I'll stealth ninja post like (e:Joshua) did. He's away from home for the first time in a while, which gives me precious alone time. Sometimes I like to be alone and enjoy the blissful silence, pondering various things without having to be interrupted to speak. I'll write briefly about what is on my wicked mind:

1) My profession - I think I'm not doing what I'm meant to do.

2) I'm not living up to my potential. I can and will do better someday soon.

3) I look at the world around me and I see so many people who just don't give a shit, and that is horribly bothersome. I know I don't agree with everyone here politically, and that's fine - but I'm thinking of "giving a shit" in more broad terms.

4) I'm thinking of tits and ass - a whole locker full of women and myself.

5) Rhonda - I had a dream about her recently. I regret ever being so nasty to her when I de-friended her. That wasn't like me at all. I never thought anything I could say to her would get a reaction - I thought she didn't care about me at all, which is why I felt our friendship was so hopeless. I wish I could tell her that I'm sorry and that of course I cared about her being sick. God if only she knew how much I cared. I felt hurt, and I bited back....HARD. If there is one re-do I want in life, it is that situation. The rest of it I can live with.

6) I love dogs, very much. If I could handle it I would love to be a dog owner one day. Owner doesn't even sound right to me - I've known dogs who were better friends than most humans. So, I wish I could be a friend to a dog. I'll never forget when I was in Philly and my soul was destroyed, 2 dogs came and sat next to me. They knew how bad I felt and they consoled me, laying their heads on my lap and refusing to leave. I then realized how dogs care as much about us as we care about them. Dogs are awesome!

7) I'm thinking about how I like to make people happy, but I have been a self absorbed asshole, an utter failure in that respect. I've been soaking it all in, like those crusty Floridians when they go to the beach.

8) We have another Democrat mayor. Yay. We also have more Democrat county legistlators. This area will continue to fuck itself over until we stop taxing and spending our way to oblivion. Decades of Democrat fiscal and social policy has left this area in utter ruin, and we just float along demanding our social. Tell me this - how many more people have to leave the area, how many jobs have to fly the coop, how many older folks have to be squeezed out of their homes for people to understand something has to change? Do you want your family and friends to stay here? Do you want to be able to get a decent job? Based on the way people voted I think they embrace the idea of Buffalo becoming a ghost town. More taxes, please!

Jason

I thought I wouldn't be able to get to my voting station today, as I have to go to dart league at 7, but I'm happy to hear that the polling stations will be open until 9 PM. I'll have you all know that Jerry and I are currently in 1st place and the only remaining undefeated team. Tonight we play against a supposedly very good team so we have to bring our A game. It's not good enough for me to just scrape by with a victory, I demand domination. Hopefully we will be able to win quickly so I can make it to the Unitarian Universalist Church to cast my vote.

I still do not know who I am going to vote for, but I know for sure I am voting NO on Prop 1. I'll do my best to explain why as succinctly as possible. The way I understand it, Prop 1 will shift more budget power away from the Governor and towards the legislature, Silver and Bruno in particular. The Governor proposes a budget and the Legislature ratifies it. If Prop 1 passes, after a certain amount of time passes without a ratified budget the legislature can implement a "default" budget with a certain percentage increase in State spending, while the legislature decides what the "real" budget will be. In effect this renders the Governor's proposed budget irrelevant and frees the legislature to impose as much increased spending and tax increases as they please (we can safely assume this would be the case, as our State government spends like a bunch of trophy wives). The legislature can just ignore the Governor's budget and stall until the deadline passes. Proponents of Prop 1 say that a vote against Prop 1 is a vote against reform, and that is utter rubbish. WE CAN DO BETTER, AND WE SHOULD EXPECT OUR REPRESENTATIVES TO ENACT REAL REFORM. Please, say NO to Prop 1 and let's pressure our State government to come up with better solutions - we deserve it!

At work today 3 different people bummed smokes from me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against sharing - I live with my twin and I've been sharing everything as long as I've been alive. These people at work refuse to buy their own smokes, saying they're trying to quit, and as soon as I show up with a pack they crowd around my desk with their hands out. Either you're a smoker and you're buying cigs, or you're not a smoker (or trying to quit) and you're not buying cigs. Don't half ass it, telling me you can't let me bum one because you're trying to quit, and 20 minutes later show up at my desk asking me for a handout. I can't afford a 4 person smoking habit. I'm at my wit's end about this because it happens so frequently. Either buy your own, or take your commitment to stop smoking seriously!

Jason

Only in the sense that the French are the loudest critics of how we handle radical Islam, saying they are smarter and safer than we are, that their methods of dealing with the world are far superior to anyone else's. They can't even handle radical Islam in their own country - so why the hell would anyone who cares about National Security listen to them? Remember this is the country that took all of TWO WEEKS to decide their country wasn't worth fighting for in the past. When it comes to fighting terror or dealing with global security issues, we should politely tell France to shut up and let the grown-ups handle it.

More on this later, I have work to do.

Jason

From Yahoo:

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WHY PARIS IS BURNING - by Amir Taheri

AS THE night falls, the "troubles" start — and the pattern is always the same.

Bands of youths in balaclavas start by setting fire to parked cars, break shop windows with baseball bats, wreck public telephones and ransack cinemas, libraries and schools. When the police arrive on the scene, the rioters attack them with stones, knives and baseball bats.

The police respond by firing tear-gas grenades and, on occasions, blank shots in the air. Sometimes the youths fire back — with real bullets.

These scenes are not from the West Bank but from 20 French cities, mostly close to Paris, that have been plunged into a European version of the intifada that at the time of writing appears beyond control.

The troubles first began in Clichy-sous-Bois, an underprivileged suburb east of Paris, a week ago. France's bombastic interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, responded by sending over 400 heavily armed policemen to "impose the laws of the republic," and promised to crush "the louts and hooligans" within the day. Within a few days, however, it had dawned on anyone who wanted to know that this was no "outburst by criminal elements" that could be handled with a mixture of braggadocio and batons.

By Monday, everyone in Paris was speaking of "an unprecedented crisis." Both Sarkozy and his boss, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, had to cancel foreign trips to deal with the riots.

How did it all start? The accepted account is that sometime last week, a group of young boys in Clichy engaged in one of their favorite sports: stealing parts of parked cars.

Normally, nothing dramatic would have happened, as the police have not been present in that suburb for years.

The poblem came when one of the inhabitants, a female busybody, telephoned the police and reported the thieving spree taking place just opposite her building. The police were thus obliged to do something — which meant entering a city that, as noted, had been a no-go area for them.

Once the police arrived on the scene, the youths — who had been reigning over Clichy pretty unmolested for years — got really angry. A brief chase took place in the street, and two of the youths, who were not actually chased by the police, sought refuge in a cordoned-off area housing a power pylon. Both were electrocuted.

Once news of their deaths was out, Clichy was all up in arms.

With cries of "God is great," bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee.

The French authorities could not allow a band of youths to expel the police from French territory. So they hit back — sending in Special Forces, known as the CRS, with armored cars and tough rules of engagement.

Within hours, the original cause of the incidents was forgotten and the issue jelled around a demand by the representatives of the rioters that the French police leave the "occupied territories." By midweek, the riots had spread to three of the provinces neighboring Paris, with a population of 5.5 million.

But who lives in the affected areas? In Clichy itself, more than 80 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim immigrants or their children, mostly from Arab and black Africa. In other affected towns, the Muslim immigrant community accounts for 30 percent to 60 percent of the population. But these are not the only figures that matter. Average unemployment in the affected areas is estimated at around 30 percent and, when it comes to young would-be workers, reaches 60 percent.

In these suburban towns, built in the 1950s in imitation of the Soviet social housing of the Stalinist era, people live in crammed conditions, sometimes several generations in a tiny apartment, and see "real French life" only on television.

The French used to flatter themselves for the success of their policy of assimilation, which was supposed to turn immigrants from any background into "proper Frenchmen" within a generation at most.

That policy worked as long as immigrants came to France in drips and drops and thus could merge into a much larger mainstream. Assimilation, however, cannot work when in most schools in the affected areas, fewer than 20 percent of the pupils are native French speakers.

France has also lost another powerful mechanism for assimilation: the obligatory military service abolished in the 1990s.

As the number of immigrants and their descendants increases in a particular locality, more and more of its native French inhabitants leave for "calmer places," thus making assimilation still more difficult.

In some areas, it is possible for an immigrant or his descendants to spend a whole life without ever encountering the need to speak French, let alone familiarize himself with any aspect of the famous French culture.

The result is often alienation. And that, in turn, gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid.

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.

In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.

The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.

A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.

"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.

That illusion has now been shattered — and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a "ticking time bomb."

It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.

So what is the solution? One solution, offered by Gilles Kepel, an adviser to Chirac on Islamic affairs, is the creation of "a new Andalusia" in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.

The problem with Kepel's vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power. Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?

Suddenly, French politics has become worth watching again, even though for the wrong reasons.

Amir Taheri, editor of the French quarterly "Politique internationale," is a member of Benador Associates.

Since (e:Ajay) refused to acknowledge what I wrote, instead going for the bait and switch. Feel free to look if you are reading and are interested.

Essentially your silence says this:

No, (e:Jason), I refuse to live by the standards I set for you. Do what I say, not what I do. No, I refuse to challenge my own political ideas and no I am not interested in reading the same subject from multiple points of view before coming to my conclusions. No, I am never skeptical of any point of view that lambastes the right - no matter what they say it has to be true! Yes, you are absolutely correct that I am only interested in pointing at the right and staying silent about my own side. I refuse to be anything but a pointy-headed partisan like Hannity and Rush.

How could such a brilliant analytical mind stoop to this when it comes to politics? All I'm asking for is an equal effort, and for you to be as honest as you want me to be. Don't ask me to do the things you refuse to do. I'm trying to reach out my hand here.

Jason

PS - The "Niman is a mosquito, here are the real issues!" argument refuses to acknowledge press accountability, which is the real topic here. Try to stay on topic. We have plenty of time to discuss Halliburton and anything else you desire, but for now try and explain why the media shouldn't be accountable for what they say, and why it isn't a problem that pretty much every media outlet breathes lies or half-truths to the American public on a regular basis. Try and explain to me why Paul Krugman can get away with reprehensible lies about the presidential recount and numerous other topics, and is never forced by his bosses to issue a correction. Instead of reporting facts, it's become favorable to tell a story. Don't tell me this shit isn't nearly as important as "war profiteering". I'm not buying it.




"Niman got some bunk info from someone, liked what he heard, and started telling people the 12 tribes are white supremacists. He didn't need or want anything other than what he agreed with. He wrote an entire article making his case. He is peddling his opinion as if it is fact, and people are going to read the article thinking it is fact. If you were to ask Niman if what he wrote was opinion or fact, what do you think he would say? The "this is just an opinion piece" argument shrivels up as a result.

Maybe you're right. Maybe he isn't lying. Maybe he didn't already have his opinion in his head before he tried making a case for it. Maybe he just got BS information. Apparently that passes as a legitimate argument nowadays. We are seeing it more and more.

Don't think that just because I don't talk about Fox News that I don't have an opinion about them. There are 120239879834798 people talking about Fox News, and zero talking about the alternative press, who get a free pass from everyone. You tell me to be skeptical about what I read, but are you skeptical about what you read from the alternatives or from any information source? I'm sure the answer is yes but I've never asked. I want to make sure that you are willing to be as honest as you want me to be.

I'm willing to "set the example" but I feel like I am completely alone in that sentiment. I feel like people just want ME to point the finger at the right so they can tell me how correct they are, while they stay silent. Nobody wants to point the finger at the people who represent their political "side". As of yet I am the only person on e-strip who is willing to do this. Will you join me? =)

Yes I know Fox News reporting is skewed to the right, everyone knows that. They are the only TV news outlet in the USA that reports this way. There isn't any reporting from any media outlet that isn't skewed. They do report facts, but not the same facts and not in the same context. Hannity and O'Reilly and Rush and the rest - no I do not think everything that comes out of their mouth is fact. I am not so far to the right as a Hannity or a Rush.

Ultimately I want truth, and truth does not come from a single source. It comes from reading a broad spectrum of pieces. I feel like I'm the only person on e-strip who does that as well. I feel like I'm the only one who is willing to challenge his/her ideas and to grow. I'll never be a partisan."