission Impossible 2 and other Cruise Bombs. In closing, Tom I have three words for you: GO SUE YOURSELF!

Please Stay Healthy Justice Stevens

Although I haven't really read the decision, I have a feeling I know which side of the issue I would fall upon, and I am glad the supreme court upheld Oregon's assisted suicide law. Once I saw that it was a 6-3 decision, I knew who the 3 were right away, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas with Scalia issuing the dissent. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come, but unfortunately I think it is, and once Mr. Alito is confirmed which seems likely, unless rumors of his relationship with Pablo the pool boy are true, there will be a solid block of four that will be methodically stripping away individual rights at the same time strengthening the "individual rights" of corporations. That's why I will wish good health for the remaining 5, Stevens, Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg and Kennedy. Please stay healthy until 2008, and hopefully the democrats will get their butts in gear to save our court and our liberty.

MSG

Just went down to Walgreens to buy a bag of baked doritos and the best drink ever Lemonade Vitamin Water, and while waiting in line I decided to read the ingredients label on the Doritos. As a little kid I used to be terribly allergic to MSG, pretty much throwing up whenever it came into my system. We used to go out to restaurants and even when they said that there was no MSG in the product, if I threw up we figured either they were lying or just didn't know. I'm assuming I am not that allergic to MSG anymore, since I am currently eating the Baked Doritos right now, and they haven't ended up on my computer screen. But I decided to google Doritos and MSG, and I found this website, MSGtruth.org and found out that some of the worst culprits are American Food Companies, BIG SHOCK THERE!!!!! I'm glad I haven't eaten at KFC since I was about 7, because it seems they are one of the worst offenders: FRIED CHICKEN - What could be more American than Fried Chicken? KFC chicken actually contains so much MSG that in one country at least, KFC exceeded the legal limit for adding MSG to their chicken. Next up, Partially Hydrogenated Oils.

Maybe some of the "Supposed Liberal Media" could learn from South Park

I definitely think some of our "Supposed Liberal Media" could learn a lesson from Comedy Central and the creators of South Park on how to not back down from the Religious Extremists, who though in the minority can raise quite a fuss. A recent episode of South Park, called "Bloody Mary", caused quite a stir among some religious groups. The controversial part of the episode was the Virgin Mary Statue that was bleeding from it's nether regions. According to the NY Post, conservative groups had claimed victory, saying that they had gotten the episode shelved since it did not appear on the end of year season marathon. A statement issued by Comedy Central and the creators of South Park stated that this was not the case and they were just being sensitive during the holidays, a nice gesture that probably won't be repeated because of the crazies who yelled and screamed about the episode. Here is the statement that the press could learn from: "As satirists, we believe that it is our First Amendment right to poke fun at any and all people, groups, organizations and religions and we will continue to defend that right," the letter stated. "Our goal is to make people laugh, and perhaps if we're lucky, even make them think in the process." If you are a member of the press, subsitute "as a member of the press" for "satiriststs", "report on" for "poke fun at any and all". amd finally for the last statement substitute,"Our goal is to report the truth to people, and perhaps if we are lucky, open their eyes in the process." And you probably thought South Park was just fart and poop jokes.

Brokeback Mountain Review

Saw Brokeback Mountain this past weekend with my girlfriend. I have to say it was a great movie, the acting was great especially Heath Ledger and the story flowed very well. I would have to say it was the best overall movie I have seen this year. One aspect of the movie I liked was that there was not too much dialogue and a lot of the emotional interaction between the characters of the story was non-verbal, especially with Heath Ledger's character. I also really enjoyed the soundtrack, the music did a very good job of setting the mood. Well that's my review. Here is a review from Focus on the Family's reviewer. The part that I found most interesting: "When two people love each other, they love each other. And people should hold on to it as hard as they can, whether it's homosexual or heterosexual," star Jake Gyllenhaal told reporters at the Toronto Film Festival. He's partly right. But if he's talking about the kind of love shared onscreen by Jack and Ennis, he's conflating the meanings of the words love and lust. The Bible doesn't isolate "love" to male-female relationships. It calls men to love other men, and women to love other women. (Look at the connection David had with Jonathan in 1 Samuel 19-20 and the bond Jesus had with John in John 13 for a biblical reference point. Also relevant are 1 Peter 1, 1 John 2 and John 15.) What it condemns is turning brotherly or sisterly love into sexual love—a form of love God reserves for a man and woman who have embraced the gentle bonds of marriage. That sexualization of love—and our growing cultural acceptance of it—is gradually making valid, chaste love between two men or two women harder and harder to accomplish. (Read 1 Corinthians 6, Romans 1, John 1, 2 Peter 2-3 and Leviticus 18-20.) Since I am Jewish I had no clue what passages he was talking about, so I found out that I could read the bible online. Here is 1 Corinthians 6. I am a decent student of the English language and I didn't see anything about god condemning Man on Man or Woman on Woman chaste love. Here is Romans 1, and although there is a vague reference to lust, it still doesn't condemn Homosexuality. Nothing in John 1. Too lazy to read anymore, because I am pretty sure by now it is all the same. I guess these nutballs in the Discriminate Against Homosexuals Community Through the Cover of Religion Club or DAHCTCRC as I like to call them, have to twist the bible's words in order to support their cause. That's what I figured from the beginning, but I just wanted to make sure for myself so I read a little bit of the bible. These people who preach intolerance in the name of the Bible are the real sinners and hopefully one day they will be judged accordingly.

I write a complaint

I am not one to usually complain too much, but I just picked up a bottle of that Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke and it was horrible. So I decided to contact Diet Coke via their comments section. We shall see how it turns out. Here is the letter: To my beloved Diet Coke Company, As an avid coke and diet coke drinker, I have to say I am extremely disappointed with your Diet Black Cherry Vanilla product. I just purchased a bottle at the nearby WaWa and would have to say it tastes worse than cough syrup. I generally enjoy your other Diet products, my favorite is the Diet Cherry Coke. However, I have to reiterate that this product is horrible, I think it may be the vanilla, but it is utter garbage. Thank you for your time, just thought someone would like to know. Will

Alito Hearings

Watching the hearings on C-Span's feed, All I can say right now is that he looks like he needs to go to the bathroom, I guess he forgot to make a pit stop before coming to the hearings.

Don't drink the water....

at least I wouldn't if you live in Los Angeles. Before I comment on this article I have to admit that I prefer to drink bottled water as well, mainly as a result of reading a Civil Action and with the lack of confidence I have in the environmental protections enforced by the Bush Administration. My girlfriend and I currently have a Brita filter attached to our tap, but if I ever found out that Philadelphia's Water Purification team was doing this, let me just say the Brita Filter would not be enough. What is the LA water purification team doing? Now it turns out that the Department of Water and Power has so much faith in the city�s drinking water that the agency spent $31,160 over the last two years on Sparkletts. That would probably be a wise move for many of us, but it seems strange for the DWP, which also spent $1 million in tax dollars to convince citizens of the quality of our delicious tap water. Amazing just Amazing.

Some truthiness from the U.S. Army....

well sort of. This is an article that was published on the U.S. Army's Professional Writing Collection section of their website, it is titled "Why the Stong Lose". Initially I was skeptical, since I assumed I would be reading propaganda, but the points are legitimate and well thought out. The author, Jeffrey Record, is a professor at the Air War College in Montgomer, Alabama, so we can safely say "He knows his shit". I could suggest another title for this piece,"Will we ever learn from our mistakes?" Though it easily polished off Milosevic's Serbia and Saddam's Iraq, the United States failed to defeat Vietnamese infantry in Indochina, terrorists in Lebanon, and warlords in Somalia. In each case the American Goliath was militarily stalemated or politically defeated by the local David. Most recently, the United States was surprised by the tenacious insurgency that exploded in post-Baathist Iraq, an insurgency now in its third year with no end in sight. The phenomenon of the weak defeating the strong, though exceptional, is as old as war itself. Sparta finally beat Athens; Frederick the Great always punched well above his weight; American rebels overturned British rule in the Thirteen Colonies; the Spanish guerrilla bled Napoleon white; Jewish terrorists forced the British out of Palestine; Vietnamese communists drove France and then the United States out of Indochina; and mujahideen handed the Soviet Union its own "Vietnam" in Afghanistan. Relative military power is hardly a reliable predictor of war outcomes. One of the main reasons the strong lose, according to Record is: the materially weaker insurgent was more politically determined to win because it had much more riding on the outcome of war than did the stronger external power, for whom the stakes were lower. In such cases: The relationship between the belligerents is asymmetric. The insurgents can pose no direct threat to the survival of the external power because . . . they lack an invasion capability. On the other hand, the metropolitan power poses not simply the threat of invasion, but the reality of occupation. This fact is so obvious that its implications have been ignored. It means, crudely speaking, that for the insurgents the war is "total," while for the external power it is necessarily "limited." The piece is relatively long, but definitely worth the read. If you don't get to the end, here is his conclusion: The strong, especially democracies, lose to the weak when the latter brings to the test of war a stronger will and superior strategy(emphasis added)reinforced by external assistance. In the case of the United States in Vietnam, a weaker will and inferior strategy was reinforced by an apolitical conception of war itself and a specific professional military aversion to counterinsurgency. In the case of Iraq, the jury remains out on the issues of will and strategy, but the unexpected political and military difficulties the United States has encountered there seem to have arisen in part because of a persistent view of war as a substitute for policy and an antipathy to preparing for war with irregular adversaries.(emphasis added) Maybe Wolfie, Rummy and Bushie should have consulted Mr. Record, before the decided to go with The Greet Us As Liberators Plan.

A little New Year's Hope

....Well not really. The title of the Op-ed is,"This won't be the American century", I found it to be very interesting well thought out and relatively realistic. My favorite excerpt follows: History is shaped not only by events but by individual humans. It is impossible to imagine the United States' reputation would have sunk so far and so fast, had Bill Clinton or Al Gore had been president. The next president, or presidents, will be able to regain some lost ground. He didn't even need to mention the idiots name to get his point across. George W. Bush, WORST PRESIDENT EVER!!!