Anything else would be uncivilized...

I am living in an interesting chapter of political agnosticism at this point of my life.

My liberal friends shrink in terror at my real and supposed lilt towards the right and my right wing friends consider my progressive social tenets largely untenable and highly suspicious.

I kind of like the freedom of not belonging to either side. Can now call them as I see them. Equal opportunity upsetter.

Amazing how easy it is for both sides to work themselves into a tizzy at some real or imagined grievance from the evildoers on the other side. We loathe each other so these days.

If I can be rightfully accused of any prejudice and I am sure that, like you, I have many, it would be against the plainly stupid. Forget right and left, I will take smart and a good moral and ethical center every time, color of your plumage be damned. Hand out I.Q. tests and force membership into the smart people or the dumbshit parties.

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Rename Mt. McKinley? Oh, please, who gives a shit? My apologies to the good people of Ohio but the man never set foot in Alaska. His career, cut short by an assassin's bullet, was largely lacking in any semblance of merit whatsoever.

He instituted a protectionist tariff and launched an imperialist drive against the Spanish that ended up in a war in which we grabbed their main overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. McKinley turned Cuba into a fiefdom of the U.S. Army, although it was initially promised independence.

While we were at it we annexed the independent Republic of Hawaii in 1898 and it in turn became a U.S. territory. Good old manifest destiny.

In any case, the Alaskan natives have been calling the mountain Denali since Nanook first launched his dinghy into the Bering Strait and I tend to vote for the early guy's moniker.

Thanks, Jon Harwood!

The rhetoric and hyperbole post Kim Davis's trip to the hoosegow has been pretty nauseating.

“Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.” Ted Cruz
“I think it is absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberty,” Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told CNN.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, in a statement, said that putting Ms. Davis in federal custody “removes all doubt of the criminalization of Christianity in our country.”
“This is a reckless, appalling, out-of-control decision that undermines the Constitution of the United States and our fundamental right to religious liberty,” he said.

Mrs. Davis is not being criminalized for being a christian. She went to jail for putting herself and her personal religious beliefs above a law that she swore to uphold. In addition she and her stooge lawyer, Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel, are actively trying to keep her deputies from issuing same sex marriage certificates that she does not personally believe in and questioning the legitimacy of the licenses they are issuing.

...Staver has predicted that President Obama will impose “forced homosexuality” upon the nation, has likened gay people to terrorists, labeled the gay rights movement as “demonic” and defended countries that outlaw same-sex relationships.
Gay equality, Staver warns, will lead to the end of civilization and cause America to “implode” and “unravel.”

This is the sort of controlling and self righteous behavior that makes christianity anathema to many people. The justices have spoken. If you don't like it, Davis, resign.

The whole religious liberty issue is such a crock of rotting dung. Many religions don't favor blacks or minorities, cursed be the son of Ham and all that. Should their adherents be able to deny those poor folks service and housing if they wish to? Or deny people of mixed race? Gays, jews? Shall we allow members of the Church of Satan an occasional human sacrifice? It's their religion...

We are a nation of laws, sometimes they aren't going to go your way. Bigots get no special dispensation.

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I am loving the Trump show. Have a couple bets down with apoplectic friends on the left who keep forecasting his imminent political demise. Trump is playing the media and his opponents like a fiddle. having the time of his life. Refreshing to hear a candidate say what he actually means, as coarse and incorrect as he is at times.

Has thrown everybody for a loop, from Jeb, who thought he had the thing nailed down and was just awaiting the coronation, to Hillary, who went after him today. He has totally upset the cogwheels of the institutional GOP and the only guy in sight of him is Carson, who seems to be the darling of the evangelical branch and a guy who I think will lose traction as more of his past statements and positions come to light.

I think he is an almost lovable misogynist creep. I believe his statements about latinos are deplorable as are his comments about immigrants in general. But I have feelings of my own on the issue that many of you would certainly find deplorable.

Let's take amnesty for instance. I am dead set against a path to citizenship for people who have entered our country illegally. Any path. Don't break in through the screen door and then demand entrance at the front. You come to America illegally, you relinquish your rights to become a citizen. Period. Your and my parents and grandparents came here legally and they studied, passed tests, did things properly. Why should people be rewarded for their lawbreaking?

I appreciate the latino people. I have many hispanic friends. The great majority are wonderful, honest and hard working. I think that the business machine would practically freeze up without their contribution as a generally low pay work force.

But I am not one to cry tears for sending illegal parents back who manage to hit a home run and have a kid on our shores. Better work programs. Yes. Citizenship and welfare benefits for people who enter our country illegally. I don't think so.

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I am a little peeved this week. Managed to catch a young hispanic couple dumping a truck load of trash into our ravine. With a camera I caught them anyway. Cops came out. Not sure if they will do anything but we have the people's address, which they were dumb enough to leave at the bottom of the pile.

(Keith Dannemiller/Chronicle) Garbage on street, Condesa - Mexico City

Now I travel all over our country and you never see litter elsewhere like you do here in Southern California. Because it is perfectly acceptable in certain cultures to dump the stuff over some rural hillside. Because that is how it is done back home. Go down to La Bufadora or Ensenada and see all the trash down there. Cultural differences do exist, like allowing pedestrians to cross at crosswalks and not endangering people when you are driving. Not malicious on anyone's part I think, just not part of their culture.

But you can't say this stuff out loud because you are then accused of being a bigot.

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Which brings me to Europe. Lucky them, they get a whole new influx of poor muslims to go with the recent boatloads of poor africans. The bleeding hearts of Europe get another chance to assuage their liberal guilt.

"We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe—without swords, without guns, without conquest—will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades."- Muammar Gaddafi (2006)

It will be very interesting. France, Spain and Belgium are already rich breeding grounds and recruitment centers for the Islamic State. Not that every muslim is a jihadi mind you. But if 5% of the total 1.7 billion is, that makes, let us see... 85 million people to worry about. Forget that some surveys say that the number supporting jihad is actually closer to 25%, too many people to worry about. But you just know how surely some of these people are going to be offended in the very western and liberal Europe. Takes a fundamentalist a little time to acclimatize. Perhaps these folks all share the same antediluvian genetic markers, globally. You know the breed... Maybe we will find that everybody has been dealing with denosivans all this time.

The Danes have seen their tolerance rewarded with the cartoonist killing and the calls to make Scandinavia part of the new global caliphate. There are too many examples of how this wonderful European love for these people has been repaid in a most terrible way.

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.
Barack Obama 9/25/12

Not much different than what we have seen here. Forget the honor killings and the genital mutilation but the outright acts of terrorism a la the Boston bombers, the Major Nidals of this world.  Look at the terrorist acts that have emanated from the Somali community of Minneapolis alone, not to mention San Diego.

Anyway, I don't blame Hungary, Greece or any of the countries faced with these hordes demanding passage and asylum. I know. Go back and fix your own country. Revolt if you have to. Don't export your dreams of global caliphate, sectarian wars, strange woman hating culture and other bad habits. With the exceptions of the Kurds, Yazidis and Christians, I fail to see any good guys coming out of the middle east in this current invasion. Just people on the wrong side of the gun, for whom the worm has now unfortunately turned.

Whose fault is it that Africa and the middle east are in shambles? Quick, name a functioning democracy in the entire region. After a certain point you have to stop ranting about colonialism and take a good look in the mirror. These people and their leaders have sold themselves out. We have nothing to do with it and its not really our job to fix. Look at Mugabe, Mbeki, Assad. I am awfully glad that I don't live in Europe. Because its citizens are certainly about to find out very quickly how the neighborhood has now changed. Allahu Akbar!

I find it hard to believe how many well educated and intelligent friends of mine have bought into the current regime's act. Marijuana, Patriot Act, Civil Liberties, Doma, Stingray, Iran, Snowden, Kurds, Turks, Syria has been a total fucking disaster, fake red lines and all...

But hey, I guess it can always get worse.