…I haven’t posted anything new in several days.I’ve been the house guest of my oldest and most beloved friends and their awesome (and I mean awesome!) family in a heavily wooded town about fifty miles outside New York City since last Monday.

I’ve taken to awakening with the dawn here, and what you see in the above photo is the view from the patio at 6:30 a.m. or thereabouts. Uninterrupted miles of dense forest filled with just about every kind of critter imaginable.

It’s great, sitting on the patio early in the morning, staring off into the woods and listening to a hundred different kinds of birds calling out, the occasional caw of a crow, the staccato ministrations of a woodpecker on a dead tree.

That said, I find it somewhat difficult to devote any attention to the quagmire of modern political issues just now. However, as all good things come to an end, I’ll be returning to Manhattan tomorrow, and after reaclimatizing myself to the city and the unending swirl of daily life, well…

Earlier in the week, there was this.

The University of Toledo has suspended with pay one of its administrators for writing a newspaper op-ed that questions whether homosexuality is a civil rights issue. The school said the administrator was suspended precisely because her views on homosexuality do not comport with those of the university, a state institution.

Crystal Dixon, associate vice president of human resources at the Ohio-based university, sparked controversy Apr. 18 when she wrote in the Toledo Free Press that she did not agree with comments by the newspaper’s editor that portrayed homosexuals as civil rights victims.

Ms. Dixon rightly opines,

“I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman,” she wrote. “I am genetically and biologically a Black woman, and very pleased to be so, as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle evidenced by the growing population of PFOX (Parents and friends of Ex-Gays) and Exodus International, just to name a few.”

However, as we’ve been seeing for some time now, the modern American educational institution has become intolerant of any expressed opinion that does not agree 100% with their own liberal political agendas. This is because they are no longer there to educate and prepare our young to think for themselves, they are there to indoctrinate.

Therefore, Ms. Dixon has to go.

But Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues at Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization, said the university appears to be discriminating against Dixon and was almost “inviting” a lawsuit.

“This is classic viewpoint discrimination,” Barber said. “The First Amendment and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act make it illegal for an employer to discriminate against an individual based on that individual’s sincerely held religious belief.”

Problem, Mr. Barber: The First Amendment and the Civil Rights Act apply only to atheists, liberals and liberal causes these days. The minute you mention religious beliefs in court (unless they are Islamic), it will become “obvious” that Ms. Dixon is a right wing Christian fanatic, despite her skin color, and some activist judge and well-vetted “progressive” jury will rule in favor of the university.

Greg Quinlan, a former homosexual who serves as president of the Ohio Pro-Family Network, said the University of Toledo, like many other university campuses, has become a “bastion of fascism.”

“Today, if you speak out against homosexuality on a college campus, you are considered a criminal,” Quinlan told Cybercast News Service . “I’ve been out of the homosexual lifestyle for 16 years. And if you speak out as an ex-gay, you are always under attack. I’ve been slapped in the face. I’ve been screamed and yelled at. I’ve been called all kinds of names. When you disagree with someone, that doesn’t mean you hate them.”

Quinlan, a former homosexual activist who said he had raised “thousands of dollars” for the Human Rights Campaign Fund in the 1980s, said his own conversion came about slowly.

“The science is clear, absolutely clear: no one is born a homosexual. It is nurture, not nature,” he said. “But if you say that, you are branded a bigot, you’re branded as a monster, you’re branded as a hater. You are branded as intolerant. But you are also, on many campuses, treated as if you have no right to your opinions.”

Well said, Mr. Quinlan. That is how the left “debates the issues”. They attack your charactar in as vicious a manner as possible, brand you ignorant, a bigot, etc, etc. This way, they don’t have to let it be known that they really don’t have any viable or otherwise palatable (to the majority of their fellow Americans) arguments to support their minority agendas.

Yet, despite the fact that these portsiders are in the minority,

SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court has overturned a ban on same-sex “marriage,” paving the way for California to become the second state where homosexual residents can marry.

The justices released the 4-3 decision today, saying that domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage.

Yup, even though the majority of Californians have previously voted against same sex marriage, there are always those activist judges and “justices” out there who feel they know better.

The challenge for homosexual rights advocates, however, is not over.

A coalition of religious and social conservative groups is attempting to put a measure on the November ballot that would enshrine laws banning gay marriage in the state constitution.

The Secretary of State is expected to rule by the end of June whether the sponsors gathered enough signatures to qualify the marriage amendment, similar to ones enacted in 26 other states.

If voters pass the measure in November, it would trump the court’s decision.

California already offers same-sex couples who register as domestic partners the same legal rights and responsibilities as married spouses, including the right to divorce and to sue for child support.

But, “Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” Chief Justice Ron George wrote for the court’s majority.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Marvin Baxter agreed with many arguments of the majority but said the court overstepped its authority. Changes to marriage laws should be decided by the voters, Baxter wrote.

Spot-on, Justice Baxter.

However, having lived and voted in California, I have seen a proposition (a bill voted on directly by the voters rather than the legislature) or two delivered with loaded wording, and I’ve also seen bills that should have been presented as propositions go straight to the state legislature. Liberals don’t much care either what the majority wants nor what is just, they simply want their agendas to be manifest no matter what it takes, clean, dirty or indifferent.

That said, I wouldn’t hold my breath: It would come as no surprise to me if there was a gay marriage amendment passed in California in the fairly near future, and with two states (the other being Massachusettes) marrying same sex couples, well, look at the legal quandaries other states are encountering when legally married couples from Massachusettes apply for divorce in them. If California gets on the bandwagon, the momentum of the same sex marriage debate will increase that much more, and states just might start toppling like dominoes.

Despite their minority status, liberals sure seem to be having their way with the rest of us…

…but…

Three posts ago, I made mention of the “jihadi wagons” (the stainless steel roach coaches, towed daily to their curbside locations, from which Muslims within sell various hot hallal foods, everything from shish kebob and falafel to lamb and all beef hot dogs. With few exceptions, curbside food vendors in New York City are Muslim immigrants. I also remarked that these jihadi wagons are as commonplace in Manhattan, these days, as are yellow cabs.

In a comment therein, Always On Watch wrote,

Sooner or later, one of those “jihadi wagons” is bound to be a security threat. The police can’t possibly monitor all of them.

She was right on point, only perhaps in a different way than her comment implied.

All these jihadi wagons are part of one or more fleets belonging to Muslim entrepreneurs who reap most of the profits of their farflung enterprises. Obviously, for the food to meet hallal standards, it must come from Muslim distributors.

The jihadi wagons themselves are a purely cash business. For anyone who’s never been involved in a purely cash business, well, let’s just say that it’s really easy to take a lot of money out of the equation, especially when the product involved is perishable, “we didn’t/couldn’t sell it, so we threw it away” merchandise like food. Good write-off, as well.

Not only can’t, as AOW put it, the police monitor all of them, but there are a hell of a lot less field qualified tax revenue auditors working for the city of New York than there are police.

Most of the legions of smaller hot dog and pretzel stands are also run by Muslims. So are nearly all the delis, small markets, smoke shops and, surprise, surprise, guess who sits behind the wheel of just about every taxi cab in New York…?

A large number of these delis, small markets and smoke shops are cash only, no credit or debit cards.

So, call me paranoid, call me Islamophobic, but…

When an ethnic group whose very scripture declares itself the enemy unto death of our civilization, our religious beliefs, our form of government, our freedom, our way of life and, for that matter, our lives, period, an ethnic group which, incidentally, has already cheerfully sacrificed numerous of its own in order to butcher thousands of our citizens while promising to butcher still more, suddenly has monopolies on several cash businesses in our greatest city at an infiltration rate that would have made the occupants of the Trojan Horse green with envy…

…I think I have the right to be just a tad concerned.

When you take all the revenues involved into account, we’re talking some serious millions. Millions that can be skimmed in order to finance an awful lot of terrorist activity both here and abroad.

There are an estimated 600,000 Muslims in New York, and they keep on coming.

Many are employed within the metropolis’ vast infrastructure in places such as the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the Police Department, the Fire Department, the Dept. of Corrections and so forth.

Of course, such concerns expressed in certain public forums would result not only in the usual fatwas coming out of the mosques, but in officially registered outrage by terrorist front organization CAIR (Council on Americam Islamic Relations), the Marxist-founded, “down with America” ACLU and their kindred spirits from among the liberal progressive, politically correct, multiculturalist zoo.

CAIR’s job is to see to it that most of us are prevented from realizing the truth until after their brethren have murdered lots more Americans and mired us in the Sharia. The ACLU’s job is to see to it that our enemies have every possible advantage in these efforts. The kindred spirits are just a lot of useful fools who live in some Utopian dream that those of us who embrace reality will never be able to understand, and probably wouldn’t want to, anyway.

Perhaps the most frightening bit is that the government apparently finds no cause for concern with the above. There is a word for such people: Dhimmis.

So call me paranoid, call me Islamophobic, but…

Just a few observations.

While quite a few (an understatement) people drive their personal vehicles in New York, most Manhattanites don’t even own cars because a) N.Y.C. has an excellent public transportation system, arguably the best in the country, b) a guaranteed parking place costs thousands of dollars a year and there are often long waiting lists for same and c) who wants to spend half ones time in traffic gridlock, anyway?

To make up for the usual car owner’s status pecking order, there are…Baby strollers.

A $70.00 Combi might replace a Saturn, while a $900.00 Bugaboo might be another woman’s (and baby’s) Mercedes. A lot is based upon design, storage space (yes, a house wife or her husband might need to pick up a few things, maybe some groceries or whatever, and take baby along for the “ride”, so places to stash the purchases aboard the toddler’s personal vehicle are a plus, as opposed to having to carry a grocery bag and control the stroller at the same time).

I can just imagne the conversations that take place:

Barb: Oh, did you see the new Stokke Xplory Marilyn just bought for little Davey? Eleven hundred dollars!

Harriet: Yes, it’s a dream! And right after Connie picked up that $900.00 Orbit Baby Travel System. Just in time for spring, too.

Barb: I hear Fred’s out of work, and it shows. Mabel’s been pushing Deanna around in that same old $400.00 McLaren she bought two years ago.

Harriet: Oh, that’s so dreadful! How embarrassing that must be for poor Mabel!

******

From a recent column by Mona Charen,

Administrators at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis had seemed to be vying for the title of most ludicrous educators in America. The story began when a student, Keith John Sampson, who worked in the university’s janitorial department, was seen reading the book “Notre Dame Vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan” in the break room. Sampson was notified by the university’s Affirmative Action Office that he had committed the offense of “racial harassment.” He protested that the book lauded the Notre Dame students who had taken on the Klan in 1924. Never mind, said Lillian Charleston, the AAO director. By “openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject,” he had violated university policy.

The university has since reversed itself and expressed “regret that this situation took place.” But consider the fascist environment the PC police have created. That the student felt constrained to defend the book’s content as politically acceptable is an outrage in itself that goes to the heart of academic freedom. Welcome to an America where you must glance over your shoulder to wonder whether your co-workers will inform on you for reading forbidden matter!

Read the entire column here.

******

Go to Chinatown. Ask for Cane. He can help.

He sure couldn’t have helped one hapless little Italian fashion photographer and the model with whom he was doing a shoot yesterday, in the late afternoon rain at the intersection of Chinatown’s Grand and Christie Streets.

I was passing by on my way to the B and D trains’ subway station over there and had to stop and watch.

The model, a tall, thin (aren’t they all!), attractive woman with a familiar face (I’ve seen her picture someplace before, but not being one to care one way or another about such celebrities, I haven’t the faintest idea who she was), was wearing a slinky, silver silk dress and holding up a grey fur coat. The photographer wanted her to walk towards him across the street, but only while there was a walk sign so she could be moving along with the pedestrian flow.

Obviously, he didn’t know Chinatown.

Chinatown here in N.Y. is a densely crowded, fast moving, busy place whose denizens have no brief but for their own day-to-day activities, and no one paid the slightest attention to the model. Everytime the walk sign appeared, she began crossing the street and was immediately engulfed in throngs of other pedestrians headed the same and opposite ways, jostling her, cutting in front of her and generally making it impossible for the photographer to get the shots he wanted.

But he was determined and they kept trying over and over, to no avail.

Seeing the amused grin on my face and having himself picked up on what was going on, a young Chinese man smirked at me and said, “This guy doesn’t seem to know he’s in Chinatown.”

Finally, I shook my head and continued on to the subway station, wondering how many dozen additional attempts it would take before the photographer finally gave up and relocated to Broadway or someplace…

…here is one place in which I believe, at least in recent decades, we conservatives have been deluding ourselves.

Granted, I firmly believe that the “silent majority” of right-thinking Americans referred to during the Vietnam era is still alive and well, our self-deception is in our belief that it is sufficient that we do our talking at the polls on Election Day.

The problem there is that in between mid-term and Presidential elections, the only “talking” that really gets done is between elected politicians. Granted, there are occasional, though few and far between, voter rebellions wherein We, The People intercede en masse, such as the thankfully aborted amnesty legislation a couple of years back, but for the most part, we just kinda’ sorta’ sit back in blissful unawareness or semi-awareness while the commie trash social progressives in Congress gradually assert their socialist political agendas, with either too much compromise or insufficient resistance from those on the right side of the aisle. By the time the next election comes up, these agendas, virtually all of which are contrary to the letter of the Constitution, are already carved in stone. The same goes for “earmarks”, the vast majority of which are little more than bribes from representatives to special interests within their respective constituencies to gain votes for reelection, virtually none of which benefits the American taxpayers as anywhere near a whole. But that’s okay, right? Just ask any politician (you’d probably have to get him/her drunk first, and even then he/she would want to check to be sure you’re not wearing a wire), if Congressman Shmoe wants to get the $36 million bucks for local project A, Congressman Bonehead will be happy to sponsor same in return for The Distinguished Mr. Shmoe sponsoring his own earmark for $41 million toward the latter’s own local industry. Look at all those megabucks corporate agri-businesses that benefit from subsidies that the small, struggling farmers they were originally intended for barely see, or the same for political agenda-based venues like NPR, or the National Endowment For The Arts. Has anyone asked We, The Voters lately if we wanted our taxes to subsidize or otherwise support these institutions?

No, no one has, yet earmarks go on and laws are passed whether we like them or not, whether they are Constitutional (within the purview of our elected officials to even discuss, let alone pass) or not, the overwhelming majority of them drifting in a decidedly leftward direction no matter who we on the right elect to represent us in Washington.

This November, we have no recourse but to vote for John McCain, not because he is even remotely the right candidate from a conservative perspective, but because he’s not as bad as either of the two jamokes vying for the Democratic nomination.

This time out, our options are possibly the absolute worst in my lifetime to date, but what the hay? No matter who wins the White House, the following two years will simply be “business as usual”, the tenacious left sneaking their agendas into the mix, the complacent right ho-humming and making concessions, lining up their ducks for their next reelection campaigns.

No, I’m afraid that speaking our piece by means of the vote alone doesn’t carry the weight it once did and I’m even more afraid that it never will again.

I’ve been trying my best to stay away from politics the last few days while I enjoy becoming reacqainted with my home town.

It’s actually becoming quite fatiguing seeing “Obama this, Obama that, Wright this, Wright that” everywhere I go on the Internet. It’s like watching news sites, blogs and other media flogging the same dead horse over and over while ignoring stuff that is being pushed on us under the radar, using the Presidential campaign as a distraction.

By this time, anyone who, despite all the suffocating coverage, still believes that either Hussein Obama or Hillary Clinton belongs in the Oval Office is either profoundly obtuse, a “liberal-run government at any cost” Utopian, a jihadist, someone who despises either our Constitutional form of government and/or the American People, or a communist. I simply see no purpose in continuing to do what amounts to beating my head against a wall trying to prove a point that’s already been proven.

Especially when trying to convince liberals, who, when confronted with scientific fact or other indisputable evidence that runs contrary to their politically based “beliefs” will shrug it all off with, “That’s your opinion.”

By now, those folks out there in the middle of the road have more than enough evidence to make their own judgement as to the viability of either Obama or Clinton where the Presidency is concerned, as this time out, even the MSM has failed to hide the truth about the two Democratic candidates. All they can do is manage weak attempts at spin or try to divert public attention in what, just as Obama’s efforts to distance himself from Irreverend Wright, are proving transparent efforts, at best.

Face it, no matter which of the Democratic candidates gets the nomination, McCain will prevail in November. Any other outcome would be pure insanity.

Moving right along, on Wednesday evening I visited one of my old Little Italy favorites on Mulberry Street at Broome (they relocated about 12 years ago from a Hester Street location), Umberto’s Clam House. Since I was dining alone, I ate in the kitchen (a small counter from which you can see most of what’s going on and be served directly by the chef). I chatted with one of the owners and ate ala carte, a generous serving of linguini with white clam sauce (I watched the chef shucking a big pile of clams — yum, clams! — for my dinner, what a pro!), a basket of fresh, warm N.Y. Italian bread with butter…

Afterwards, I walked down to my new favorite N.Y. bar, an establishment that’s been in business since 1972, in a building that’s been around since before the last century, Kenn’s Broome Street Bar.

I must confess to a rather lengthy evening therein. It’s a very comfortable pub with a great staff and a good crowd of local regulars (though quite a number of European tourists also find their way there), a large menu of good food, including home-made chili con carne (one of the house dishes, for anyone who’s really hungry and reasonably gas resistant, is an open-faced knockwurst “chili dog” with cheese and a large pile of either crinkle cut potato chips or fries. Their burgers are intense and large, as are all the other items on their menu. They don’t skimp on anything. Daily specials can be anything from blackened fish to langosta and they have a more than admirable Saturday and Sunday brunch menu.

So, Thursday I was up and out early enough to meet a friend for a lunch date, and we headed for Mulberry Street. Mulberry is an Italian food lover’s heaven, more than three blocks lined with Italian restaurants, bakeries (Mmmmmm, fresh cannoli!) and cafes. We were both ready to eat at 11:30, and most of the eateries on that strip of culinary delight don’t start serving until noon.

However, La Mela seated us at an outdoor table at 11:40 and took our orders.

I had pasta in a white sauce with mussels that was awesome, and they were extremely generous with the mussels. If you’ve never had mussels in New York, you’ve never had mussels. Mmmmm, mussels! My companion had chicken scapariello, which I had a taste of and was pretty impressed. I’ll have to order it next time I go there.

Afterwards, we went down to the Broome Street Bar for a drink before parting company. Ah, Guinness!

It began to rain in the evening, so I returned to the hotel to visit my computer and catch up on some of my news reading and so forth.

Through the weekend, there was night clubbing on Bleeker Street in the west village, including a couple of hours of great Jazz at the Blue Note, wherein they serve a remarkably good lobster ravioli (all this eating, in New York, is easily offset by the amount of walking one does in the interests of really seeing the city).

A late Saturday evening dinner date found my companion and I at a neat little Italian joint at East 50th Street and 2nd Avenue called, very appropriately as they specialize in lasagna (17 different kinds, ranging from ground sirloin to prosciutto to lobster to veal and everything in between), Lasagna Ristorante. This was followed by a cab ride downtown to — where else? — Mulberry Street, for canolli and capucino at La Bella Ferrara.

Sunday morning I was down at Duarte Square (Canal & 6th Avenue) to watch the start of a bicycle Tour of New York, wherein some 30,000 participants embarked on a 2-3 hour, 44ish mile ride around the boroughs, equipped with a continuous police escort to block cross traffic. It was a sight to see, every kind of bicycle in the universe, from regular 10 speeds to bicycles built for 3, several side by side 3 wheelers (two people in reclining high backed seats peddling from relaxed positions), some crazy configs wherein there was a small front wheel and a large rear one with the peddles right above the front wheel, a bicycle that was built to resemble a Harley chopper and one individual was pulling a small wooden cage-trailer that looked like it contained his cat.

One morning last week, I took a stroll down Bleeker Street above 8th Avenue (west village), and was totally impressed by the atmosphere of the neighborhood. It is simply beautiful, lots of trees and the view down nearly every side street was profoundly green, the shops all upscale without blaring the fact. I stopped at a local cafe for a chocolate almond croissant and a capucino, sat outside and enjoyed watching the people pass by, the bird sounds and the morning aroma of spring in New York…

…then several cloudy, rainy days arrived, today being the first clear, sunny day.

On a less pleasant note, as I said above, while so many of us make a major event of every word issuing forth from the mouth of Hussein Obama and every outrageous statement uttered by his “former” Pastor Wright, in my opinion doing little or nothing to change the minds of those wingnuts who view him as some sort of messiah (face it, friends, there are a lot of incorrigible boneheads in this country who believe America is the root cause of every problem of every kind, everywhere on earth, and that only the mighty Obama can save the world), we pay less attention to issues that we really need to focus on that amount, basically, to government encroachment on our free enterprise system and the price we pay for this wholly unconstitutional series of actions.

Issues such Congress’ decision to attempt to meddle in banks’ current credit and debit card management methods, the effect the ethanol production mandates are having on food prices across the board, including starvation and food riots in the same developing nations liberals claim to care so much about (this despite the fact that ethanol production and use produce more of the dreaded C02 than regular gasoline use), and still another dreadful bi-product of the government protecting us from ourselves.

Yes, all those high taxes local governments in states like Illinois and New York love to levy on cigarettes, purportedly to “help us”, have created a black market that directly finances terrorism. I ran across the above link at a security industry website, and, in as timely a manner as one could ask for, Walter Williams, one of the most “on-top-of-things” columnists in the business, penned a spot-on piece about it.

While it’s politically popular to impose confiscatory taxes on America’s 40 million tobacco smokers, there are a number of consequences one might consider, but let’s start out with a quiz. If a carton of cigarettes sells for $160 in New York City, and $35 in North Carolina, what do you predict will happen? If you answered tons of cigarettes will be going up I-95 from North Carolina to New York City, go to the head of the class.

Smuggling cigarettes is illegal; so the next quiz question is: Who is most likely to engage in cigarette smuggling? It’s a mixed answer, but for the most part, organized smugglers will be people with a high disregard for the law. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has found that Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Middle Eastern (mainly Pakistani, Lebanese, and Syrian) organized crime groups are highly involved in the trafficking of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes. What’s worse is the ATF found that some of these groups use the money to provide material financial assistance to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Read on…

People who don’t spend a lot of time in major cities might easily miss this, but immigrants from Muslim countries have, over the last several years, established monopolies over certain retail-based industries that in some other sectors would easily inspire anti-trust lawsuits. Small markets selling, among other things, cigarettes are at the forefront of this phenomenon, with convenience stores and fast food restaurants not far behind. Here in New York, pizza shops are also on the menu to some extent, as are what I can’t help but think of as “jihadi wagons”, those stainless steel carts, towed daily to their respective curbside locations, from inside which Muslims serve hot grilled food (shish kebob, etc) through a window. Often one sees them joined within by fellow countrymen, deep in conversation, with others hanging around outside. When I lived here ten years ago, many of them were owned and manned by Russians, but this no longer seems to be the case.

Nice going, politicians — levy taxes, help finance jihad. Now the Bureau and the ATF have even more on their plates, so to speak, a tax-created homeland security issue.

Say what you want about the letter of the law, I tend to agree with Williams’ opinion that,

Some smugglers are good people who differ little from the founders of our nation such as John Hancock, whose flamboyant signature graces our Declaration of Independence. The British had levied confiscatory taxes on molasses, and John Hancock smuggled an estimated 1.5 million gallons a year. His smuggling practices financed much of the resistance to British authority — so much so that the joke of the time was that “Sam Adams writes the letters (to newspapers) and John Hancock pays the postage.” Like Hancock, some of today’s cigarette smugglers are providing a service to their fellow man caught in the grip of confiscatory taxation.

In my book, the Hancock-type smuggler is a hero of sorts. Let’s look at it. During the days of the Soviet Union, Swiss watches were illegal. During our Prohibition era, the sale, manufacture and the importation of intoxicating liquor was illegal. Britain’s Navigation Acts imposed high tariffs and restrictions on goods sold to the American colonies that ultimately led to our 1776 War of Independence. The common theme in all of these acts is government seeking to interfere with, regulate or outlaw peaceable voluntary exchange between individuals.

Reason?

It has occurred to me on numerous occasions and I have mentioned a time or two in previous posts that for some time, our government, and I’m talking about both parties, has been betraying us, treacherously so and purely in the interests of individual political careers by gradually reintroducing the very same governance that our founding fathers saw fit to rebel against and in so doing break away from Great Britain, and found the United States of America.

However, rather than fight it, we collectively permit this regression to pre-Revolutionary War conditions. We continue to reelect politicians who could give a rat’s backside about We, The People or about our great country — to these scumbags, the only thing America means is realizing their own personal political ambitions, getting reelected at any cost, and I have come to realize that no matter how we elevate one above the other in our esteem, you can count all the politicians in this country who entertain even an iota of patriotism on one hand.

That said, two of my upcoming activities will be to catch Clarence Spady live, and also to attend a musical play called Street Dreams (an excitedly upbeat young actress, or aspirant thereof, handed me a hand-out for the play, billed “an inner city musical”, presented by the Rosetta Lenoir Musical Theatre Academy — never heard of it — and it looks like fun) at the ATA Theatre on West 54th.

New York, YAY!!!!