My Rantings
(semi-original thoughts)

Opinions
 

Caterwauling About the N-Word

I don't like people telling me what I can say, especially celebrities, tv commentators, talk show hosts, supposed civil rights leaders, politicians, and other pc idiots.  And selecting certain words to be off-limits seems particularly simple-minded.

I understand that there are limits to our blessed 1st Amendment rights, so I don't yell "Fire!" in crowded theaters, make threats against the President, etc.

But on to the N-word.  There are a huge number of ethnic and racial slurs. I'm too lazy to count them all, but in the Racial Slur Database (http://rsdb.org/) there are 62 listed that start with the letter "A".  Feel free to count the ones that start with a number or the letters "B" through "Z" and get back to me. Bigots can be very prolific and creative.

But for some reason people think the N-word is particularly abhorrent and merits special treatment. Pardon me if I don't agree. There are all kinds of despicable behavior that warrant our condemnation, and the N-word doesn't even make the top 10.

Even in the area of hate speech, the N-word pales in comparison to many others. Check the RSDB for yourself and see if you don't agree.  But even if you don't, there is selective condemnation - apparently movies and rap music and blacks when they're talking among themselves are exempt from the perils of using the N-word, while white folks like Paula Deen are not.

In 2007, the New York City Council symbolically banned, with a formal resolution, the use of the word "nigger".  Apparently kike, wetback, chink, gook, cracker and bible-thumper are still perfectly acceptable.

The New York City resolution also requested excluding from Grammy Award consideration every song whose lyrics contain the word "nigger", however Ron Roecker, vice president of communication for the Recording Academy doubted that it will have any effect on actual nominations. And he was right.

In our politically correct society, it's difficult to keep up with the rules of the day.  It might be better to just make up your own.
 

The Wisdom of George Costanza

In my favorite Seinfeld episode, George decides that every decision that he has ever made has been wrong, and that his life is the exact opposite of what it should be.

George tells this to Jerry, who convinces him that “if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right”. George then resolves to start doing the complete opposite of what he would do normally, and amazingly (or perhaps expectedly), his life changes drastically for the better.

So this year, I've decided to follow George's lead in selecting my New Year's Resolutions.  Rather than select positive ones (that never seem to work out), I'm going to choose resolutions that are the opposite of the outcome I really hope for. Hopefully it will work as well for me as it did for George.

With that in mind, here's my list:

1. I'm going to eat anything I want, and hope to put on at least 25 unhealthy extra layers of fat.
2. No iron-pumping, stationary bike riding, jogging, yoga, etc. I intend to never run when I can walk, never walk when I can ride, or never stand when I can sit.
3. I intend to do everything I can to find the worst in people, and then to make sure everyone else knows about it.
4. I'm going to try to dominate every conversation with clever made-up antidotes showing what a great guy I am.
5. I intend to impulse buy every gadget advertised on tv.
6. I'm going to find excuses for not doing all the things that would improve other peoples' lives or contribute to a better community. 

I suspect most of you won't notice the difference. Happy New Year.
 

Preparing to Start Thinking About Prepping

Sacred: "highly valued and important."

Sacred obviously has other meanings as well, but I want to discuss this one, because we often get what's important badly skewed.

And trendy clothes, fancy cars, high-tech gadgets and high-dollar houses don't even make the short list.

In my highly biased opinion, a substantial stock of safe food and drinking water (and a means of replenishing it), and adequate shelter (and a means of protecting it) are the only things that rise to sacred status.

There are any number of catastrophes that seem increasingly more likely to occur. Something as simple as a trucker's strike would disrupt the delivery of food, and any city, large or small, has less than a week's food on grocers' shelves.

A major disruption in our electrical grid would obviously cause all kinds of problems, and almost assuredly will happen. I was without electricity for 9 days during a bad ice storm. Imagine if the entire US was without electricity for a month or more - not an unrealistic scenario.

And hungry and panicked people resort to desperate measures, including taking your food, safe water and shelter.

Very few of us are prepared in any way for what is surely to come in our lifetime. Unfortunately I have to be included in that group - but I've started working on it. I encourage you to do the same.
 

Fed Up With Al, Jesse, Eric, etc.

I am more than fed up with folks like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, ad nauseam caterwauling about what us white folks need to do and need to stop doing to our black brothers and sisters. White men seem to be their perpetual target, so let's examine some facts:

1. It was a white man who issued the  Emancipation Proclamation.
2. It was a white-man dominated Congress that passed the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
3. It was a white-man dominated Congress that passed the 14th Amendment, which, inter alia, gave state and federal citizenship to all persons regardless of race.
4. It was a white-man dominated Congress that passed the 15th Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
5. It was a white-man dominated Congress that passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1964 and 1991.
6.  It was a white-man dominated Congress that passed The Voting Rights Act of 1965 that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
7.  It was a white-man dominated Congress that passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the results of which created quotas for and requirements that minorities be hired for jobs, regardless of whether there were more qualified white applicants.
8. Universities have established lower ACT and SAT score requirements and enacted other procedures that discriminate against white applicants to increase minority enrollments.  They have also established curriculums such as "Black American Studies" to provide a better likelihood of success for these students.
9.  Blacks, which represent about 13% of the population, are 39% of the welfare recipients, again benefiting out of proportion to a white-man enacted law.
10. And pick your own Affirmative Action Program to cite.

I could go on, but I hope I've made my point.

All of this might sound "racist, racist, racist" as Diane Ragsdale, former Dallas City Councilperson, likes to say, but contraire.  I'm simply trying to point out that us white folks have done quite a bit to improve opportunities for people of color, but most of these opportunities require some initiative on the part of the black community.

There are a lot of very successful blacks, including our current President. And he got there with the help of a lot of us white folks.  Strangely he doesn't sound all that appreciative.