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Are old cemeteries hallowed ground? Worms used that soil as mess hall
Posted 5/9/08
•That lawsuit in the news a few weeks ago dealing with proposed new development around Kansas City International Airport strikes a chord. If you've not been paying attention, the development was stalled because some old homesteading families’ graves were encountered by the developers. The land had been sold some time ago, and the airport developers that now owned the land even offered to relocate the graves to a new location. Well, the court ruled in the favor of the long ago dead folks' family, so the graves have to remain right where they are and the development must go around the little “cemetery.”
•Does it seem like the big media should be tiring of covering the Clinton and Obama campaigns yet? They are covering the same stories from the same angles even involving the same quotes or so it seems. Can they keep this up for another two to three months? It's kind of like watching Road Runner cartoons…the audience has got to tire of watching the Acme anvil fall on either Hillary or Obama's head somewhere along the way.
•Does it seem logical that the land one is interred in upon engaging in a dirt nap should remain off the market for all of recorded time? What about all the slaves that died in this country and had unmarked graves? What about all the Indians that died over the hundreds of years that they roamed the land? Give me a break that we are so very special that the land we start to ooze and decay in is some kind of hallowed ground!
•Was Speed Racer really that big of a cartoon back in the '70's that it would curry enough favor for a Hollywood movie? If you really think about it, and even for five seconds, that's twice as long as anyone gave it during the run of the cartoon series, it might have been intriguing had they put the project into Pixar's hands and we'd then get to enjoy Trixie in 3D animation.
·Reach down and grab a handful of dirt. That dirt is composed of, in part, the long-decayed remains of countless numbers of people that lived on the earth over the last 4 million years. There were wars, documented and not, that left countless dead in the soil. There were highway robberies and ambushes that left bodies in the dirt. There were animals that ate humans and pooped their remains onto the ground. Why are these dead people's remains so special?
•The NBA Playoffs are starting to garner a modicum of media interest. I'm still a Spurs guy. But it still is about a month away from being worthy of any more than casual interest, and less so if the Spurs can't avoid being wiped away by the surprising Hornets, which they are heading toward very quickly. The NBA regular season is still largely dismissible.
•This eternal gravesite thing has implications on all kinds of seemingly related issues. Who owns the land the World Trade Center towers used to stand on? Who owns the real estate Jimmie Hoffa is somewhere buried under? Isn't at all really silly?
•That story making the rounds of the girls collegiate softball team that carried an injured opposing player around the bases to score her three run homer she'd just hit shows a memorable display of true sportsmanship. But it also begs some interesting distinctions between men and women. The actions of the opposing team showed that women can put winning aside when necessary to make a human point. But had this been a men's baseball game…or even a men's beer softball league, they'd be stepping on the guy's injured leg to be sure he couldn't tag first base.
•In the end, we are significant as a species not through that which we accomplish individually. We are significant because we accomplish something collectively through organized efforts of many, or through building upon the advances of those that came before us (standing on the shoulders of giants…remember that one?). How sad must we be in our self-image of we have to latch onto something by claiming perpetual rights to a tract of earth that worms used as a mess hall on our soul-abandoned corpse?
(Whether opining on old cemeteries or the NBA playoffs, Brian Kubicki will let you know how he feels. Let him know your thoughts with an email to bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Are the Chiefs about to come full circle under Peterson?
Posted 5/2/08
•So have the Chiefs come full circle under Carl Peterson? They draft the best defensive lineman in the draft who just so happens to be from the same college football conference as Derrick Thomas, the first Chiefs Savior. This was done in the aftermath of a season in which the team won a pitiful 4 games. The team is under the guidance of a defensive-minded coach. All we need now is a couple of 11 and 12 win seasons and first round playoff losses and the circle will be complete.
•Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial pastor is in the news again. This time, he's been blathering-on about supposed genetic differences between black brains and white brains. Can this guy be more of an albatross to Obama? Why can't they shut him up? This should be an interesting week of political media. Wright is about as helpful to Obama's campaign as a piece of cheesecake is to Hillary's hips.
•Can we start global warming already? I just shivered through a weekend of youth baseball games played in conditions more suitable for Eskimo sunbathing. What gives, Al Gore? I thought we were controlling the planet's climate?
•Speaking of youth sports…we all blather on about how many bad things there are in youth sports. This extends from overly pressuring Dads to overly protective Moms to coaches that are living their Casey Stengel and Billy Martin fantasies. But there are a great many of truly excellent and appropriately balanced Dads, Moms, and coaches that have the right temperament and philosophies. I've seen them of late and thought we ought to all recognize those folks when we see them.
•I'm operating on a minimum of sleep right now, so bear with me. My concentration is less than optimum.
•I need to change the oil in all the cars this week. (Just reminding myself…I'll read this Thursday and remember to get the stuff I need).
•Do the Royals stink again?
•Have the Royals and the Chiefs ever really stunk together at the same time?
•Is anybody else growing truly tired of the Angry Black Man/Sensitive White Guy constant drumbeat out of the KC Star sports page? It gets kind of old, doesn't it?
•I just read in a book that Adolph Hitler was chronically flatulent. Why is that not surprising?
•The next time someone around you starts blathering-on about the earth being overpopulated, toss out this little factoid (courtesy of John Stossel's latest book)…if you took the entire population of the world and dumped them all into the state of Texas, the resulting population density would be less than that of New York City today. I guarantee you that the biggest Margaret Sanger Disciple will reply with stone silence.
•I would wager that Hitler's flatulence would likely be perhaps the most unpleasant odor ever encountered from a living human. And who would have the courage to complain out loud? Probably the only advantage to being the 20th Century's most infamous and horrible ruler would be that you could foul the air and nobody would complain about it.
•Wouldn't you pay $1000 to see a pay-per-view of a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama Celebrity Boxing Match? I probably would gather a few interested parties for that one. Forget the debates…lace-em-up.
·Doesn't this latest dust up between Hillary and Barack remind you of the scene in Rocky (I or II, I can't remember) when Rocky is getting pounded and Paulie yells to Mick, “…he's gettin' killed…” and Mick replies: “He's not getting' killed…he's getting' MAD!”
•Selling a house in this market is incredibly painful to one's psyche.
•Cutting springtime grass is really hard to do when you have two yards to mow. I haven't mowed this much grass since I was 13.
•Can somebody explain to me why the Democrat nominee for President needs 2100 delegates but the Republican's nominee only needed 1100? What does that mean exactly?
The soreness from running a 4 mile race at 7am Sunday morning is starting to settle in. Owwwww! It reminds you that you're alive, though. I've got to give it that.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..
(Awaken Brian Kubick with an email to bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Child-molesting priests make Catholics appear hypocritical
Posted 4/25/08
•With Hillary Clinton's recent resurgence in the Democrat Primary fight, a Barack Obama victory seems less than certain, surely, but do Democrats really want such a juicy piñata for the Republicans to bang away on for 5-6 months?
Rev. Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezco, Michelle “I Hate America” Obama (does that woman EVER smile?) and whoever is to arise later is going to make attack ads incredibly easy to compose. When the Republican attack machine is done with him, Obama will feel and look like a lone apple in a Bobbing-For-Apples booth at the Rest Home for Toothless Paraplegics.
•The Catholic Church was back at their, “Don't-Look-At-Me-I'm-Looking-At-You” policy when, in conjunction with Pope Benedict's first U.S. visit this past week they began to once again chide members of Congress who publicly support the right to abortion. The Pope has said such lawmakers should not receive Communion.
Now as an avid proponent of the fact that life ended voluntarily in the womb is indeed murder, I also abhor hypocrisy wherever it resides, and as long as one-time child molesting priests and the Bishops and Cardinals that moved them from parish-to-parish go right on ministering within the church (and they indeed do, thanks to the policy instituted several years ago), then they have no authority to tell anyone else what is right vs. what is wrong. That's the fact of that.
•Are we ready for the Ace of Cakes 10-minutes-of-fame on the Food Network to be over already? How interesting can one make throwing a cake into 17 million different whimsical shapes? Could I make a show about carving cat litter box chunks into the cast of Gilligan's Island and run it on cable TV for 2-3 hours a day? Enough already!
Besides, there is no more entertaining show on the Food Network than Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.
•R.I.P. John Archibald Wheeler 1911-2008, who was the theoretical physicist that pioneered the theory of nuclear fission (along with Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi); taught graduate student Richard Feynman; among many other of the 20th Century's physics legends; and participated in the development of the U.S. atomic bomb under the Manhattan Project.
Wheeler is also credited with originating the terms, wormhole, to describe tunnels in space-time, and black holes. You should know what those are. We talked about them last week. My readers are the smartest readers out there. . .tons smarter than any regular Star reader.
•You know, I bet with as good as John McCain's luck is running, he could appear in the little black book of one of these high-end call girl scandals and he'd climb 5 points in the polls. He kind of reminds me of Steve Martin's Navin Johnson in The Jerk (truly a comedy classic!). He certainly has the same degree of natural rhythm.
•All this hoohaw about Catholics being all ga-ga about the Pope is part of the reason the church is having the problems it is. Too much is made of a simple visit by a world dignitary. You don't get any special dispensation from visiting the Pope or seeing him on TV. But these people going bonkers over the Papal visit seem to think they will. They're in for a big surprise, methinks, when their ticker stops ticking.
•Al Gore was moaning and groaning about global warming (they call it “climate change” now) again this time in London. In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Mr Gore said recent polls had found that while people rate climate change as a “serious problem,” some ranked it lower than clearing up dog mess. That was funny. I like that attitude. There may be hope yet for you humans.
•You know, on this KU basketball fan issue, this championship they won, despite being completely unbearable for a non-Jayhawk, has made a point very clear to me. Now that I am a Kansan, and more specifically a Johnson county resident, KU fans in Kansas City, Missouri and Parkville, and Platte County were realistic, believable fans. They liked their team. They cheered for their team. They good-naturedly chided fans of other rival schools. They fit in.
KU fans in Johnson County, especially ones that didn't necessarily attend the University of Kansas are completely nuts. They can't really conceive of people around them not being supportive of the University of Kansas basketball program. You tell them that you would have preferred to see KU lose to Memphis in the NCAA Championship, and these folks look at you like you just asked for the best directions to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse from the corner of 18th & Quindaro.
It doesn't register past their point of synapse. They are a funny group.
(Email Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
The Clintons are a gift that keeps on giving
Posted 4/18/08
Can somebody explain how Cass County can only have one voter in the Kansas City, Missouri questions on last week’s ballots? One? That there is some serious voter suppression. I'll bet that voter doesn't find a union member voting in his place after he dies.
•Is this John McCain's year or what? He is resurrected from the dead by the unexpected resurgence of an Evangelical Arkansas Republican that took out his main rival through religious rivalry. The Democrat race turns into a 15-round heavyweight bout that makes the end of Rocky II look like a bubble bath with Jennifer Aniston. Then, just when it looked like Barack Obama was going to assume control of the Democrat race, he starts a drain-circling exercise that makes Howard Dean start to think there might be hope for him yet.
•So I'm catching the Royals on TV last Friday night, being the bandwagon baseball fan that I am, and there's one out in the bottom of the first inning with nobody on-base. The Twins bunt down the third base line successfully I might add. But he doesn't bunt to advance a runner. He doesn't bunt to score a run in a suicide squeeze. He just bunts to try and get a base hit! What in the name of an old fashioned Hal McRae perpendicular-to-the-basebath second-base slide is this bunting in the first inning for a single strategy? Is this what baseball has become? Whatever happened to hitting for the alleys, extra base hits, and speed on the basepaths?
•Somebody asked me this week what these Carbon Credits are that Al Gore keeps blathering-on about. With Earth Day around the corner, I thought it appropriate to give you another reason to increase your Carbon Footprint in commemoration.
It goes something like this…Gore uses more than 20,000 Kilowatt-hours each and every month in his huge Nashville house alone. In return for burning that much coal-fired fuel, he pays the utility company a certain amount to put toward generating energy through so-called renewable means, like wind power or solar power. Conveniently, Gore himself owns companies that sell these carbon credits. So he buys these things from himself.
It's kind of like this…imagine if you are restricted by doctor's orders to consume no more than 2000 calories a day. You're a hungry, growing dude, so you pay the grocery store an additional $100 for every 1000 calories you consume over that limit. The grocery store then uses your $100 to buy more Skinny Guy meals (which you just so happen to own the franchise for), for the uber-hungry folk that eat 10 of them a day. As a result, the grocery makes money on the sale of the Skinny Guy meals, hungry people have plenty of meals to gorge themselves on, and you can exceed your 2000 calorie limit while "feeling better" about it because you are contributing to a healthier bottom line for your Skinny Guy franchise. What a racket!
•Here's one for the expense file. Did you know that since 2001, former Pres. Bill Clinton has received more of almost every benefit available to former presidents?
Their recently-released tax returns revealed that the Clintons have made $100 million since leaving the White House, but that hasn't kept Bill Clinton from taking full advantage of the publicly funded perks offered to former-presidents. In reality, his presidential retirement benefits cost taxpayers almost as much as those of the other two living former-presidents combined!
The price tag for Clinton's federal retirement allowance from 2001 through the end of this year will be a jaw-dropping $8 million! That's staggering when you consider that $5.5 million was expended for Pres. George H.W. Bush and $4 million for Jimmy Carter's during the same period.
As a matter of fact, since 2001, Pres. Clinton has received more of almost every benefit available to former presidents. His $420,000 phone bill and $3.2 million office rent both nearly surpassed the totals rung up for those purposes by Pres' Bush, Carter and the late presidents Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan combined! As a group, they spent $484,000 on telephone service and $3.8 million on rent.
I guess the Clintons are a gift that just keeps on taking.
•Ironically, the Congressional Act that ensures we pay for this stems from Missouri's own Pres. Harry Truman who led a notoriously Spartan lifestyle after leaving office. He was once quoted as declaring, “I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.”
I'm supposing the dignity of the office doesn't particularly concern Bill Clinton.
(Reach Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Be aware: Facial hair does not denote gender
Posted 4/10/08
I sit here in my Memphis T-shirt as I compose this pleading for a reprieve from all this Jayhawk pomp-and-circumstance. I can't stomach a Kansas national championship. Please save us, Memphis!
•RIP Charles Carter…A.K.A. Charlton Heston. Moses went home after 84 years. He was one of the last great Hollywood conservatives…truly a nearly-dead breed given the pack of losers that carry the Hollywood political banner nowadays. The loser liberals of today want the world to remember not the firebrand advocate Heston was for civil rights in Hollywood, but instead the Alzheimer's victim that gave Michael Moore a pained “interview” on gun rights which was featured in Moore's propaganda piece, Bowling for Columbine. Moore should be tarred and feathered by the Alzheimer's Foundation of America for that interview alone. Personally, I'd be satisfied if they just slathered him in maple syrup and set him down in a grizzly bear park.
•These people who are defending Chelsea Clinton for refusing to address her mother's actions regarding the former President's infidelities while in office are out of their minds. Her mother, the Presidential candidate, wants us to believe she is smart enough to be President of the most powerful country in the world and yet she was unable to figure out that her husband was having an affair with a White House intern right up to the point that his lie was discovered courtesy of the infamous blue dress. That's just not plausible and needs to be questioned…by anyone who purports to speak for the former First Lady, as her daughter does.
•"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." That is an awesome observation on life adorning the tombstone of John Wayne.
•Sen. John McCain intends to finally meet with Secret Service officials in the coming days to accept security protection for the final several months of his campaign for the White House. McCain has said previously he doesn't want Secret Service protection, fearing it would interfere with his brand of intimate campaigning with voters.McCain also has said he'll try to last as long as he can without it.
Given that McCain is hardly perceived as an open and welcoming kind of candidate (he comes across more as the grouchy old fart in the corner house), I'd say his public perception strategy needs a little work. He's about as approachable now as a hyena with hemorrhoids.
•Also, rumor has it that Mitt Romney wholly endorses Sen. McCain's decision to forego Secret Service protection.
•Terrorists…you have lost your battle. We in the free world are conducting business. We don't have to travel on airplanes to make business happen. Thanks to fiber optics, satellite links, and the internet, the world is getting built and business is occurring despite your best efforts to thwart it. Freedom and liberty has won the terror war.
•A “man” who claims to be six months pregnant said in an interview aired by Oprah Winfrey last week that “he” always wanted to have a child and considers it a miracle. Don't believe any of this media garbage. This person is a woman…genetically. Think of “him” as the Bearded Lady in the circus, nothing more. Surgery cannot change your gender. If facial hair denotes gender, I have lots of great-great aunts that were really my great-great uncles.
•The Bush administration will waive more than 30 environmental/land-management laws to finish building nearly 500 miles of border fence along the Southwest Border by the end of the year. The move, permitted under an exemption granted by Congress, will be the most sweeping use of the administration's waiver authority since it started building the fence to curb illegal immigration. It will affect environmentally sensitive areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Are you kidding me? The Environmental Movement is being pitted against the need to control illegal immigration? Is that really what liberals want? Stop controlling the borders in order to save the habitat of the Prickly Pear Cactus? Please think about this if you were considering voting for a Democrat in November.
•The Memphis Tigers stabbed us in the heart Monday night. Missed free throws and the brain fart to not foul Sherron Collins with a 3-point lead and less than 15 seconds left. That was the biggest gift NCAA championship since Chris Webber called a timeout he didn't have. Unbelievable! I'm not going to be able to stomach all this Jayhawk crowing down here in the Golden Ghetto.
(Reach Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Operation Chaos has been around a long time
Posted 4/2/08
•It is kind of funny hearing all this media uproar over talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh's expressed strategy, called Operation Chaos, in which he urges Republican listeners in states which have yet to hold primaries to vote as Democrats in the primary and vote for Hillary Clinton. The strategy is to keep the Democrat nomination in question as long as possible, thus paving the road for the Republican nominee (you know who he is…we'll refer to him as He Who Will Not Be Named And Is Not A Conservative).
The big media is all a-twitter over Operation Chaos, going as far as to threaten voter fraud in Ohio. But truth be told, Operation Chaos-like activities are at least as old as I am. I grew up in Wyandotte County…traditionally Democrat Wyandotte County. If you were a Conservative in a Democrat stronghold like that, you're throwing your vote away if you register as a Republican to vote in any election. Your vote was much better used to convey dissension in the Democrat Party, which always controls Wyandotte County. I knew of many conservatives that were registered as Democrats for that reason. We were Operation Chaos before it was cool.
•A Hawaiian man with a background in nuclear physics is asking a court to stop work on the Large Hadron Collider, a gigantic atom smasher on the Franco-Swiss border that's set to start operations in May.
Walter Wagner and a colleague have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the collider project which they feel could accidentally create strange new particles that would instantly transform any matter they touched into an explosive burst of energy so powerful, it could engulf the Earth, and make a rapidly expanding black hole (a mass of gravity so dense that even light cannot escape its gravitational pull) that could consume the entire planet.
Named as defendants in the action are the U.S. Department of Energy, the Dept of Energy-owned Fermilab particle-accelerator facility near Chicago, the "Center for Nuclear Energy Research (CERN)" and the National Science Foundation.
Wagner has launched a Web site at www.lhcdefense.org where his concerns are detailed.
Most physicists say Wagner's worries are unfounded. Micro black holes would indeed be created, theoretically, but they will evaporate nearly instantly instead of combining to form larger ones.
They're probably right, and this amounts to nothing. What little I understand about colliders and black holes would barely make up one snippet of this column space, but I know it requires more energy than we can generate much less under the pressure of Al Gore's “let's-slow-it-down-in-the-name-of-global-socialism” Movement, to compress enough mass to start a black hole.
But then again….what if this guy is right? They said Einstein was nuts at first.
At any rate though, isn't this kind of lawsuit lots more interesting than some loonybird suing McDonald's because hot coffee was spilled on their lap.
•Has Barack Obama ever explained why he would have allowed his young daughters to stay with a church led by a pastor like Pastor Jeremiah Wright that curses the country they live in and utters race-based rhetoric as supposedly Jesus-inspired gospel? I could understand if he let his little girls see their “racist granny” they can't choose their family. They are what they are. But you DO choose your pastor or spiritual leader, and a parent has the responsibility to make that selection carefully. Shouldn't Obama explain that?
•Al Gore had a blathering feather-stroking exercise last week on CBS' 60 Minutes and it was enough fact-less and unchallenged junk-science to fill a Bill-Nye-The Science-Guy episode. If Al Gore wants to be taken to any level of seriousness, he needs to have his claims opposed in an open forum with experts on the other side of the debate. I would obliterate him in such a debate, and I don't know much of anything.
•They tell us we need to cut our carbon emissions (Who measures that in any reliable way? We all emit carbon every day of our lives. That's like counting eye blinks and taxing people on a per-blink basis!) to become 60% of 1990 levels by 2025 or something like that. We are a constantly growing society, physically and technologically. We're not going to stop needing computer power, cell phone power, home power… My BBQ and smoker grills are only getting bigger. BITE ME, AL GORE!
•For the record, the earth's atmosphere is only 0.038% carbon dioxide. Mankind generates only 3% of that 0.038% on our best day. When taken with doses of fact and logic, anybody can see that we aren't ALL that Al and his Global Socialism crowd would have you believe we are.
•Memphis runs UCLA out of the arena 86-72, and KU loses to Roy and UNC 84-78. Roy still cries.
(Reach Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
How about a recipe for Coyote Creole?
Posted 3/26/08
Alright people, we've got lots to cover this week. Let's go…
•Coyotes are moving inland. Leawood officials report that the canine marauders have taken a liking to the tony city's more delectable pets. Apparently, the 30-pound coyotes have overcome their innate fear of humans. As we venture out into the wilderness to live, some of us have done so without the comprehension that animals like coyotes are predators and we are infringing on land that they have hunted for centuries.
Some of the more ticked off Leawoodians have seen Peekapoos, Jack Russell Terriers, West Highland Terriers, and other fluffy, cutesy canines land on the dinner table of the dreaded and no-doubt highly-coiffed coyote population of Leawood.
I wonder if any of my Leawood readers would object to a Coyote Creole recipe right about now.
•So the media is making a big event (?!?) about the 4000th US military death in Iraq. Shouldn't the deaths be reported as US combat deaths in the War on Terror? Is the 4000th death somehow more relevant than the 3999th, 3998th, 3997th, etc? Or the 4001st death? Each sacrifice on the battlefield of this and all American wars means everything and stands forever as a testament to the bravery and dedication of U.S. servicemen and women because of their dedication toward the task of freedom and liberty that so many have paid into and so many more have enjoyed.
•ABC's Good Morning America (or perhaps NBC's Today or the clone morning show on CBS they all stink) had an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney in which the question was posed that polls show 60+ percent of Americans are opposed to war in Iraq. The VP responded, “So?” The interviewer and numerous liberal entities since then have been walking around with their jaws agape.
He's right. Where in the Constitution or in any of this country's founding documents is it written that we must poll the people on each and every issue under consideration by government, and much less that we must listen? Elections are the means through which the people's voices are heard. If they are not suitably heard, the next election will make the necessary correction.
Get out of my government's face with all your stinky polls.
•On Easter Sunday, a Muslim author and critic of Islamic fundamentalism was baptized a Catholic by Pope Benedict. The man now believes that he is in grave danger because of his conversion.
He's probably correct.
Apostasy in Islam is defined as the rejection of Islam in word or deed by a person who has been a Muslim. The four major Sunni and the single major Shia schools of Islam agree that a sane adult male apostate must be executed.
Some prominent contemporary examples of death sentences or threats issued for apostasy include Salman Rushdie, who was condemned to death in 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini, for his book The Satanic Verses, and Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity who was arrested and jailed on the charge of rejecting Islam in 2006 but later released as mentally incompetent.
The above examples are why I am concerned about how Islam perceives Barack Obama. Do they see him as a former Muslim who left the faith?
I would say that's very significant.
•On the Obama issue, he was questioned recently regarding his extremely liberal voting record. He says he understands the criticism, but he argues that the Senate is so “ideologically polarized” one cannot avoid being placed on one side or the other. "The only votes that come up are votes that are purposely designed to divide people," he said. "It's true that if I'm presented with a series of votes like that, I'm more likely to fall left of center than right of center. But as president, I would be setting the terms of debate."
So you need a middle of the road issue to define your moderate nature? You can't be a moderate on a big ticket issue?
It seems that even Obama admits that moderates cannot make anything of themselves on the Big Political Stage because they have no big issues to get behind.
•And by the way, for the record, Barack Obama threw his (White) grandmother completely under the bus in an effort to save his skin from answering for why he allowed his daughters to be spiritually administered to by a vociferous racist that believes that (White) man intentionally infected the (Black) African man with HIV/AIDS and that the American government knew about the attacks at Pearl Harbor before they happened. Just to make the record clear.
(There’s nothing middle of the road about our Brian Kubicki. Email him at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Barack Obama as a Muslim-
Is he or isn't he?
Posted 3/19/08
•The political world is awash in buzzards burying their heads in a still vital Barack Obama carcass as he tries to explain his admitted spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeremiah Wright's downright racist rants delivered over the years to his congregation of enthusiastic worshipers. This is a good reason to base you vote on what a candidate stands for politically and not on who your candidate falls asleep to on Sunday morning.
•On the Obama-as-a-Muslim story floating around the internet, I truly believe that he considers himself a Christian. Yes, he was schooled for a time as a Muslim and was born of a Muslim father and raised as a young boy under a Muslim step-father. But as adults, we all determine our own religious identity. That's an essential part of the Liberty we enjoy in this country.
Here's what I want explained...if you are born of a Jewish father, you are considered Jewish regardless of what religion you may choose to practice later in life. You may call yourself by your new religion, but your parents and all others in the Jewish faith still consider you Jewish. Why, if you are born of a Muslim father and raised from a young age by a Muslim step-father, are you not Muslim regardless of the religion you may choose? Do not Muslims see Obama as Muslim? I would think that a religion with a radical wing that saws the heads off of non-believers, for no other reason than they are non-believers would have a pretty dim view of converts.
The question is not is Obama a Muslim. The relevant question is does Islam consider Obama a Muslim?
•A very wise person I am acquainted with said the following when discussing liberty and taxation and what they really mean…
The Framers of our Constitution feared the imposition of direct taxes, such as an income tax, because the imposition of taxes reduces our liberty (in the form of personal property rights). The federal income tax is probably the most outrageous example of contempt for private property rights. Yes, every American is duty-bound to pay their “share” of constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government as enumerated in Article I, Sec 8 of our Constitution. But those functions account for less than one-third of government spending. Most spending represents taking what one citizen earns and giving it to another citizen to whom it does not belong -- e.g., farm subsidies, food stamps, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and welfare, which is a form of modern day slavery.
Liberals often argue to the effect that taxes are a result of a democratic process; that spending is the result elected officials making laws in pursuit of the public good. That's fallacy. The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes (changes) of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. Ones right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcomes of no elections. (Words to effect posed by Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson in1943.)
Of course it would take decades to untangle the federal government mess. Some claim it would be fair if all taxpayers paid the same amount of taxes. I would be happy if all taxpayers simply paid the same rate and that rate was based on the need for the one-third of spending that it mandated by the Constitution. At least the rate would be applied equally and fairly across all taxpayers.
We may need a strong middle class but the Constitution does not mandate it. The Constitution does not attempt to guarantee prosperity, only liberty. We should not attempt to achieve it (prosperity) at the expense of liberty. Rich people have freedom and personal property rights too. In the interest of liberty, I prefer that the private sector keeps and spreads the “fertilizer” (capital) to grow the economy; not the government. You can only trade liberty for cash for so long before the bookie calls in the loan.
•Geraldine Ferraro was forced to leave the Clinton Camp after saying last week that Barack Obama is where he is because he is black. O.K. What exactly did she say that wasn't dead-on correct? If Obama were white, he would only be another young, eloquent white candidate. Why would Black America step-up to vote for a middle class white 40-something candidate who is able to recite the platitudes of Progressive Liberal America on command? They're voting for Barack Obama because he just so happens to have black-hued skin. And that's the shame of it all.
•KU stomps Portland State and Kansas State nips USC.
KU 96 PSU 68
KSU 76 USC 70
(Nip Brian via email to bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
In the midst of getting caught, Dems typically try to stay in office
Posted 3/12/08
It was an interesting week to say the least.
•This prostitution ring that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has gotten “caught-up” in brought to mind all the sex scandals that have reared-up over the years to drag politicians under water. Florida Representative Mark Foley-R resigned over his scandal. Sen. Larry Craig-R resigned the Senate after his scandal. Randy Cunningham-R resigned the Senate after his scandal. Rep. Bob Livingston-R resigned his position after his scandal. Beginning to see a trend here?
Let's look at the other side of the aisle. Spitzer says he's staying in office. Rep. Gary Condit-D stayed in office after his scandal which involved the disappearance and apparent murder of a young intern. He served-out his term and lost a re-election bid. Sen. Edward Kennedy-D stays in office after causing the death of a woman. Rep. Barney Frank-D stays in office after his scandal involving a young gay man running a prostitution service out of Frank's Washington apartment. Kansas AG Paul Morrison initially announced he was staying in office after his scandal, though he was later pressured to resign. And the granddaddy of them all, Bill Clinton-D, stayed in office to finish his term after being impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice.
Why do Democrats stay in office when they get caught? Shouldn't they? I think they should. Maybe we should ask why, since Democrats don't stand down, Republicans don't start staying in office. Have our expectations for holders of public office fallen that far? Mine haven't.
•If I see another Flaccid Hootenanny (borrowed from the brilliant Dennis Miller, thank you!) singing us another tune about the wonders of Viagra from the confines of a 40-something's garage, I'm going to slap my children with a wet ShamWow.
•It's amusing watching all the Democrats rubbing their hands together in frustration over their Party's predicament in the Presidential primary. They are too close in delegate count for either side to claim a legitimate shot at victory. It has gotten so painfully strategic, that you've got Hillary running around whetting people's appetites by saying both Clinton and Obama names could appear on the same ticket carefully not mentioning whose name appears at the top in the hopes that people will actually believe she would name Obama as her running mate. Don't count of that ever happening. I would be more likely asked to pen a column for the KC Communist Star.
What nobody seems to foresee, except for Rush Limbaugh apparently, is that a woman and a black (I know, I know Obama doesn't fit the definition of a cultural black, but most of those to whom his skin color matters DO judge him as a black man, and that's what essentially matters.) appearing for the first time on a Presidential ticket on the same year will doom the election for the Democrats.
As much as we would like to admit that we are finally advanced in civilized American society to the degree that we can see a woman as President or a man of color as President, we aren't there yet if both of those extremes appear on the same ticket. There are not enough people opposing a woman to keep Hillary out of office if she goes the traditional seasoned male as her Vice President. And likewise, there are not enough racists to keep Obama out of office should he head a ticket with, say…a Bill Richardson or Joe Lieberman. But if you put those two minor electoral handicaps together, you have a recipe for defeat because then you have two disparate groups sexists and racists voting together against the Democrat candidate. Don't get me wrong, I hope they put that ticket together. It might even please me enough to hold my nose for a vote for John McCain.
•And by the way, nice to see Brett Favre could retain a shred of his dignified manhood in the face of announcing his retirement from the NFL. Note to Brett…there's a fine but clearly definable line between courageous tears and pathetic blubbering. That was nasty. Compose yourself dude.
•Alright, it's Big 12 tournament time. Everything kicks-off Thursday when everybody but Texas, Kansas, Kansas State and Oklahoma plays. Here's how I see it going down:
Thursday:
Texas Tech will nip Okie State 77-74
Baylor will pound Colorado 98-76
Nebraska will fall to MU 76-75
A&M will zip Iowa State 76-66
Friday:
Texas throttles Tech 85-65
Oklahoma loses to Baylor 65-64
KU squeaks by MU 76-74
Kansas State drops A&M 87-81
Saturday:
Texas barely handles Baylor 75-73
Kansas State squeaks by KU 86-82
Sunday:
Texas slaps Kansas State 76-70
(Email Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
With Obama, what's in a middle name?
Posted 3/5/08
•Much has been said last week about the relevance of Barack Hussein Obama's middle name. Cincinnati talk radio icon Bill Cunningham was asked by the McCain campaign to warm-up the crowd prior to a McCain appearance with Conservative invective and Cunningham did exactly that, invoking Obama's Middle Eastern middle name at every opportunity. Then, John McCain made his appearance and shortly afterward met the press to admonish Cunningham's appearance and verbiage.
Aside from McCain once again undercutting Conservatives (is this guy really that stupid?) and an extremely popular conservative national media figure, I wondered about the question regarding Obama's middle name. What's in a name? Well, Islam is behind his. The “Hussein” middle name came from his Kenyan father.
Another snippet of fact you learn after a little bit of reading is that Obama's mother remarried an Indonesian man a Muslim Indonesian man, named Lolo Soetoro who played an important formative role in the young Obama's life.
Lolo Soetoro's first name meant "crazy" in Hawaiian. And he had an exotic side, which he shared with the young Obama during the years they lived in Indonesia. From Obama's autobiography, he recalls,"…with Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chili peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)," And…. "…like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share."
For the record, Soetoro worked for the Indonesian government and later a U.S. oil company before he and Obama's mother divorced in the late 1970s. Soetoro died of a liver ailment in 1987. No word on whether the dog meat contributed to the liver problems.
So we know that a member of the Islamic faith had a formative role in this young presidential candidate's life. We know little more. All those involved are dead….except for Obama. Now I am not making any aspersions that Barack Obama is a radical Muslim in-hiding. I don't know. What I do know is adult men play a very influential role in a young man's life. Which of you men out there don't remember the principal father figure in your life from your initial awareness to the time you were in your late teens? I have no idea what was in the heart of the man who was in that role over Obama. But I do know this we are at war with a radical faction of Islam. A faction and movement that came on our soil and slaughtered 3000 Americans. Don't you think it would be important to look a little more closely at who we are placing within an arm's length of the most powerful military in the world and try a little more seriously to find out what is in his heart?
•Did you ever think you'd live to see a member of the Clinton political clan complain about media bias and be correct?
•By the way, on the Obama lineage question, do you think it would have been relevant in 1944 to raise an eyebrow of concern about a presidential candidate of Asian descent with the middle name, “Tojo?”
•I hear both sides call this war, “unpopular.” Has there ever been a popular war?
•If I see another focus group of undecided voters blathering-on about the emptiness of their political world, I am going to scream. If you haven't made up your mind about who to vote for by now, politics really isn't that important to you. Stay home and enjoy your life. And if you are of that mindset, that's totally cool. Nobody's denigrating you. Politics isn't for everybody. These focus groups that turn the little dials of approval/disapproval based on what Hillary's wearing or on how well Obama's tie is knotted are an embarrassment to the political process. Please, do yourself and your family a favor and run away fast if anybody from a TV news network approaches you with an offer to be on TV as part of a focus group.
•The Weather Channel's founder, John Coleman, told an audience at this year's International Conference on Climate Change in New York that he is highly critical of global warming alarmism. He told the audience about his strategy for exposing what he called the “fraud of global warming.” He advocated suing those who sell carbon credits, including Al Gore, which would force global warming alarmists to give a more honest account of the policies they propose. The lawsuit would get lots of media attention, and the thought is attention like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the enormous fraud that is global warming.
(Email Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Please don't give up on the Princess of the Pantsuit
Posted 2/27/08
•With one week left before the big primaries of March 4, it is time to put my “money where my mouth is” and start my campaign to keep Hillary Clinton in the Democrat race. She seems to have lost a bit of momentum, losing about 11 straight primaries to Barack Obama. But don't give up on our dear Princess of the Pantsuit. She's not done yet.
•In the Jack Buck Memorial, “I DON'T BELIEVE WHAT I JUST SAW” Department, common household pets at risk of self-harm are increasingly being prescribed anti-depressants because they cannot discuss problems in their lives with others.
•Some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies are making anti-depressants for animals. Last year, Eli Lilly developed a chewable anti-depressant for dogs “sweetened” with a beef flavor
Strangely enough, there was no word on whether chickens or cows are suffering from this malady in any significant numbers.
•Hillary Clinton is the answer for all our woes. If our country starts the day down, she will pick us up. If the economy starts a particular year slowly, she'll be right there to punish the top performers in the economy to right the ship. She knows right where to turn the screws. Just ask Bill.
•Do you hear that sound? Springtime is coming. The earth is slowly but surely moving into the part of its elliptical orbit around the Sun when the planet inches closer and closer to the solar system's heat and light source, causing temperatures to increase.It's a cycle that has occurred every single year of my life, and I suspect the pattern has repeated itself for billions of years.
•Did you know that if we are attacked by an enemy on U.S. soil, or at one of our interests around the world, Hillary will bring the entire force of United States diplomacy into action to seek-out those responsible and then we will sit down and find out why they hate us enough to attack? Through this shared level of compassion and understanding, our enemies will surely understand that a feather is truly mightier than a sword.
•The first thing I'm going to do when we get a day above 60 degrees is fire up the charcoal smoker and slow-smoke me a slab or two of luscious, fall-off-the-bone pork ribs. Slathered with a generous blanket of Gates and Sons BBQ sauce and served with a side of home-cooked sweet potato fries and pit-smoked beans. My springtime carbon footprint is going to be Shaq-sized in no time! I love global warming.
•Hillary has a handle on the government budget. She has managed her household finances for decades. She and the former President have never actually worked for any private enterprise in their entire professional lives (Well almost there is supposedly some law firm Hillary was working for but they're still looking for the records), and she's managed to spin their portfolio well into the seven figure range. Hillary knows money.
•Here's your springtime physics tip of the week. For those of us worried about winter weight gain and how we're going to shed those pounds gained during the inactive cold winter months, take note of where your bathroom scale is. Well, more specifically, note what surface you place the scale on when you step on it. If you rest your scale on a carpeted floor before standing on it, you will be as much as 10 pounds heavier than you really are. Most bathroom scales should be placed on a hard tile floor instead of a soft, cushy floor. The reason is the soft floor also gives some under the force imparted by your body on the scale, and the scale is fooled into thinking you're actually a bit heavier. Try it. Shed 10 pounds in a really easy way.
The logic behind this seeming Hillary craziness is that we Republicans need to keep Hillary in the race competing with Obama right up to the time of the Democrat Convention. Remember, history tells us that brokered conventions mean victory for the other side. Eyes on the prize people…eyes on the prize.
•The Big 12 regular season is winding into its last week and the order of finish is coming into view. Texas is red hot and likely on its way to a No. 1 seed. Kansas State is stumbling toward the finish line hoping they can avoid playing their way out of the NCAA Tournament. Kansas is wondering who their go-to guy is going to be.
KU will stumble Saturday night to an angry Kansas State team. There will be a suicide hotline active for family pets in Lawrence late Saturday Night. KSU 88 KU 75. Texas rolls Texas Tech in Lubbock 94-81, OU topples A&M 65-62, and Baylor rolls MU 85-62.
(Reach Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Tough Democrat fight means McCain may not need conservatives
Posted 2/20/08
Adventure pilot Steve Fossett was officially declared dead last week. If you'll recall, Fossett was on a pleasure flight when he vanished last summer. Dozens of planes and helicopters spent more than a month searching the rugged western Nevada mountains before the effort was called off as winter approached. The search area covered 20,000 square miles and about 15 to 20 private planes have vanished in the area since 1950.Amazingly, wreckage was found in 2005 in Kings Canyon National Park from a plane that went down during World War II.
How can it be that a world-renowned pilot who has the most advanced equipment at his fingertips could crash in a private plane and not be found? Do you need any other evidence that this planet we live on is way more vast and expansive than the environmentalists would like to believe?
•The USDA ordered the nation's largest beef recall this week. Apparently spurred by complaints of animal cruelty by animal rights activists, 143 million pounds of frozen beef that came from a California slaughterhouse was recalled from store shelves. Now the media is trying to fan the flames by hypothesizing that some of the meat went to school lunch programs.
At any rate, there is no threat of any disease or actual evidence of tainted meat. What appears to have happened is some cattle were “mistreated,” at least as animal rights activists like to define it, while in line to be slaughtered and rendered into Wednesday's Anonymous Meat Surprise at Benjamin Banneker Elementary in Anytown, U.S.A.
Now how exactly do you mistreat an animal in-line to have its lips become a hot dog? Apparently, if the beast falls down, due to weakness, being tripped by the cow-bully of the herd, or just to take a break, you have to let it get up under its own power. If you don't, taking a chain saw to the bovine's noggin might apparently make the cow feel bad. And a cow with bad feelings apparently is a threat to our dietary safety.
Is it a sign that our priorities are out of kilter when we allow PETA anywhere within 100 yards of a meat packing house? C'mon people!?
•These stand-for-nothing and dance-around-the-Maypole-with-the-Democrats moderates that are telling conservatives who are still protesting the John McCain apparent nomination to the Republican side of the Presidential race need to sit back down and wait for someone to call for their opinion.
John McCain isn't being hit daily by conservatives because conservatives are spoiled or mad or being unreasonable. John McCain is being hit daily like a Great White Shark hitting Ted Kennedy in a big giant floating inner tube because McCain made a career for himself over the past several years stabbing the conservative movement in the back.
This isn't like Bob Dole, who remained consistent to his politics and was largely responsible for stopping the attempted Clinton takeover of our health care system and, it should be noted, Dole did that from his role as the minority leader of the Senate.
John McCain stepped-in when his party was about to exercise a voter-endorsed and earned rule change that would have allowed them to stop filibusters, and he brokered a deal with other moderates to get a few judges voted on but not all judges, while allowing the other party to continue stalling to prevent voter-endorsed legislative majorities from enacting their power. John McCain undercut his own party on a very important issue.
John McCain failed to support tax cuts on the people in our society that pay most of the taxes in the first place. That issue is at the core of the Republican Party and conservatism in general.
McCain is going to get the party's nomination. But he is going to have to work very hard for the support of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. He has more than earned that Scarlett Letter.
•Isn't it interesting to recall that the last two times a political party entered their nominating convention without a clear nominee, the Democrats in 1968 and the Republicans in 1976, that party lost the election. The last time I watched CNN, they indicated that even if Obama wins primaries and caucuses in the remaining states, he will not have enough delegates to win the nomination outright. No matter what happens, it appears the Democrats have a brokered convention on their hands and controversy because the DNC has threatened to not seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan as punishment for their breaking ranks when holding their primaries.
John McCain might not need the conservatives after all.
(Parallax Look is always an entertaining tussle. Email the columnist at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Environmental activism has actually killed people
Posted 2/13/08
Now that I'm almost completely recovered from the gaping wound to my political self, inflicted last week by the results of Super Tuesday, I am fascinated by the split in the Conservative base of the Republican Party that Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney clarified.
In one corner, you have the Evangelicals that support Huckabee. Religion in politics is very important to this group of voters, and they do not like Mormons for some reason. That religious angst does not appear to apply to other protestant religions.
In the opposing Romney corner, you have the rock-ribbed Conservatives that hold all the principled ideas, but they do not appear to care whether their candidate is a Mormon, and they seem to really adhere to the fiscally conservative approach to government.
I think the wiser approach would be to sew up the Evangelicals first, if you are a Mormon. Then go bring the others into the flock.
•There is something either awe-inspiring or downright fitting about Mike Huckabee in the knowledge that he once enjoyed squirrel as a part of his daily diet. I want to see his favorite squirrel recipe.
•There's something about John McCain's message to the Conservative base that hates his guts that doesn't ring right. At the CPAC convention last week, McCain said something to the effect of, “…I realize I was wrong with McCain/Kennedy (his amnesty bill that failed last year)…you spoke to me. I got the message. We are going to FIRST control the border…”
Now, if I'm not mistaken, that's not the entire message. The message was that we (the American people) do not want amnesty for those that are here illegally now. McCain's Clinton-esque message seems to be that he'll enforce the border and then allow all those 12-15 million now here illegally to stay here. If this is how McCain is going to try to bring us Conservatives on-board, he better go back to the drawing board.
•This whole steroids/Roger Clemens thing is getting kind of fascinating. Why is he fighting this so hard? He just seems to be digging himself deeper and deeper into a dirt bunker surrounded by tunneling rats eager for a taste of HGH.
•Doggone it's cold outside! I've been BBQ'ing with live charcoal outside almost every night, but my efforts to increase my carbon footprint don't seem to be working. Do you suppose all this global warming hysteria is just a myth.
•By the way, while we are on that topic, did you know that environmental activism has actually killed people? You see, back when liberals started the environmental whacko movement in the 1970's they found a study that found if you bathe a laboratory rat every night for a year in DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane), a chemical that works really well as an insecticide, the animal develops cancer. So the EPA banned use of the chemical in the U.S. Never mind the fact that nobody bathes themselves even for a night in any insecticide. They banned it. So now we have a wide variety of bug-killers that we can take a bath in, but the bugs gargle with it and resume their forays into our homes and beds.
The lethal part of this story is that in other, poorer, undeveloped parts of the world, like Africa, insects are lethal to humans. Mosquitos particularly carry Malaria which has devastated Africa for hundreds of years. DDT is very effective against mosquitos.“No problem,” environmentalists say, “just make DDT for them. Well, with no market in the U.S. for DDT, it is not economically feasible to make it in small quantities, so Africa does without. Estimates put the number of deaths as low as hundreds of thousands and as high as 20 million, many of those being children. That's a hell of a price to ask Africa to pay for being “environmentally conscious.”
•R.I.P Roy Scheider. Now, as soon as The Uber-Liberal Richard Dreyfuss kicks the bucket, Heaven can start rolling with the Celestial re-make of Jaws.
•Wow! Kansas just dropped another game, to Texas in Austin. Now Kansas State has their fate solely in their own hands. They've got to handle Bob Knight's son's Texas Tech Red Raiders in Lubbock Wednesday night (I'll either be a brilliant prognosticator or an incredible doofus by the time you read this, that's the trials of newsprint), and that is a big question mark. But if K-State stays with 1 loss in conference until March 1, they will have Kansas playing for a tie and a tie-breaker will decide the regular season champion. Predictions: KSU 75 TTech 68; KSU 85 MU 62; KU 100 CU 50.
(Reach Brian Kubicki via email to bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Emanuel Cleaver is worried about the polar bears
Posted 2/6/08
Let it be understood with the utmost clarity; I will vote for Hillary (GULP!) Clinton before I will vote for John McCain. There…I said it.
•This is from John McCain's website on the subject of the environment: “He has offered common sense approaches to limit carbon emissions by harnessing market forces that will bring advanced technologies, such as nuclear energy, to the market faster, reduce our dependence on foreign supplies of energy, and see to it that America leads in a way that ensures all nations do their rightful share.”
Do our rightful share of what? I hate limp-wristed political moderates that have no ability or will to stand-up to junk science and political propaganda and face it down with facts and fervor.
•For your science minute: will an airplane or a jet set upon a treadmill-like device that moves at the same speed as the wheels, just in the opposite direction, eventually take-off?
Think about it carefully. I'll give you the answer next week.
•Why does this election for president need to consist of a debate and race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? Because those two are the most intelligent candidates in the race, on both sides, and a presidential election hasn't had truly intellectual debate by persons capable of doing so in more than 100 years.
•Rambo is worth it. I'll admit that my interest was more in closing the circle on the Rambo story than anything else, but I must admit, this one was thought-provoking on a number of levels. Anti-war at all costs was faced with the reality of warfare in a savage world. I would avoid seeing it on a full stomach though. Think of the opening 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan and extend it over the entire second half of the movie. I like that kind of stuff, but they used a LOT of cherry cobbler for this one.
•Congressman Emanuel Cleaver worries about what melting ice caps mean for the polar bear. Cleaver, who has been a member of the House committee on global warming for about a year, says the plight of the bears has meaning beyond the ice caps whatever that means.
Cleaver is co-sponsoring a bill to protect a known polar bear habitat. The measure would prevent the government from opening up nearly 30 million acres in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska for oil and gas drilling. OH SHUT UP!
Republican Rep. Don Young, Alaska's sole congressman, opposes any delay in accessing this valuable storehouse of much-needed oil and gas. I agree with him. And what is an inner-city reverend-turned congressman from the city of Kansas City, Missouri doing trying to preach to an Alaskan about what should be done with the resources in his state?
Shut up, Emanuel. Look after your constituents and keep your nose out of polar bears. They're too white for your interests anyway.
•Now, to explain my opening statement a bit, I would vote for Hillary Clinton before I would vote for John McCain. It's not that I agree with her positions more than I agree with John McCain's. I don't. If Hillary were given the reins of government, she would steer it into oncoming traffic like a schizophrenic paraplegic having an epileptic seizure behind the wheel. But a vote for John McCain is rewarding someone who stabbed his own party in the back on many, many occasions over the past 20 years. It would also ensure that a sitting senator would win a presidential election for the first time in almost 50 years. It hasn't happened in 50 years for a reason.
•Texas Tech coach Bob Knight stepped down this week unexpectedly. I love the style around the way he did it. Knight was anything if not wholly dedicated to doing what the media did not want him to. College basketball lost a great coach and an era of basketball went with him.
•How 'bout that pick of the Kansas State upset over UK last week…pretty impressive huh? Notice how I avoided predicting the subsequent KSU loss? I saw a chance for it. This Kansas State team is too young, and the coaching staff too inexperienced not to fall in an obvious letdown situation.
This Saturday Texas will drop a nail-biter to Iowa State in Ames; ISU 86 UT 85.
(Brian Kubicki voting for Hillary Clinton? Your Landmark leaders would have to see that to believe that. . . Email any Hillary thoughts you may have to Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Bush is first president who 'got it' about Middle East
Posted 1/30/08
President Bush gave his final State of the Union Address Monday night and for all intents and purposes, he was closing the book on his two terms in office and in doing so, trying to take a final swipe at critics (albeit with a very soft glove) in the Democrat Party that made it the core of their political reclamation project to take a genuinely nice man and kick him in the stomach constantly for 6 years.
I have disagreed with the moderate conservative, George W. Bush, in many ways. But he was a genial and decent human being through the entirety of his tenure in office. He never took backhanded swipes at his political opponents the way his political opponents did to him. He deserved better. The Office of the President of the United States deserved better. Any human deserved better.
The Democrat Party devised a strategy for regaining political power by taking a war that was a tough battle to wage and then they used that tribulation as a tool for criticizing each and every thing the President did on every single issue, every single day. If it rained, it was George Bush's fault. If the sun shined on a particular day, it was too hot and that was George Bush's fault.
That putrid strategy was seen as the ridiculous ploy that it was by the base of the Republican Party, but it worked with those millions that don't pay much attention to politics, and those folks listen to the big established media, and in concert with the Democrat Party, turned the tides against the Republican Party and the President….but was it worth the cost?
•Repeat after me: “The earth's atmosphere is getting slightly warmer. Mankind is NOT the cause. The earth's atmosphere is only 0.038% carbon dioxide. Of that tiny quantity, man is responsible for only 3% of carbon dioxide emissions.”
Everybody needs a refresher on the truth these days.
If man was this great influence on the environment, why can't we humans, in our densest concentration of population the big cities like New York and Los Angeles why can't we even change the local weather with human activities? When it is cold in upstate New York, it is just as cold in Downtown Manhattan. Kinda makes you think, doesn't it?
•As I write this, John McCain and Mitt Romney are polling neck-and-neck the night before Florida's winner-take-all primary. By the time you read this, something significant is going to happen in the Presidential race on the Republican side. Here are my predictions:
Mitt Romney wins Florida by at least 6 percentage points.
Mike Huckabee all but withdraws from the race.
John McCain goes nuts a-la Howard Dean in the 2004 primaries.
Rudy Giuliani withdraws officially from the race.
This will be interesting to watch.
•When the dust of the George W. Bush era settles and history looks back on his presidency and this era, I predict Bush will be viewed as the first American President that truly “got it” regarding the Middle East and Radical Islamist terrorism. Somebody mark this down and look back at it in about 10 or 15 years. Pat me on the back if you see me.
·However the Democrat primaries are settled, I cannot see Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton making nice once a nominee is determined. Somehow, I've got a feeling that the timeworn adage, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is going to be relevant. Watch for it. If Hillary Clinton loses this race, she's gonna snap like a rubber band. And that's not an anti-woman observation. It's just this particular woman. She thinks she's owed this.
Her meltdown is going to be legendary.
•The KU at K-State tilt is upon us (and will be history by the time you read this) and if there was ever a year that the Wildcats were prepped for an upset victory, it is this one. The game is in Manhattan. The Wildcats are stocked with firepower, including the nation's best player in Michael Beasley. K-State coach Frank Martin is showing the Big 12 and the nation that he actually can coach college basketball. Finally, undefeated Kansas has everything to lose and Kansas State has nothing to lose. If they drop the game to the Jayhawks, they were supposed to. They can go on and still have an incredible season. Kansas is trying to sustain an undefeated record, and they are doing so in an unfriendly venue. I've got to go with K-State in a memorable game: KSU 86 KU 78.
The rest of the Big 12 doesn't matter. I'm either going to be hung-over for a week or will be spending a few days in a soft room with no shoelaces.
(Reach Brian Kubicki via email to bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Have we met the goals set by Martin Luther King?
Posted 1/23/08
As this column is being composed, Dr. Martin Luther King Day is winding to a close. Have we met the watermarks Dr. King outlined as our goals for establishing equality in his famous, “I Have a Dream” speech? Let's check:
One of the more relevant sections of the speech went as follows:
“There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
O.K. one-by-one:
“…We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality...”
I'd say Rodney King showed that one has been achieved. Actually, the LA Riots indicated that the reverse may now be a problem.
"…When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities…”
I think we've pretty clearly got that one licked.
“…We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one…”
That one's clearly gone the way of the Styrofoam Big Mac container.
“…We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: 'For Whites Only'...”
No debating that one. As a matter of fact, there are laws out there, called Affirmative Action, that ensure people with white skin are excluded from opportunities in business and education.
“…We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote…”
We've got them all pegged. If one violates any one of those principles in this country, that person is in serious legal trouble.
So when can we stop Affirmative Action?
•And why is Barack Obama referred to as a “black” presidential candidate? His lineage is Kenyan (his father) and American (his mother). If you refer to him as black, aren't you dismissing his white lineage? And the fact is his father wasn't even active in his son's life. He visited him one time through his entire childhood. Obama was raised in the middle class neighborhood and was parented by his mother. Referring to him as a black candidate is a stretch. Referring to any candidate according to the color of their skin is just dumb.
•Why is anything the husband or wife of a Presidential candidate says in favor of their spouse not summarily dismissed the moment they are uttered? Bill Clinton is blathering on non-stop day-after-day about what a wonderful woman and candidate Hillary is. The Big Media is drooling in awe at every word that drips from his completely untrustworthy maw. Do you envision a scenario where Bill Clinton would publicly say something negative about Hillary? Of course not. No candidate's spouse would. So if he would never say anything negative about her, why should we believe him if he's saying something positive?
Never mind the fact that ANYTHING Bill Clinton says has to be mistrusted at its face. If they will lie to you once, why wouldn't he do it again?
•If you want to correct an ill among black society, try these facts on for size:
Did you know?
•Over 1,200 black babies die in the United States every day. One out of every three pregnancies in the black community ends in abortion. The birth rate of African Americans is smaller than the death rate.
•Black women have 36% of all abortions in the U.S. but represent only 13% of the population.
•The abortion rate for black women is 3 times that of white women. African American women abort at a rate of 529 per 1,000 live births, while white women abort at a rate of 177 per 1,000 live births. The rate is even greater for married women. Married black women are almost 5 times more likely to abort than married white women.
33% of the black population has been voluntarily eliminated from existence by their own parents. That fact is staggering. It pales in comparison to anything Dr. King asked for.
•On a cheerier note, didn't I tell you Kansas State was going to challenge Kansas for the Big 12 Title? You thought I was nuts didn't you? C'mon, you know you did.
This week…
All the favorites win and cover. The matchups this weekend are too boring to go into.
(Our Parallax Looker is never boring. Email him at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Why women should love the
workings of Parallax Look
Posted 1/16/08
•I'm pooped. Moving is hard work. And you'll be glad to know (or sad to know in the case of some of the women in the gallery, apparently) that I changed the power wire on our electric clothes dryer from a 3-wire plug to a 4-wire one and nary an amp ran through me, and the dryer works perfectly.
•The San Diego Chargers are going to beat the Patriots this Sunday if they throw screen passes to Darren Sproles. He is too quick and too low to the ground to be consistently stopped.
•A birdie told me that some of the ladies in the reading audience are perturbed at my occasional tugs at the biological differences that define our gender distinctions. In fact, some have accused me of being anti-woman!
•The Green Bay Packers are unstoppable in the snow at Lambeau. Mark that one down, if for no other reason than it rhymes.
•Now that idea (that I am anti-woman) is just plain silly. I love women. Where else will you read that the abortion issue hinges on men stepping up and taking responsibility for the outcome of their reproductive powers, and to stop dumping the question in the laps of the ladies?
•Like clockwork, when the calendar turns, the fad diets come out of the woodwork like a fat talk radio worker with a diet endorsement that just so happens to be the same company as the actual diet they are on. Figure that! Here's all the diet advice you need: only eat when you are REALLY hungry, and only eat until you are NOT HUNGRY any more. Trust me, it works.
•I have finally figured out who needs to get the Republican nomination for President in 2008. The only candidate on the Republican side that is continually derided by the Big Media is the candidate liberals do not want to win. And that is the candidate all Republicans should want to win. That candidate is Mitt Romney. This dude is continually run down by every single story you find, every news radio update, and every snippet poll magically tries to make Romney's climb to the nomination a little bit steeper. Romney's definitely the guy.
•Back to the women…Do you find any columnists in The KC Star that decry men for our dereliction of duty in teaching our sons responsibility instead of slapping them on the back and shoving a pack of condoms in their pockets while placing a chastity belt on our daughter? Who says that? I have for years.
•It's kind of fun in a voyeuristic manner to watch Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hammer away on each other. The joy of watching political enemies exchange flaming bags of poop is unique and doesn't recur every year. Savor it while you can.
•Anti-woman?!? Show me where the NY Times champions the rights of women on Death Row by demanding that they be executed in equal proportion to men? You've heard that from me.
•That Geico commercial with Peter Frampton in the background on the talk-box is awesome.
•And women are every bit as wrong as men if they believe that mankind causes global warming. But if any of you think I am giving women the short end of the stick, drop me a line and call me out for it. I promise I'll be nice, every time.
•Truth be told, if I am a bit tough on the ladies at times, it is directed only at the ones who put themselves in the public eye and then fail to set an example for advancing the status of women in the modern world. Hell, women weren't voting 100 years ago. That's a heck of a disadvantage to start out under. Progress takes time.
•Well, I was 2 out of 3 in my Big 12 basketball picks. Not bad for a first week. Missouri showed that Texas can lose their focus. Kansas State showed that they can score with the best of them. Nebraska showed that the old hex they used to have over Kansas has long since uttered its last breath.
This weekend:
Texas A&M loses to Kansas State for no other reason than their coach, Rat Turgeon, is more of a rat, genetically, than even Mike Shanahan is. Kansas State 94 A&M 86
Kansas will pummel Missouri. KU 103 MU 56
No other weekend games merit a sideways glance.
Now go and open the door for the first woman you encounter tomorrow. Chivalry is not dead. Chivalry lives in me!
(Both genders are free to email Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
Here's hoping both parties fail to name a nominee at convention
Posted 1/9/08
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's Holiday and the coming 2008 is the best year of your life.
The New Year has left me as scatter-brained as Brittney Spears addressing a convention of brain surgeons. Please bear with me.
•I hope both political parties fail to name a nominee for president when the conventions roll around in the summer. My generation needs to see uproar on presidential election convention floors.
•News out of Singapore says that male macaque monkeys “pay for sex by grooming females” suggesting that primates may treat sex as a commodity.
They are saying, "In primate societies, grooming is the underlying fabric of it all…it is a sign of friendship and family, and it's also something that can be exchanged for sexual services."
WHAT?!?
Do monkeys seek sex? Monkeys are animals. Animals seek sex because sex feels good. That is why sex feels good…so we will have it and survive as a life form. In lower forms of life, like monkeys are, the species exists because sex feels good. Humans survive because you and I understand innately that while sex delivers pleasure, it also ensures the survival of the species through its use.
Researchers are stoopid!
•We have moved our base of operations for The Parallax Look from unincorporated Platte County to Shawnee in Johnson County. This is our second move since we started buying homes, and prior to that, we rented domiciles in no less than five different locales. So I have a base of experience behind this observation.
Women move differently than men do.
We had all our clothes in these wonderful inventions called “garment boxes.” Simply transfer the hangered clothes to a box and then open the box in your closet and hang the clothes up. I hung up 21 years of collective clothing organized mind you…shirts in one area and pants in another…in about 20 minutes. My wife is still hanging clothes, almost a week later. Some folks are termed, “clothes horses,” she is a “clothes cattle drive.”
Gotta admit though…SHE LOOKS GOOOOOD!
•I have to chuckle at these folks who get soooo worked-up when people criticize their favorite candidate for president. The Ron Paul supporters take the cake with their tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories that are so outrageous they make an Art Bell radio show worthy of CSPAN coverage. The Huckabillies are new to the party of nutbags, and they take criticism of their guy as akin to spitting on a Jesus statue.
It's O.K. folks. I am probably going to vote for Mitt Romney. But I will admit now that I will vote for any Republican that gets the nomination even if it's Ron Paul. Democrats stand for dangerous ideas. The last Democrat to hold the office of the president let Osama bin Laden slip right through his intern-soaked fingers.
•Now that Mike Solari and the remnants of the Vermeil Era--an era that won more games than Herm Edwards' Jets, I should note--are gone with the wind, the Chiefs essentially blamed their atrocious performance in 2007 on an inexperienced offensive coordinator. I don't think giving up 25 points a game in your last 9 games indicates a problem with your offense Herm. Very few offenses in the NFL (3 this season out of 32) score more than 25 points in a game. Your defense, why you were hired, sucks. That's what the numbers say.
•Hillary Clinton turned the female emotion faucets on this week when addressing a group of women she let her guard down. Her voice breaking and tears in her eyes, she said, "You know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political it's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it."
Afterwards, a young woman told ABC News that she was glad Clinton showed emotion.
"She allowed herself to feel," she said. "I was surprised and I said, 'wow there's someone there.'"
Another woman in the group said she, like most of the people in the group, had been considering Obama. But after seeing Clinton become emotional, she said she was going to vote for Clinton.
"Her whole thing today really convinced me but that really did clinch it for me. She's very impressive."
You've got to be kidding me! This is how some people base their vote? On crying? Not “How would you approach new taxes” or “What would your capital gain tax rate be?”
Hell, why not just give the nomination to Paris Hilton and call it a day? Women!
•Has Obama claimed name recognition benefits, to his credit as a presidential candidate, that occur because Osama has become almost a household word? If so, how weird is that?
•Big 12 Conference basketball is here! Finally, March Madness is within sight.
This weekend's slate: (only the intriguing games)
Texas gets nipped at Missouri…76-73
Kansas State gets snappy in Norman…KSU 85 OU 83
Kansas gets shocked in Lincoln…NU 68 KU 66
(No matter his base of operations, Brian Kubicki’s Parallax Look will continue to be found here. Email him at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
What makes people think Clark Hunt will be like Jerry Jones?
Posted 1/3/08
Well, 2007 is creaking to an end and so have the Chiefs. Their 4-12 record ensures them a high draft pick and an easier schedule next year. Based on how the team closed-out the 2007 season, with a record 9 straight losses, I'm not sure that's going to matter much unless lots of changes are made. This team has way more needs and questions than a high draft pick and an easier schedule will be able to fix. There's still a question about the quarterback. They got to see lots of Brodie Croyle this season, but he seems fragile and throws more interceptions than touchdowns. Herm Edwards seems to like Croyle, though I'm not really sure why. I'm getting a distinct Steve Fuller-esque vibe from Croyle.
It is going to be fun watching all the caterwauling in the media in the coming weeks when there is no word that Carl Peterson has been fired from his job by Chiefs' owner Clark Hunt. Why anybody thinks Clark is more of a Jerry Jones or Al Davis than a Lamar Hunt is a mystery. Everything we've seen of Clark Hunt up to now has been about as bland as bland can be. In fact, Clark Hunt is so vanilla he makes his father look like a disco pimp.
•Why is the writers' strike so paralyzing the entertainment industry? Why is a non-union replacement writer so hard to find? It's not like an airline pilots' strike or a brain surgeon strike. Those I could see as hard to replace. But writers are a dime-a-dozen.
•Have five straight weekends of snow and/or ice shoveling convinced you yet that global warming is not as big a deal as Al Gore wants you to believe?
•By the way, I heard Rush Limbaugh reading my “carbon dioxide represents only 38 thousandths of one percent of the total atmosphere” argument on his show last week. Well, I didn't INVENT the stat but I'm the first person around here bring it up.
•If Rush starts describing how ants have a larger impact on the global environment than mankind does, I'll be convinced he's reading The Landmark's website.
•This Bear Grylls guy who fronts the Man vs. wild show on The Discovery Channel is absolutely nuts! I saw him on a show last week drink water from one of the stomachs of a dead camel and actually squeeze water from the partially digested vegetation in another one of the camel's stomachs into his mouth. Damn! I realize he was crossing the Sahara Desert, but squeezing water from a pre-turd??!!??
•The primaries are starting this week. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are busy kicking each other in the shins while the Republicans are engaged in a tag-team death match that won't let anyone take the lead.
•As I predicted, Christmas has faded to memory and so has Mike Huckabee's insurmountable lead in the polls. It's hard to be religious when you have to pay so much money after Christmas.
•I love the fact that politics has invaded the holiday season with these early primaries. You gotta love the competition between the candidates for political power. I'm not sure I like them being all stacked-up though. People don't get a chance to really look at the candidates when it all happens this fast. Also, the stupid people and those that don't pay much attention to politics are even more susceptible to glitz and flash that they otherwise would be when they have more time to absorb the campaigns.
•This is my last column penned as a Missouri resident. Next week's column will begin from the plains of Kansas. Nothing much will change beyond that.
By the way, did I ever mention that when I first moved to Missouri and Platte County in 1991, much of the county and state was under Democrat control? It isn't now. You people don't let that change. Things are going pretty good in the county and state now. I'm depending on you.
•Did you notice what's been happening in Kansas since I set a closing date for my move to the state? Paul Morrison has politically gone “tits-up” and the Democrat governor is getting itchy under the collar. I don't know what it is exactly, but when I get close to Democrats, they start combusting. I feel like Drew Barrymore in Firestarter.
•The Big 12 basketball order of finish is going to go down like this:
12. Colorado new coach; new system. 11. Oklahoma State new coach; old system. 10. Texas Tech old coach; new players. 9.Oklahoma new coach; getting better 8.Iowa State new coach; getting better. 7.Nebraska new coach; getting better. 6. Missouri new coach; getting a lot better. 5. Texas A&M new coach; some good talent. 4.Baylor 2nd most surprising team in the conference. 3.Texas always with talent; always close. 2.Kansas ties with upstart Kansas State; loses title through tie-breaker. 1. Kansas State too much talent; WAY too much talent.
•I hope your 2008 is as healthy and happy as it can be. I cherish each and every one of my loyal readers and cherish their occasional input, especially from the ones that disagree with me. Happy New Year!
(A weekly look from a Parallax point of view can only be found in The Landmark. Reach Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)
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