I was in a conversation today with various people, and a post from one of them shocked the hell out of me:

"The south wont vote for a Yankee but theyll take our money. Watching bushs speech it looks like he's gonna ask me and my people in the north to rebuild an area of the country that disrespects my area and wont even vote for a guy if he's from here. Screw em. I vote no. Maybe some other time."

After being called petty, he responds:

"Petty is why they wont vote for Yankees. My post is more of a vengeful post. Get it reicht"

I'm stopping it here for a minute to note how if you disagree with him he will bring up the Nazi card. Typical liberal debate strategy.

I say fine, no problem but now that you need us pardon me if I don't just jump up and throw money at them.

My response?

Nobody is obligated to vote for anyone from any particular region of the US. The argument is null and void. Clinton was a redneck, Carter was a redneck....it matters less where the person is from than who the person is and what they stand for. This "You won't vote for my guy so I refuse to help you" is some of the worst, petty political BS I've ever heard.

And if you want to know why nobody wanted anyone from Ohio, think back to Kucinich's idea to get rid of the Department of Defense and replace it with a Department of Peace. Yes! Get rid of the military! What a brilliant idea, especially now! He was and is a fringe leftist. Bring some better candidates to the table, jeez.

(After that I noted how Kucinich's idea to abolish the military and replace it with a "Department of Peace" was directly out of Howard Zinn's playbook from the short book Terrorism and War. Therefore it isn't surprising nobody would touch him with a ten foot pole)

But the bottom line is, Jesus Fucking Christ people - who cares what part of the country they are from! How can anyone be this petty!! I could slap the yellow off of that asshole's teeth.

Jason

I know I'm going to get in trouble for this one. I don't care, it's pretty funny.





That looks like it's perfect V-Day candy made by a guy. After all, the romantic feel-good nonsense is what we do for the women. In the end (lol) what we look forward to the most is the boning aspect of V-Day.

Jason

Is it true that nobody gave (e:Ladycroft) Her Birthday Spankings? Are you guys telling me she made it through that crazy party without someone doing what's right and giving her 30 heavy hands on the ass? F-ing A, isn't that part of what a birthday party is about, bending the person over and embarrassing them by spanking their ass?

Jason

PS - Where I come from, people don't get spanked, they get punched in the arm. And my friends wouldn't lighten up either, they would go WHAM and hit me really hard. Just when I recovered from that hit another one would be on its way. I think that's called "tough love".

I haven't had the chance to give my input into the Artvoice Best Of awards, but I do want to talk about our own category and how things have gone down.

Firstly, the fact that there is even a category for blogs is a good step for our community because a lot of people don't realize they can have a say. Most people feel they are helpless in this respect, but blogs give voice to our own concerns where other media have failed in doing so. In addition the fact we were in Artvoice means that the spotlight is on us, and gives us the kind of exposure that we cannot afford through normal advertising. I'm not upset that we didn't win. It is so difficult for people to say what is best because the blogs up for vote each have a different focus. It doesn't matter that we didn't win - what matters is that hopefully people now realize there is a FREE outlet available for them to blog about whatever is on their mind. To my knowledge (e:strip) is the only way for normal local people like you and me to give voice to our concerns, and we should be proud of that fact. It does no good for anyone to start bashing the other blogs, because in essence we all are here to make a difference in our community. It makes absolutely no sense to me that each blog should be chiefly about itself - there is no reason why blogs can't work together to achieve a common message. This kind of thing happens all the time and we should embrace it.

One thing I can say with ABSOLUTE confidence is that if it were up to the site that is coded the best, (e:Paul) would win in an avalanche (I guess landslide wasn't a good enough term for me to use). Although I hate hate hate when people affiliate the word "designer" with the word "programmer", because in nearly all professional programming environments they are separate duties, I can tell you all that (e:Paul) does an outstanding job with both aspects of putting this site together.

Don't take criticism so harshly. When someone says it is hard to navigate, we should look through the eyes of a new user. It is not unreasonable to expect that if someone comes here, they may want to browse articles dealing with X, Y, and Z. While "per-user" this is achievable, on a more broad scale it is not easily achievable. Please correct me if I'm wrong. After all many of our discussions are community discussions, and there is value in being able to piece our journal entries together to make a more "complete" discussion for people to browse.

I want to take some time to talk about (e:BuffaloPundit). You know it is really nice that I can write (e:BuffaloPundit). I hope you can read this because I want to compliment you. My brother, (e:Joshua), has had contact with you lately. Based on what I saw in your response to him, I have to give you tons of credit. (e:BuffaloPundit) is neither an ideologue nor a partisan. This becomes evident when someone reads your blog. For what it's worth I think your blog rightly deserves to be called one of Buffalo's best. I also REALLY HOPE that you continue to particpate in (e:strip) in some way, although you have your own site. Please come back and say hello every now and then. Oh yeah, I couldn't possibly agree more with what you wrote recently regarding the Teacher's Union. Unions are a kind of "untouchable" in Buffalo, and I'm glad you're willing to point the finger when it is deserved.

Jason

(e:Paul) - I haven't had the opportunity to respond, but I will now. Actually I had no idea you had responded until a couple of days ago when I was looking at some back journal entries. At any rate I owe you a response.

If I gave the impression that I have a problem with people protesting, I want to fix that impression right now. Protest is responsible, in part, for socioeconomic changes that benefit us all today. I have no problem with anybody taking their issue to the streets. I can disagree with them, I can tell you why I think they're mistaken - but in no way does that mean I have a problem with the fact they are protesting. There is a difference, and I hope we all can appreciate this, between disagreeing with people and saying that they shouldn't be allowed to protest. Now that I think about it, the first sentence I wrote before perfectly articulated this point (albeit in a more blunt manner). I'm really not sure how else I can say it.

I didn't approach it from this angle, but yes I know that politicians mix issues all the time. Although from my perspective most people are sort of by-the-issues, politicians can't be only about one or two issues - in order to get elected they have to be knowledgable about issues all across the spectrum, and they have to speak on those issues. This is part of what politicians do. I wasn't arguing that politicians shouldn't do this. To me there is a difference between being a politician, and having to speak on these issues, and participating in a protest, where the premise is based on only one topic.

Protests shouldn't be this way - if someone is protesting war, or abortion, or trade policy the message shouldn't become diluted by the obligations people have to other organizations which have nothing to do with the topic being protested. I'm not talking about people tagging along, of course this happens during most every protest, I'm talking about non-related organizations who employ active participation in something that has nothing to do with their area of interest, donating funds, paying for people to arrive on-site, building up the camp site, so on and so forth. Although many of these people care more about anything else than Sheehan's kid, they are smart and recognize that the opportunity for exposure couldn't get any better - they know how many cameras are there and they want to make sure they get some face time. The exposure they get, and the voice they get is the reward for the money and time they spend on a protest that is about anything but their own area of interest. When people told her she was being taken advantage of, Sheehan went out of her way to make sure that people knew she was supportive of these other organizations' efforts. What conclusion can someone come to other than the movement is not about the war - it is about the broader leftist ideology? If you can imagine the NRA building a protest site and flying people to an abortion rally, and the abortion protesters saying "Hey we welcome the NRA" you will understand the point I'm trying to make about the left mixing all of their eggs in the same basket. To me any protest is much more effective when everyone is focused on the same thing.

The only reason I bring Sheehan's name up, or the protest in Crawford is because all of these satellite protests are allegedly modeled after the one in Crawford. If that is really true then I should expect the very same things out of the Lafayette protest that I saw in Crawford - a "war" protest which is actually less about war than about peddling the broader ideology of the left. To be fair to the Lafayette protesters, I was not able to get there to see it, so I cannot say for certain that it is how the whole thing went down. If someone was there or can tell me about it, I would happily retract my statement when it comes to that protest. I would love to be able to say that here, in Buffalo, we are smarter than to do what has been done in Crawford.

None of this explains why I call these protesters assholes. I do not get pissed off by anything that I've written about so far in this post. What gets me really upset is when they incinuate that their message is carried by all military families. They go ahead and put up crosses for people whose families may diametrically oppose everything the protest is about. They get on the microphone and say they represent the military families. They drag MY FAMILY and many others into their protest when we want nothing to do with it. This is why they are such assholes. To make matters worse, Sheehan goes on camera and BELITTLES AND INSULTS other military families who don't see eye to eye with her. These other families will never ever be able to get in front of a microphone or a camera and plead their case, becase the mainstream press is not interested in peddling anything other than what the Sheehan movement says.

Thank you for your compliments, but I'm really not interested in going and changing peoples' minds about what they are protesting. Some, not all of the protesters have family members serving and I would have no right to tell them how they should feel when it comes to their family. This immediately makes me better than the movement. If anything all I would say to them is that they shouldn't mislead people about who they are representing, and they shouldn't go on the attack against other military families who don't agree - they will never have the opportunity to respond on the same scale. I'm not a violent person, and I am against violence against women, but when I heard Sheehan talk like that I wanted to knock her out. Who the fuck are YOU to start belittling and insulting people who have gone through the very same tragedy? People come to different conclusions for different reasons, and as far as the movement is concerned people should either come to their conclusion or be insulted, forced or shamed into agreeing with them. To me, even if I am against the war in Iraq I am honest enough to look at what they do and say, and come to a conclusion that it is not appropriate for that kind of shit to go on - ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO SEE THEIR WAY.

Hopefully this clarifies how I feel about the subject.

Jason

Edit: I forgot to address this - (e:Paul) you bring up an interesting point about Yugoslavia and Clinton. I never saw such an outpouring against Clinton when he unilaterally attacked, or citizens perished, so on and so forth. In addition his bullshit, mamby-pamby way of handling Mogadishu cost lives, yet the anti-war left seemingly did not blink an eye. Why is this? If I'm wrong about this please tell me but it seems to me that it is only because Bush is in office that people care about this stuff.