Month: February 2015

PATRIOTS WIN!!! The…PATRIOTS WIN!!!

Football…and the culture itself…as commentary on the present/prophecy about the near future.

The “Patriots” won.

Who can really be a “patriot” these days, given the information that has become available regarding the SuperState/SurveillanceState/WarState? Only SuperState/SurveillanceState/WarState supporters. SuperState/SurveillanceState/WarState fans. You know…like Patriot fans.

Suspected serial cheaters won.

Hmmmm…sound familiar? Ring any bells?

An older, more conservative team won, a team with an exceptionally high proportion of white stars for the NFL and a policy of not letting team members publicly rock the boat.

i repeat: Hmmmm…sound familiar? Ring any more bells? Like, maybe…Republican bells?

It was close.

As are all good games. Like the politics game.

It was lost because of a mistake by the more “liberal” team’s leader.

Yup. Roger that.

In many respects Boston is still the most racially and culturally divided major northern city in the U.S. The whole Irish/Italian/black neighborhood thing remains in place throughout much of the city. Bet on it.

Get my drift?

I am willing to bet that the movie “American Sniper” has been exceptionally successful in the Boston area.

I drive through Boston several times a year and…as I do everywhere I drive that’s not my home turf…I take its temperature by listening to the radio. I listen to talk radio and especially to sports radio. Boston’s talk radio temperature is overall a white, working class fever. Lots of broad, old Boston (Read “segregated Boston”…I recognize the accent code because I went to school there in the mid-’60s.) rants about how outrageously “the new people” flaunt established (Read “white.”) societal mores.

Conclusion from the Sports Soothsyer?

Sure.

Batten down the hatches, leftinesses…it’s gonna be a rough year. That 2014 electoral disaster? It wasn’t a fluke. It was a flounder.

Watch.

AG

So, who is going to win this thing?

Update [2015-2-1 22:44:44 by BooMan]: Next time, hand the ball to Marshawn Lynch.

Is Ross Douthat right to say that we think “pathologizing critics as bigoted and phobic can be an effective way to finish up debates”? Assuming he is, even if we wouldn’t put it in exactly those terms, are we right?

I like how Rand Paul talks about politicians who smoked pot as teenagers or college students who then, when they found themselves in a position to set policy, went on to support incarceration for others who smoke pot.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) accused Jeb Bush of hypocrisy after The Boston Globe reported the former Florida governor was a heavy marijuana smoker while at an elite prep school.

Bush opposed a Florida medical marijuana ballot initiative last year even though he partook liberally of the herb while in high school.

“You would think he’d have a little more understanding then,” Paul told The Hill while en route to a political event in Texas.

“He was even opposed to medical marijuana,” Paul said of Bush, a potential rival in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. “This is a guy who now admits he smoked marijuana but he wants to put people in jail who do.

“I think that’s the real hypocrisy, is that people on our side, which include a lot of people who made mistakes growing up, admit their mistakes but now still want to put people in jail for that,” he said.

“Had he been caught at Andover, he’d have never been governor, he’d probably never have a chance to run for the presidency,” he added.

I’ve said the exact same thing in the exact same way countless times. I believe it’s an unassailable argument that you ought not support ruining the life of someone for something that you did yourself unless you think your life should have been ruined.

If you’re only able to win elections because you got a second chance or because people just don’t know what you’ve done, you should be willing to extend the same generosity and good will to others.

It’s particularly galling to come out and admit what you’ve done and that you were never held accountable for it, and then to insist that others are held accountable.

Now, obviously, if you got away with committing robberies, sexual assault or something else that should clearly be punished severely, that doesn’t mean that you’re a hypocrite for thinking that we should maintain laws against those crimes. But you should turn yourself in or pay restitution.

And just because you did some drugs when you were young, doesn’t mean that all drugs should be legal, but the biggest part of this isn’t the legality; it’s the punishment.

President Obama doesn’t have a perfect record on this issue, by any means, although he has been moving the government in a better direction. Aqua Buddha has a less cautious and more morally clear position on marijuana, and I’m willing to give him credit for it.

I think it would do a lot more for our nation’s youth if people like Jeb, Barack, and Rand would talk honestly about their experiences using drugs and what they think about them in retrospect. They should tell kids how smoking pot held them back and why they quit using it. At the same time, some heavy marijuana smoking didn’t prevent them from becoming senators, governors and presidents. So, really, let’s get real.

I bash Rand Paul relentlessly for good reason, but he’s absolutely justified to give Jeb Bush shit for being a hypocrite on this issue. Even Obama has to take a bit of a hit here, no pun intended.