By The Numbers: Poverty In America

Well earlier today the US Census Bureau released their report on poverty in America. And it just backs up what far to many already know. That this country, and a good many of it's citizens are poor, not just like we cant take showers poor, like no house, living under a bridge in a tent city poor kind of poor. So when you hear some Milton Friedman lover say we have the highest standard of living, or that our poor compared to the poor of other industrialized nations is not bad, then you give em these numbers and remind them that we have more people living in poverty in this country per capita than  any other industrialized nation:

15.1%- the percent of Americans who lived in poverty in 2010 the highest such number since 1993

2.6 MILLION- the amount of people who fell into poverty last year alone bringing that total to 46.2 million people

$22,314 or less- a family of four making this much or less is defined as living in poverty

22%- percent of children under 18 living in poverty

3.2 million- the number of people kept out of poverty thanks to unemployment insurance

20.3 million- number of people kept out of poverty thanks to Social Security

-11.3%- change in income between 2007-2010 for the bottom 20% of wage earners (in other words their wages went down)
-6.6%- change in income between 2007-2010 for the middle 20% of wage earners (again their wages went down)
-4.5%- change in income between 2007-2010 for top 20% of wage earners (again their wages went down)
^^BUT did you notice how the guys in the middle and on the bottom lost their income substantially more so than those at the top?

$6,298- The decline in median working-age household income from 2000-2010

$5,494- The decline in median African-American household income from 2000-2010

$4,235- The decline in median Hispanic household income from 2000-2010

49.1 million- Number of people under 65 without ANY health insurance

13.6 million- The decline in the number of people under 65 with employer-sponsored health insurance from 2000-2010

10.5% points- The decline in the share of the under 65 population with employer sponsored health insurance from 2000-2010

Look at those numbers imagine if that unemployment insurance and social security safety net was not there do you know how many people we would have in poverty right now?

that would be 69.7 MILLION Americans living in poverty without those social safety nets. Most of that 69.7 million would be in the Rust Belt (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo all the way to Detroit were manufacturing jobs have left a massive black hole of unemployment and poverty), the Southern United States (where more people hate the government than any other place even though more people in this region receive government benefits than anywhere else in the nation, but also the loss of textiles, manufacturing, and family owned farms) and lastly big cities (New York, L.A., Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, Philly, on and on and on all have massive populations, all have high poverty rates). But now the real shocker, even if we don't include those who are saved by social safety nets in this country, and just go with the raw 46.2 million in poverty now, just to put it in perspective here, thats 1 in 6 people. Let me say that again: 1 IN 6 PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA LIVES IN POVERTY. Let that sink in on this Wednesday evening while you watch your big screen, play on your iPad, go out to eat, or even purchase that new pair of shoes you so desperately think you need. So next time you find yourself in a room with six people look around, because most likely one of you is living in poverty and wont find your way out any time soon

Republican Primaries: Who are your choices?

So this guy is the Democrat's choice to run for president. And seeing as he's already been there for 3.5 years, it would be reasonable to believe he will be there guy. But hes got competition from the Republicans, and now (more than a year and a half ahead of the date) the GOP primaries are in full swing. Now I will not endorse a republican candidate and to that, even if i did, who the hell would care, my opinion does not carry the weight that say teh CEO of Bank of America's does. But heres a run down of who I think the most formidable candidates for the Republicans are in 2012:

So this is Herman Cain. He's black (we already got one of those in office so his win wouldnt be to big of a deal), AND hes not a career politician like everybody else running for the GOP nod. He's the former CEO of Godfathers Pizza. And somehow, people believe that because ol' pizza makin herman got godfatehrs pizza out of the gutter and the brink of bankruptcy, that somehow that expertise will translate to him turning our washed up shit hole of an economy around. Well if that was the case, then every successful kid with a lemonade stand should be in this race. If we have reached a point in this country where we thing a guy who use to run a pizza chain is our last vestige of hope to turn our country around, then we are clearly a lot worse off than we all think. Now ol Herm will most likely not be the nomination to take on the president in the fall of 2012, and really it's sad. For one he's black, and hes a republican. Immediately there is a conflict here. The republican base (those bible thumping, mcdonalds eating, natty light swiggin', ford truck driving, cousin fuckers) simply won't vote for a black guy, even if hes one of them. This kind of reminds me of that Chappelle show:

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This is John Huntsman. He looks awfully happy doesn't he? Well it's what I call the "morman gaze" yes mr. huntsman is a morman. and by morman i don't mean like hes got more than other men, i mena hes one of those weird people who said fuck it when everybody on the east coast realized how fuckin crazy they were and they moved to utah, yes that kind of morman. Well Mr. Huntsman, besides his obvious folly of being a morman in america, is a pretty level headed fellow. Hes been quoted as saying he believes in climate change (you know the thing that will ultimately kill us all off?) he believes in evolution (maybe hes not a morman after all) and hes for the legalization of marijuana (he got willie nelson's endorsement, wich might go a long way believe it or not). It would seem mr huntsman is actually a liberal. But he's not, his economic policy (unlike ol pizza makin herm) does not involve running the economy like a pizza chain, nor like barack obama, his economic policy to be quite frank, is well, nearly non-existent. Now mr. huntsman use to be the governor of morman land (utah), and for the most part I guess he did a good job, but still theres just not enough out there to make him a wow guy. hes got the same economic policy as everybody else, less regulation, let the free market go, lower some taxes, this that and the other and really its just mainstream gop economic's thats hes holding steady to. But that's not going to be what destroys the one semi-normal person in this group of crazies. No the thing that will destroy mr huntsman is simple, hes a morman, and he believes in climate change, evolution, and he digs marijuana. So right off the bat his religion is to weird for americans, he believes the total opposite of what all other people around him believe about climate change, his evolution stance immediately makes him a no-go for the gop base, and he likes drugs, therefore he can't be the gop guy. 

First dumb brunette haired bitch (exit stage right) ENTER second crazier dumber bitch (stage right). Yep this is Michelle Bachman, the congresswoman from Minnesota. Oh yes shes full of great quizzical knowledge like: Wishing Elvis a happy birthday on the day of his death, or speaking in New Hampshire and proclaiming how excited she was to be in the state that was home to the first battles of the revolutionary war in lexington and concord......... Massachusetts, or even saying that the recent east coast earthquake and hurricane irene were acts of god, or that time she went to waterloo iowa and was so excited to be in the home town of john wayne.........john wayne gacy that is, the guy who murdered and raped boys while dressed as a clown, yeah that john wayne. Yes little bachman is full of great information. Even if that information is wrong. Her husband marcus bachman runs a "pray the gay away" treatment facility. And we all know how that works, make gay people feel like shit and tell them they are going to hell, and scare the gay away, but if you knew marcus, you would most likely think he needs to be getting treatment at his own facility. And of course michelle and her husband have a farm that they received subsidies from the federal government, but michelle hates the federal government and would like to see it be obliterated. She also wants to lock up the Environmental Protection Agency if shes president. Hell yeah! Thats what the fuck im talkin about, fuck clean water and clean air, who needs that shit? I like getting TB from my faucet and breathing green air, all you hippy dippy enviro freaks can fuck off! Well thats not really my stand but that might as well be hers. Michelle is not very bright, and who knows it could be that cold minnesota air is clogging up her brain's ability to think, or maybe shes just naturally stupid. Either way shes a good fit for republicans, she fits right in with the god fearing, hate mongering, anti-government agenda they all adore. But her big issue is this: she only appeals to the republican base. now the republican base is very crucial for success in primaries, it's the same as if you were going to run as student body president, first you would get your friends on board then you would convince all the others right? well unfortunately for michelle, only her friends want her to win, while everybody else is standing there saying "what a fuckin nut bag." See you can claim that natural disasters (which were happenign long before the creation of god) are divine acts, you can claim that elivs was born on the day he died, you can threaten to take away clean air and water, you can promise to repeal health care, and you can claim the president was not born in this country (which she has since rebuked) and the only people listening to you are your friends, because they dont want to hurt your feelings, but guess what I don't like you, support you, and im certainly not your friend mrs. batshit bachman, so ill tell you what your friends wont: YOUR A DUMBASS. there it's settled,, maybe it would be best for you to attend k-12 education again, i really think this would help you understand how govt works and it might even be able to teach you some american history since that seems to be a problem, or maybe you can take geography classes and learn that the soviet union does not exist any more (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/08/michele-bachmann-soviet-union-/1) or hell maybe you could do as you already do and be a submissive wife (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/michele-bachmann-submissive-wife-iowa-gop-debate_n_925063.html) and get the hell out of this presidential race before you make an even bigger fool of yourself. See michelle there are plenty of avenues for you to go down, be that getting a new education (which you clearly need) or maybe even become the mom off leave it to beaver and just washing dishes and wiping baby asses, either way politics is clearly not your think, nor is thinking.

Hey whose that guy? He looks really familiar, ive seen him somewhere before, do you know him? OH yeah thats right it's good ol ramblin mit romney! Yes your eyes do not deceive you, that is indeed 2008 presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor mitt romney, aka the first morman. Yes mitt is running for president again, and is presumably the "main stream" republican candidate this go round. you see mitt lost in 08 to that guy that cant lift his arms up for the republican nomination, and now hes had 3 years to prep for what is most likely his last opportunity at the most powerful job in the world. But recent blunders like "Corporations are people too my friend" to a person at a recent town hall meeting, along with his questionable campaign finances, the "Mormans for Mitt" campaign is looking increasingly dire. Up untill rick perry got into the race (more on him in a moment) romney was leading the pack of gop nominees. Hes got the looks, the hair, the creditably, hes got the business man thing going. But poor mitt faces the same obstacle that our dear friend mr. huntsman faces: HES A MORMAN. Yes folks it's a fact that the United States got a black dude in office before a morman, and to be quite honest with you, it will most likely stay that way. American's are just afraid of mormans and their  20 wives (note: the Church of Jesus Christ of Lader Day Saints does not promote polygamy anymore). But mitt's done a great job of convincing everybody that hes still normal despite his odd religious beliefs (it could be worse right? he could be a muslim? *gasp* *shreik* (lady faints to the ground)) (no knocks on my muslim hommies out there) no mitt's biggest problem is this right here:

"There may be some aspects of (the Massachusetts law) that can be picked up by other states ... perhaps even some national elements that could be adopted. ...Everybody in our state has to have health insurance."

Thats a Mitt Romney quote from an interview with PBS in 2006. You see when mitt was governor of mass. he implemented a health care law in the state that required each person to have health insurance. His plan now called the "Romney Plan" was and is the basis for the health care law passed by president obama in 2009. It's the same plan, the exact same plan actually. And now he hates it, even though his home state now carries the title of "best health care coverage in the nation." People in mass are treated to fantastic health care coverage, and more over they pay higher taxes to be able to have that privilege, and guess what? Massachusetts is not doing to bad, healthy people, good schools, nice roads, oh yes it's just horrifying. Well when the campaign begins mr romney will be questioned by many about his stance and don't expect him to support what he did, he will do a total 180 degree flip flop on that subject, or he will ust avoid it by covering his ears with his wads of money.

And folks finally we have reached my favorite of all the "batshit crazy" people the republicans have decided to put against the prez. Yes hes a texan, yes hes white, yes he hates the federal government (even though he wants the most powerful job in it) and yes hes a christian. ladies and gentlemen i give you:

RICK MOTHA FUCKIN PERRY!!!

Oh yes, this is the guy that I think will get that republican nomination, and will set up what is destine to be one helluva presidential election. Mr. Perry is the current governor of texas (you know just like the guy who was in charge before obama), and if he would have his way hed be the fuckin president of that shit hole. A few years back mr. perry was talking about secession (you know that thing when states say fuck this and leave the country, but are actually still attached to it? you know that thing those states in the south tried 150 years ago? yeah that) and if he would have gotten his way texas might not be in america anymore, it might just have become the republic of texas, just like the old days, which I wouldn't be totally opposed to, it would ensure that no more dumb ass wanna be cowboys are president anymore. But thats not the only thing ranger rick brings to the table. you can bet if hes president there will be ufc style cage fighting at the federal reserve next fall if he wins. yep a few weeks ago ranger rick was quoted as saying that if the fed didnt stop printing money it would ruin the country and that (while speaking to people in iowa) "down in texas we would treat him pretty ugly" in reference to fed chairman ben bernanke. So if he wins we will be treated to Perry V. Bernanke LIVE at the Federal Reserve Arena in Washington D.C. tickets just 5 bucks! No but really he did say that he would treat the chairman of the fed ugly. Then jus tthis week he billed the federal government and the obama administration 340 billion for "covering the cost of keeping fuckin mexicans out of our country" well that wasnt the exact quote but you get the point. But why would ranger rick bill the govt for that much? I mena this is the same guy that says we are spending too much and we need to lower our national debt, well how the fuck do we do that if your gonna keep billing the federal govt for money that you claim they dont have? See ranger rick is just so confusing, so outrageous, and so fuckin nutty that he appeals to the republican base. But he also appeals to the republican masses. He's another one of these gun totting, straight shootin son of a bitches from texas who dont play any of those faggy bullshit liberal games like compromise and agreements. Hell no thats not ranger rick's thing, hes all or nothing, my way or the highway kind of guy, and you better believe if he gets to the white house, im gonna be hittin that highway straight for canada, because the last time we had a guy like this in charge things like this happened:

So when you start watching the increased coverage about the 2012 elections keep a warry eye on these folks above, they will be the ones challenging blacky mc black blackerson for the presidency, and my question to you is do you really think that a CEO of a pizza chain, two mormans, a dumb crazy bitch, and a wanna be cowboy are the ones that can help change this country? 

Happy reveling!

A New Outlook on the Blog

So it's been far to long since I posted anything, I have been busy with work and school and other things but we are changing the direction of the blog. The blog will now be primarily a political forum of sorts. My opinion on the headlines of the day/week depending on when I feel like posting

Deficit, Taxes, Budget, & More Washington Bullshit

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July 4th Edition

As many of you know July 4th is monday, and seeing as I have to work I wanted to do an early post about the United States.

Now I spend alot of time on here bashing our politicians, foreign policy, domestic policy, liberals, conservatives, and just about everybody else that lives in this country. But every July 4th I get the same feeling in my heart. That feeling is a feeling, that in my opinion, no other person from any other nation could ever quite understand. 

You see for all this bullshit that this country has gone through and continues to go through, I still find it hard for me to ever have a desire to leave. And that is what I am going to talk about today:

Every so often we American's have a presidential election. And you hear these words every time "If such 

and such is elected president Im leaving the country!" But nobody ever does. Now I am sure some people have but most do not. And there are simple reasons for that. As much as we Americans complain about our withering economy, our elected officials, our shit school and so on, we still have something most countries in the world dream of, and thats the freedom to do as we please.

If I wake up in the morning and want to go take a shit in my back yard, I can. If I want to shotgun five beers on my front porch at 2 in the morning I can. If I want to scream at the top of my lungs in downtown greenville south carolina how much the government sucks, I can. And to me that makes it great to live here. The fact that we still enjoy more freedom than any other nation is something that should instill national pride in each and every one of us.

Our country was founded on principles of liberalism, democracy, freedom, and (though not initially) equality. We have forever been the little brother country. Consider that nations like Russia, China, Japan, all of Europe were thriving long before our country was even a thought. And through it all we came out on top. We fought against the largest most powerful military the world had ever known during the american revolution. we steeped into two world wars and saved the day in both. We out spent the soviets and ushered in a new age of world wide democracy.in each instance we were the little brother. the guy who wasn't very big, had a rough start to life, but made something out of nothing. Our nations history has an incredible parallel to the history of our people as well. Immigrants from all over the world flocked here in hopes of a better tomorrow. A better life for their family. A better life for themselves. And many of them found that better life. And while the American dream may have faltered over the past twenty or so years, it can still be reached. We are a nation of can do's, a nation of better days ahead, a nation of optimism in the face of a pessimism filled world.

Look at the people this nation has produced in technology, the arts, science, sports, and every other cultural aspect. Look at the things we have done for the world. Our nation is not great because we say it is, our nation is great because we show you why it is. And while over the past twenty years we have seen American slowly turn into a laughing stock of the world, we still know how good we got it compared to all the others.

Now for the most part this was a complete rambling of my thoughts on our great country. But to me thats fine. I don't need to sit here and give foreigners an in-depth analysis of what makes the United States great. Because I know how great it is, and I am an American and for that, I am forever grateful.

Now go out shoot some fireworks, drink really cold beer, enjoy great times with old and new friends, eat great food, and celebrate being an American, and for one day set aside political, social, economic, and religious differences and celebrate the one thing that brings each of us together, that we are all Americans!

Happy Independence Day!!

The Bible and Christians: IM PISSED OFF TODAY

Well today has been quite the saga between work and other things, ive been super busy lately what with the weather warming up, there is lots and lots of cold beer to drink so a heads up that posts will be limited during the summer months.

Anyways moving on, I am all kinds of angry at the bible and christians, jews, and muslims today. So strap in and lets go for a ride:

I stole these from my Uncle Ralph (he has a blog too! go read it if you can www.foliooilio.blogspot.com)

Thank you Ralph

Now it could be that I am the only person aside from the guy that wrote that letter, that thinks all this shit is pointless and stupid. Now I read that yesterday and thought to myself what some other questions to ask all you religious folks out there? So here is a series of questions that I would like answers to, along with answers to the questions above:

1. Paraplegics who pray are my favorite to use as an example. Now say some guy around the age of 18 can't go to college, family is poor, he can't get a job, so he joins the military. He goes over to the war zone and gets his shit rocked and finds himself without arms or legs or both. So he prays, and prays some more, hoping god will answer his prayers. And guess what there not. He doesnt get new legs, no new arms or any of that. So if that guys prayers are not being answered whose are?

2. Whats the deal with the collection plate? I get the idea that some of it needs to go to the church itself for power and water bills and new fancy robes for the priest, but did god default on his mortgage or something? Did he not pay his strippers last night so he needs all of you to pick up his tab? Did god get drunk, leave the bar, get in a taxi and find that he left his wallet at the bar therefore he needs you to pick up his cab fare? I mean honestly think about this. If you have a congregation of around 100 people each of them gives 10 bucks each to the collection plate, thats $1,000 bucks right there. Now I don't know about you guys but if my power and water bill are exceeding the 1,000 dollar mark, then maybe its time to invest in some energy efficient light bulbs or some shit. 

3. Deuteronomy 23:1 states: "No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord." Well if thats the case then I guess Lance Armstrong and a few million others are shit out of luck, sorry lance all those tour de france wins only sent you to hell buddy.

And to be honest faithful readers I could go for hours and hours on this subject of stupid shit in holy texts, but it would be mind numbing and pointless. But the real story here is that once we all free ourselves from the control mechanism that is organized religion, then we can move on to more important things, like will there be NFL football this fall?

Happy Reveling folks

Shit to Disappoint & Piss Off

Last time I did one of these I got a lot of thanks you's and laughs out of it so here we go again.

This is a series of things that disappoints me:

This is US Representative,  Democrat from New York, Anthony Weiner. If you watch any type of news you know that this guy apparently showed some pictures of himself to a college girl he met online, and hes married. He's also on the fast track to being NYC new mayor to replace Michael Bloomberg. Well Nancy "Wicked Witch of the West" Pelosi and the rest of the Dems are calling for him to resign, while the right wing hate machine calls for it too and of course calls him the worst person ever, as usual. But while all those jackass asshats in washington call for him to resign, his constituents (you remember the people he REPRESENTS and the people who VOTED for him and put him in his position of power DO NOT CARE).   Besides you really think this is the first time somebody in New york city has seen another persons genitalia? Or do you even think they have seen something crazier than this? Of course they have, in teh NYC metropolitan area alone 16 MILLION people reside. These people see dead hobo's on subways, drunk college girls pissing on sidewalks, cops beating black guys heads in with clubs, trash piled 3 stories high, junkies shooting up in ally ways, etc etc. Who gives a shit if e showed his dick to some college girl. For me if shes over 18, and shes requesting such, then who does the blame go to? Well I don't care who it goes to an neither should you. As a male I understand, all guys are proud of their package, and more importantly the people congressman weiner represents don't care, so why should I? Thats what disappoints me.

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This is house majority leader John Boehner, Republican Ohio. He believes the most important thing facing the nation is the debt crisis and the budget. And so do all his cronies up there on "Disconnect Hill." But the real problem is 9.1% unemployment which nobody seems to want to talk about. Nobody wants to talk about the fact that 13.7 million people are unemployed. And nobody wants to help them or anything. That disappoints me

The hate surrounding "Tradition marriage and single parent homes," really disappoints me. You see I myself was raised by a single mom, my mom and dad were never married, and the two asshats my mom married after my dad were just that not my dad and asshats. But the real thing here is that there is a much older generation of people who so strongly believe in this that they will stop at nothing to shove it down our throats. The generational disconnect is unbelievable these days. But the older this generation gets the more progressive and open minded we become. We are far more accepting of sex out of wedlock, far more accepting of children out of wedlock, far more accepting of single mom's and single dad's. far more accepting of drug use, sex, music, entertainment, clothes, and ever other facet of life. we are the first majority open minded generation in this country. and to us people like single moms and single dads and even gay and lesbian parents are just another part of society. i have numerous friends who were raised by single parents , or even gay/lesbian parents. its just normal now. people realized that marriage in the traditional sense is just so BLAH. now your great grandparents marriage and love, well thats something that most of us may never understand. we have moved on, we believe that love changes, evolves, morphs into bigger things over time, different meanings, different idea of what love and marriage and parenthood is suppose to mean. The more important thing here is that we have bastardized single parents for far far far to long now. Most of these parents work their asses off for their kids. Now believe me I know that there are many out there, who live in gov't subsidized housing, receive welfare checks food stamps and unemployment benefits and pass on nothing to their children except the knowledge of how to milk the system. But I would be willing to bet that number pales in comparison to single parents workings trying to keep their heads along with their kids heads above water. Single parents are parents to, and more over their not just one, but the play both sides. having to be mom and dad all in one for their kids. So back the fuck off single parents it disappoints me that we have reached this point.

SHIT TO PISS OFF:

This is my series of shit that pisses me off:

1. When people say "I remember my first beer!" You have heard this one a million times. Some drunk asshat just spilled his beer all over the place adn some smart ass in the back screams "I remember my first beer!" Oh do you? Well thats fucking great because I don't/ Know why I don't? Because I have drank so much beer since my first beer that I honestly can't remember my first beer, so shove it lightweight! If you are going to claim to be a "beer drinker" you better be a damn good one, and you better be a great one if you want to hang around me. A great beer drinker doesnt make smart ass quibs about drinking hsi first beer, he drinks and thats it. Shoots the shit with people thats it. Not stand in the back and harass the guy that clearly isn't having his first beer, but has more likely had his 20th beer and is now vomiting all over your girlfriends red shoes. So shut up witht eh "My first beer" routine, it's getting old, nobody cares when you drank it, and the majority of us wish you would shut up so we can enjoy our beer. Thank you annoying "My First Beer" Guy.

2. "Keep your eyes peeled!" Well that just sounds stupid off the bat.  Peeled? Like a citrus fruit kinda peel? Or like I farted int eh kitchen and the varnish on the walls is peeling off?  What kind of peel? Lets just say it means the same as open your eyes. Would it not be easier the next time your in a car with two or three other people looking for exit who tha fuck cares on the interstate and your driver says "Keep a look for exit whatever" instead of "KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED MAN!!!!" Like we could miss the fucking exit or something, your stoned off your ass driver man, so am I why the hell would I peel my eyes back? get tha fuck outta here man im not peeling anything except potatoes.

3. You know when people sit around and somebody pops off and somebody else gets pissed so you pull one of them aside to let cooler heads prevail, maybe a "i apologize" is in order. And then that jackass goes off and says this: " I don't apologize for nothing! Im sorry but I don't." Well.....well now you have not only confused me, you have made your point completely irrelevant. You don;t apologize for anything, except for saying you don't apologize for anything. Wha tthe fuck kinda statement is that? This one is so stupid it doesn;t even deserve me talking about it anymore.

4. "I could care less!" Ahh the old favorite. You have heard it a million times. You are arguing with somebody or talkign about something stupid (Depending on who you are Left wing would say I could care less about sarah palin and sarah palin could say I could care less about reading books) and bam somebody whips out "I could care less about it!" And they act all high and mighty like they used some finishing move in mortal combat or some shit, like them saying that makes the conversation end or some shit. Give me a break. For one it makes no sense, two yeah it makes no sense. If you could care less then show it! You could care less about reading books? Then go burn em, or something (joking), but don't say you could care less, because if thats the case then clearly you care less for something than what you are saying you care less for. So all you have to do is get energized, and add a few letters and make this become "I couldn't care less."

May 22nd "Israel" posting:

So according to my reader stats, the "Israel" topic, was off the charts, 43 views since i posted, and that is up from 12 views this morning all together on that post. quite impressive.

what is not impressive is the personal messages i have gotten. I got two messages calling me anti-semitic and other rude terms.

Let me make this clear, I think all of your religion's are complete bull. and yes that includes the jews, sorry folks. your all a problem. I respect your beliefs, I understand where you all come from (christians, muslims, jews, etc.) and I have no place to tell you what to believe, and vice versa. But i do have a place and a right to say what I will of those religions, and vice versa. As do you have a right to have an opinion on my words about your religion. But when you get worked up and freak out about what I posted, on MY FUCKING BLOG, you just prove my point every single time, and once again prove whats wrong with this world. To that I hope you are all having a great day.

BOB DYLAN TURNS 70

The Voice of a Generation has turned 70 today! For those of you who don't know, Bob Dylan is my all-time favorite artist, musician, and song writer. When I first started my love affair for Dylan, I knew I had found the voice that I would always look to in my time of trouble, happiness, and confusion. Dylan is an icon above all icons. Every musician today will tell you he single handedly changed music. The brits may have the beatles, and all the other great, but we got Dylan, and without him music would have never come as far as it has. So today i am posting some writings by a few artists. Rolling Stone Magazine has a cover story about Dylan this month and on their website you can read all about it at www.rollingstone.com/dylan.

So without a further ado here we go:

"The Times They Are A-Changin'" (The Times They Are A-Changin', 1964)
By Bob Weir

Back in high school, there were two things that I marked my days by. Every few months I’d get a new Beatles record, and every few months I’d get a new Dylan record. "The Times They are A-Changin'" has always been one of my favorites. I wasn’t a politico back then, but he managed to articulate in undeniable poetic terms everything I was thinking and feeling at the time.

The song has an open-ended kind of spirituality to it, equally about faith and reason. He was telling the government to lose their self interests. He was telling journalists to use a lighter hand. And when he sang, "Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don’t criticize what you can’t understand," he was locked into an eternal truth there. His main message seemed to be, “Use your head, and follow your heart, and above all, be open.”

His records helped Jerry and I bond when we first started playing together. We were kids when we met; I was 16, Jerry was 21. We went and saw Dylan in 1965 at the Berkeley Community Center when he was pounding out with the guys in the Band. He did his first set solo and then the second set with the Band, to the considerable annoyance of some “purists” who booed. That seemed to me totally contrary to what he was saying in his early songs, about being open.

Jerry and Dylan later became great buddies. They understood what it was like to be idolized beyond any reasonable standard. They became tight right after John Lennon was shot, so they were pretty much the only two guys who knew what it was like to be held to that standard. We toured with Dylan in 1987, and being in an improvisational situation, we developed a musical bond that a lot of folks don’t get to have. Sometimes we missed the wave, but when we caught it, it was a beautiful thing that made life worth living. If we could do it all over again, I wish we had played "The Times They are A-Changin'."

This was from Bob Weir, of Grateful Dead fame. This article is from Rolling Stone, and are not my words.

And if you want to read something a little more in depth this is an article from slate.com written by  John Dickerson:

Bob Dylan is turning 70, and here we all come: the writers, the critics, the biographers, the song-quoters—and not one of us with a cake or a candle. Each of us thinks we know how best to celebrate the changeling who has changed our lives. Dylan has been called the voice of a generation. It's true. He's given voice to generations of writers who say he inspired them. If every person has a book in them, it seems every writer has a Dylan book—or at least an essay—in them.

Dylan isn't thrilled with the birthday presents. He's always taken a dim view of critics, even adulatory ones: "40-year-olds trying to explain my music to 10-year-olds," he once called them. In a recent letter to fans he rolled his eyes at the "gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future," dubious about the prospects of a great one. He has made a professional sport of embarrassing interviewers he thinks are trying to put him in a box, most famously Time'sHorace Freeland Judson in the documentary Don't Look Back. A key theme of Dylan's music is: You're missing the point. "Ballad of a Thin Man" from 1965 says it most famously and explicitly: "Something is happening here but you don't know what it is." You can even find the message in "Boots of Spanish Leather."

It's your own fault, Bob. If you made everything so simple and so plain, you wouldn't have so many followers plumbing your lyrics, tweezing your life, and succumbing in the process to the many sins Dylan somehow makes it very hard for writers to resist. I committed one of them at the end of the last paragraph. Call it song dropping. I've tossed off a song title and moved on to the next paragraph. Unless you're a fan, you probably aren't familiar with the song. Even if you are, my point may not be as self-evident as I think. (For the record, my point was that the song "Boots of Spanish Leather" is a conversation between two lovers, each missing the point—maybe on purpose—the other is making.)

Other sins include endless citations of obscure blues and folk musicians and rhapsodic descriptions of Dylan concerts you've seen—merely to establish that I'm very well read, it's well known. This is another sin, gratuitous quotation of Dylan lyrics. Done sparingly it's part of the clubhouse conversation of Dylan fans—a breadcrumb sin—but it gets tedious fast (almost there) if the writer quotes a lyric with no attempts to shovel the glimpse into the ditch of what each one means. (See what I'm saying?)

When I started listening rapturously to Dylan as a teenager, in the mid-1980s, I wanted to know what his every word meant, including a, andthe, and um. It's the least you can do when you're writing lyrics on your jeans. Emotionally, I was in his thrall, but I also wanted some glimpse of how those words might all add up. He's asking questions that call for answers or at least conversation: Who are you? What's it going to take? What's true? If you had to get out fast, would you use the window?

And as my bookshelves filled up with biographies and cultural histories, I had a recurring question about a lot of the answers I found in those books: Why, in all the time that I've been listening to Dylan, has he so often been judged to be on a comeback from the period before I was born? Caught up in the world of Dylan's fans, which included most of the people who wrote about him, I couldn't help feeling out of step. They were either too hard to please—they said he was no good after he went electric or after the motorcycle mishap or after he became a Christian—or they were so pleased by everything he did, it suggested his genius might be a big hoax.

Though the great Dylan book may not be at hand, even he might approve of the mission that inspires the most recent crop of writing about him: to "celebrate the impossibility of pinning down Bob Dylan," as David Yaffe writes in his collection of four Dylan essays, Like a Complete Unknown. Above all, that means exploring the desire for change that drove Dylan from the start and still consumes him in his latest period, as Daniel Mark Epstein understands in his biography, The Ballad of Bob Dylan. In Bob Dylan in America, Sean Wilentz traces the cultural currents and cross-currents he's constantly navigating. It's the lived Dylan experience—messy, conversational, and expanding—that has engaged Greil Marcus all along, as his incisive Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010 attests.

"For an artist who began his career protesting," Yaffe writes, "his most fervent protests have been against his earlier selves and the audience who wanted to embalm him in them." Yet Dylan's fans, these books suggest, may have served all along as a kind of brutal muse—fruitful and destructive, like the romances that have inspired so many Dylan songs. And as is his way with those relationships, Dylan spends a lot of time pretending not to care—or bridling with impatience—even as he privately obsesses. The tension throughout Dylan's career between his drive to keep moving and his fans' deep investment in his current incarnation, or some prior incarnation, turns out to be a crucial catalyst of his restless creative process.

Follow the bouncing Bob since he came to New York on Jan. 24, 1961: Guthrie emulator, protest singer, beat poet, hipster rocker, recluse, stadium-show band-leader, carnival musician, evangelical, gospel singer, faded rocker, American song curator, radio host, filmmaker, and painter. When Dylan is in a comfortable spot in his career, he kicks himself out of it, reaching for some new sound, trying for a new and precise way to capture an idea that's always elusive. He rolls the rock up and then he's the one who pushes it back down again. "This home that I'd left a while back and couldn't remember exactly where it was, but I was on my way there," was how Dylan put it in the aptly named documentaryNo Direction Home, summing up his career. "I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be, and so, I'm on my way home."

The constant recreations are what pull us in as fans. Dylan is discovering something new and we're going along with him. He's giving us a map to understand our own lives. It's not just the evolving music and words that draw us onward, but also the promise of a gateway into feeling like a member of a special new group, one that is always ahead of the curve. "We thought we were advanced and special," Wilentz writes of seeing Dylan in1964 at the Philharmonic Hall in New York. "For us the concert was partly an act of collective self-ratification."

That is where the struggle started. A sense of identity rooted in Dylan-allegiance made for a very demanding audience, avid for precisely what its hero withheld: certainty, a promise either of more of the same or of absolutes. Now instead of just chasing after something, Dylan felt pursued.

Nothing, it seemed, could go more against the grain of his creative style, as an inside look at Dylan in the studio reveals. In a great chapter on the making of Blonde on Blonde, Wilentz captures the determined musician at work—abandoning recording in New York for a new venue in Nashville—and in Epstein's portrait of Dylan at work on Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft 40 years later, little has changed. The recording sessions are experimental and off-balance, yet Dylan runs them in a way that gives him maximum control. Sometimes he'll start a song in a new key. Musicians just have to catch up. He resents his producers who he says have watered down all of his albums. (He's produced his last three by himself.) If that's how he feels about professionals chiming in on his work, imagine the whole world telling him what his music was supposed to say and sound like.

How fast did Dylan start moving to elude entrapment? His third album, Times They Are A-Changing, filled with the protest songs that would help cement him as a protest singer, came out in the same year—1964—as Another Side of Bob Dylan, which marked his move entirely away from political protest songs. Of all the periods of change in Dylan's career, 1964 to 1966 is the most intense. His iconic decision in July of 1965 to go electric at the Newport Folk Festival and the negative reaction (Pete Seeger wanted to take an axe to the cables!) isn't the half of it. What followed was far more radical: a total commitment to creative risk in the face not just of uncertainty but hostility.

Dylan spent much of that year after Newport getting booed. It's one thing to try something out. It's another to live with that roll of the dice, following your idea for month after month. Dylan felt the new amplified sound matched his in-your-face attitude and his Kerouac and beat influenced lyrics. "I had to get where I was going all alone," he said at the time. "And I know it's real. … They can boo till the end of time. I know that the music is real, more real than the boos." His drummer Levon Helm was so undone by the audience abuse that he left the tour to join an oil rig. Dylan just kept following his way.

And it nearly killed him. Shortly after this period Dylan had a collapse and didn't tour again for eight years. But he was musically still on the move. He retreated into seclusion to write some of his most beautiful songs of repair on John Wesley Harding (1967) while also finding joy in dickering around with his friends in The Band in their home recording studio. The Basement Tapes (1975) that emerged from those sessions are "less a style than a spirit," writes Marcus, "a spirit that had to do with delight in friendship and invention … a spirit that shoots a good smile straight across this album."

It was his fans, in no small part, who pushed Dylan into that fertile period, which lasted a decade and produced some of his best music. Even Dylan himself seemed to acknowledge his embattled reliance on his audience to propel him forward. He couldn't forge ahead alone. There was a reason everyone was talking nostalgically about Dylan's greatest years by the time I started listening to him in the mid-'80s, after his followers panned his Christian phase. Dylan himself felt adrift, "a missing person inside of myself," he said. He'd lost a connection outside of himself. I traveled to shows he played with Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead, where he looked out into the audience and told us we all looked like "cutouts from a shooting gallery."

If the audience he needed didn't exist, he would create it. In his autobiographyChronicles, Dylan writes that he was about to hang it up and stop the "marathon stunt ride"—until he had a revelation at a show in Locarno, Switzerland, in 1987. Instead of running from his fans, he would "put myself in the service of the public" He'd leave behind his old followers and find a completely new set. "The kind of crowd that would have to find me would have to be the kind of crowd who didn't know what yesterday was." Dylan seemed to be recognizing afresh something Marcus wrote in 1960 after the release of the lackluster album Self Portrait. "If the music Dylan makes doesn't have the power to enter into the lives of his audience, his audience will take over his past."

Dylan has been working hard to hold off that takeover. He's put out enough good albums since the turnaround he writes about that Dylan fans have a new debate: Which is the better comeback album? He plays more than 100 shows a year, mixing old standards with new work. This year he made his first trip to China, prompting criticism from fans who thought the author of "The Times They Are A-Changin' " shouldn't play in an authoritarian country—since presumably he wouldn't be allowed to perform his signature protest songs.

Responding on his Web page, Dylan sounded like—what else—a musician who refused to be pinned down: He wasn't censored by anyone other than himself. He wanted to play new stuff. He bristled at being presented as a '60s icon. "They responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last four or five records," Dylan said of his audience. It wasn't a crowd of expats, either, he pointed out. Actual Chinese had flocked to hear him play. Fifty years after his career began, Dylan is still wrestling with his fans, leaving some behind and attracting new ones a long way from America. It's all part of trying to keep moving and find his way home.

NOTE: Neither of these article are my words, thanks to Bob Weir, Rolling Stone magazine, and John Dickerson of Slate.com, for their words on this great day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB!

A series of things that deserve looking into

So traffic laws are getting out of hand. Tickets are rising, we now make our officers meet quotas each month for tickets given out, and here is a series of traffic laws im sick of:

1. Wear your seat belt or get a ticket (Click it or ticket)- We have all heard this one a million times. Put on your seat belt, it saves lives. And ya know what, I DO wear a seat belt, I am a rather large fan of the seat belt. Seeing as the seat belt has prevented myself and quite a good many others from launching out of the front window of our cars and having our head cave in on the pavement. But there is a commercial here in South Carolina with a lady saying "I just don't have time to put it on," and my favorite, "It's my car, I shouldn't have to wear a seat belt if I don't want to." And you know what I love what that second lady said. She has a point, it's not like the state of South Carolina is making my car payment, or my insurance payment, or paying my property tax on my car, or paying for my tax and tag on the car, their not putting gas in the tank, they aren't paying for my car to be maintained, I think you get the idea now. And that girl is right, it is your car, if you don't want to wear a seat belt you shouldn't have to, and you sure as hell shouldn't get a ticket for it. But you know what pretty lady, when you don't have that seat belt on and you drive down HWY 123 from Greenville to Walhalla, and your car suddenly swerves and drives your ass into a tree or a ditch or some shit like that, and you propel out of that car like a potato cannon, i bet your gonna wish you wore that seat belt then. So go ahead take that law off the book, because if your so stupid as to not wear one, then you will eventually face the consequences, survival of the fittest folks, and that bitch sure ain't fit.

2. Getting a ticket for no tread on your tires. Guy I work with got pulled over for this shit, adn got a ticket of about 100 bucks. let me tell you something folks, if you have never bought tires for your car, then you don't know this, but those fuckers are expensive as hell. Now the average price for my tires on a 2011 Scion tC sits around 175-215 bucks EACH. That shit adds up quick when you throw in the following: Parts and labor (whose gonna put those fuckers on there?), the tires themselves, balance the tires, rotate the tires, and all that other shit. now your talking about a bill for TIRES being somewhere around 700-900 bucks!! And now you have been pulled over for not having enough tread on your tire (the tread should not be below the top of Abe Lincoln's head on the penny, past that your fucked). So throw in that 100 bucks your paying for the ticket, unless you find the time to go to court and waste an hour of your life, so now your paying even more. Do cops not realize we just came out of a recession, and unemployment is still hovering around 9% and over 10% in South Carolina alone? how the hell do they expect somebody making minimum wage and working off of tips to just up and one day go out and buy brand new tires, hell no you save money for that shit. once again it's a personal responsibility. you want your emissions to go up, your gas mileage to go down, and your car go out of control while making a turn? then go ahead run those tires bald, i don't give a shit, your problem not mine.

3. No Right on Red- This is really stupid folks. You have seen the sign a million times if you drive, pull up at a stop light turning right, your in a hurry to get to wing zone before the close and bam there it is, NO RIGHT TURN ON RED sign hanging above the street, like it's taunting you "HAHAHAHA IM UP HERE AND YOU CAN'T TURN BECAUSE I SAID SO JACKASS!!" This shit is for people that can't drive, feel like they need all 4 lanes to be empty to be able to turn, and they hold up everybody else too. We live in a fast paced, always going, on the move society, I don;t have time to NOT turn right on red, I depend on that and when I see no right on red signs i am immediately pissed off. shit's gotta go now, otherwise we are going to start seeing "No Left Turn, No Questions Asked" signs, then you will always have to turn right, unless of course there is no "Right on Red."

4. Random Sobriety Checkpoints- This has got to take the cake on stupid bullshit. Really? Are we really setting up checkpoints to arrest drunk drivers? Have our drunk drivers become such great drunk drivers that we can't tell if they are actually drunk so we have to set up a check point to make sure? Now in my time of driving (like the bob dylan reference?), I have seen, and driven past, behind, in front of, and beside people I assume are drunk. Each time they are swerving, all over the road and scaring the shit out of me, literally. if I, a 20 year old dude from south carolina can notice a drunk driver, wouldn't you feel safer if a cop could do the same? Well if the sobriety checkpoint is any indication, it's clear they are not qualified to detect drunk drivers. But ya know what the worst part about sobriety checkpoints are? It's a waste of our tax dollars. think about it, if you have a friend that always drinks and drive, doesn't care about the risk they are taking and sees nothing wrong with it, then thats their problem. thats a prime example of ignorance is bliss. and if we just let all the drunk people drive, eventually natural selection will rear its ugly head back, and show you exactly how ignorant that person was to drive drunk. i mean if all the repeat, continuous drunk drivers drove drunk eventually it will catch up to them, and like that they crash, they die, and now one less drunk driver we gotta worry about smashing into your house on sunday while watching the biggest loser or jersey shore. so sobriety checkpoints, waste of time, waste of money, waste of resources, and most of all a foolish way to solve the DUI problem. But the biggest kicker of all is being subjected to this bullshit like we live in Berlin in the 40's or Moscow at the peak of the Soviet regime. to have to produce photo id, and all that bull shit is so un-American and so anti-constitution (violates 4th and 5th amendments) that there in lies the real problem

just food for thought for you on this sunday.

have a good one and happy reveling