Barack Obama versus John McCain - My Dilemma

OK, My predictions were off base. I guess I was dreaming. Hillary is not the Democratic candidate and Fred Thompson didn't have the juice to ever get off the ground. Many of you have never heard this from me, however , I was wrong.

 

Now lets look at reality.

 

In November we will choose a sitting Senator as our next President. I don't think that's been done since John F. Kennedy and it had been a while before that. In the next election we will either elect a Black man as President or an old Senator with a youngish white woman as Vice President.

 

Usually we don't like to elect Congress to the Presidency. We choose people with real verifiable experience, because in our national collective judgment we think that past performance and proof of experience will dictate the future result.

 

Myself, I could care less what the party is. I'll vote for whatever party if I like the candidate.

 

Personally I have voted Democratic 3 out of the last 8 Presidential elections.

 

Here's the history- (Real brief)

 

• Ike (R)- Military man ,Supreme Allied Commander WWII
• Kennedy (D)- Military man (PT109), Pulitzer Prize winner ("Profiles in Courage"),Author ("While England Slept") Senator (Political family)
• Johnson (D)- VP, then Presidency (was in the senate before)
• Nixon (R)-former VP in '52, then failed as a Presidential candidate in '60 and failed as Governor of Cali. in '62
• Ford (R)-Appointed to replace Spiro Agnew as VP, succeeded as President when Nixon resigned, never elected as Pres.
• Carter (D)-State Senator, Former Gov of GA, Navy man -(Sub Commander?), peanut farmer, Nobel peace prize winner
• Reagan X2(R)- Former Gov -California, actor, ran S.A.G., and was a Democrat turned Republican
• Bush1 (R)-Bush held a multitude of political positions prior to his presidency, including VP for Reagan and director of the CIA
• Clinton X2 (D) - former Governor-Arkansas
• Bush2 X2 (R)- former Governor-Texas

 

John McCain , Republican,  chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Was this a Masterstroke of political theatre or obvious pandering to the female vote? Depends upon your point of view, I suppose. I think it was what he had to do to shake up the race. I mean, if you have ever heard him speak, he wasn't going to get the press coverage with his speaking ability. His speeches suck. He can be a bit dry (to say the least). he gets on my nerves a bit with the "My Friends" bit too. Sarah Palin gives him what no other choice could have. She gives him (among other things) a clean break from Washington insiders and a clear philosophical break from the sitting president. Palin is no Dick Cheney. McCain has a long history of service. He's always been a republican and of course, he has supported republican ideals. You can find thousands of examples of what McCain has done and supported and said. Former military man from a military family, Fighter pilot, former POW, Senator etc.  There is almost too much out there on John McCain and the information is voluminous. He has a temper? Big Freaking deal. I want a president that gets pissed off every once in a while. Its disingenuous and insults my intelligence to compare Bush to McCain. Like we don't remember the campaigns from the past 2 cycles and how much McCain disagreed with him to begin with. Agree with him or not ,at least there is a lot of substance and history to draw a conclusion from.

 

Barack Obama, Democrat, chose Joe Biden as his VP. I like Biden. If he were the Democratic candidate, I'd probably vote for him over McCain and over Obama. Why not? I voted for Clinton twice. This race ain't about Vice Presidents though and no matter how much the press spins Biden, McCain's age or knocks Sarah Palin it never will be. He had to choose somebody with Foreign policy chops, because he doesn't have any.  He pretty much thinks he has the race in the bag and his current philosophy seems to be to stay "above it all" and act Presidential. Thinks he can win the race because he draws big rock star crowds and makes pretty speeches. The guy can talk I'll give him that. He gets great press and it looks like he is starting to believe his own press releases. I think he is making a big mistake by staying out of the battle for the mind of the undecided voter and letting his people make the case for him. I take reporters and political pundits points of view with a grain of salt. They are a bit loopy if they think we believe only what we hear from them. Hell even I think Rush Limbaugh is goofy every now and then.

 

Here is what I don't get and don't understand why he is thought of as the answer to our problems.

 

What has Obama ever accomplished besides writing books getting married and having children?  He was (is) a lawyer? What legislation has he ever sponsored? What has he ever done to indicate he has ever taken a stand for me or you (before he announced his run for the Presidency?) His whole entire substance of work is based on one vote against the war? I'm sorry, what ? Chicago politics is his claim to fame ? He commanded 13 people on the South side of Chicago while he was an organizer? He wrote 2 political books that nobody has ever read besides the news reporters ? Oprah supports him is why I should vote for him? Young people (who usually don't know anything about world politics and think "The Daily Show" is a real news show), show up in big numbers at a rally. Hollywood supports him?

 

Google Obama and you will find reporters stories, his web sites, and a plethora of copies of his speeches and the like. Google "Obama accomplishments" and it is about as light as a recent college graduate's would be if he were applying for the Top Job in any industry.

 

The guy from the mail room is qualified to be the CEO ?

 

That is my dilemma in a nutshell. I'd love to vote for a positive candidate like Obama. I like the way Obama carries himself. So far he has run a pretty decent (no mudslinging BS) campaign. He makes a good speech. I have heard basically everything he has said.

 

I am still waiting for him to actually say something (anything) specific besides "Change", "Yes we can" or "Make it better". Change may be the answer but his brand of change may not be, because he still hasn't told us what it is made of. Being the first black man is not enough, just as being the first woman was not enough. It is just not a good enough reason to give them the job. If it was I could start a catchy chant phrase and get elected and trust me I'd never make it either.

 

I have no idea how he can make a negative claim on anyone else's history or accomplishments though when he doesn't have any himself , nor how he can judge anyone else's qualifications for the job when his resume is so light in reality and substance. Who gave him the high ground? He is a lightweight running for a heavyweight's job in a fog of words and video. This is why 35+ and older male and female voters will have a hard time voting for him. This is why Undecided voters will have a tough time seeing him as the answer. This is why middle of the road democrats (like my wife) won't trust him. Black big city support will not get him elected. Hollywood support will not get him elected, because we believe in actors about as well as we believe in politicians. Money will help, but won't matter a bit to anybody in Independence Missouri on election day. Far Left liberals will not get him elected. There is just too little of them to overcome the middle of America and all the small towns between Boston and Los Angeles. How can we trust or elect an unknown, untried, untested, politician with two best selling books (but no legislation) with no experience and no executive background who has never led anything or had to make a decision under tough circumstances to be the most powerful leader on the face of the planet?

 

Just what exactly are his qualifications for the job? The fact that he is running a political campaign? Are you serious? "(Insert Lewis Black quote here)"

 

Can anybody answer that question or give me concrete examples that I can compare to anything anyone else has ever done who has held the office? If this were a contest between Bill Clinton and Obama would you think Obama is qualified? I'm having a very tough time thinking this guy has the prerequisite skill sets necessary to be given the responsibility. Start up dotcom firms in Silicon valley may give young people the chance to be the CEO, but should we do it when electing a president? It is a stunning proposition to say you do not need any demonstrated leadership experience to be President. One day Boy Scout Troop Leader and the Next running the USA?

 

Just take a look at his history and his resume and ask yourself these kinds of questions before you actually decide on election day.

 

Could this guy run a medium sized company with this much experience?

 

Would you hire a guy with this experience to run things for you if you absolutely had to make money or go broke?

 

Here is a novel non-racist question I have heard no one ask. What if McCain was Black and Obama was white. What if Obama was a republican and McCain was the democrat?

 

Would you vote for this guy if he was a white republican based solely on his experience?

 

Thankx for reading my rant ! 

 

bigmike

 

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/  

 

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

 

Check out my business at http://answrtek.com

 

 

Movie - Hancock (starring Will Smith and Charlize Theron)

RE: Your review of Hancock in Variety Posted: Tue., Jun. 24, 2008, 4:01pm PT:

(Mr. McCarthy writes movie reviews among other things I imagine for variety in Hollywood CA.)

See Todd McCarthy's review at : http://www.variety.com/VE1117937497.html?query=Hancock


07/04/2008

Dear Mr. McCarthy,

First and foremost , and with all due respect, I believe that you miss the entire point of this movie and in general most critics (seemingly including you) do not understand why people go to movies in the first place. My wife, my son and I went to see this movie ("Hancock"- starring Will Smith and Charlize Theron) last evening. I see a lot of movies, probably at least 2 a month. I've pretty much seen all the last 10 years of big releases. This was a great movie. Great acting. Pretty good 90 minute story, too short for all the plot points, but that's a decision made by money and marketing not the actors. It had sufficient texture and was fun to try and figure out. The whole theatre clapped at the end. Everybody clapped. Seemed to flow pretty well. We in the theatre seemed to all understand it pretty well if you ask me. Overall, I was entertained. We talked about it all the way home. Would love to see a sequel. Heck, I'd like a MIB III also.

Tonight I searched out reviews about this film and among others, found yours on Variety.com

As I read your review (and others) and then tried to make any sense out of what the critics (and you) were thinking about as they wrote them, or tried to understand what it is they think the public expects of them , I was taken by one thought. Critics who write movie reviews for a living must be a bunch of jaded, dark hearted souls, who wouldn't know a good movie if it smacked them in the face. They wouldn't know a good performance if it was imprinted upon their skulls with a laser. They couldn't buy a clue if they were Sherlock Holmes on "Wheel of Fortune" and Vanna White was their client. Reviews like this are a disservice to the movie industry, the actors and to the movie going public. You guys almost always get it wrong and I am not sure who you think the audience is for your review, cause it sure ain't the person who goes to see them.

I can almost read the reviews first, find out which one the reviewers said would blow and go to that movie secure in the knowledge that it will be a (good to great) movie and I will have a good time watching it. You guys (and girls) are wrong that often. The only conclusion I can come up with is people who write movie reviews for a living must have some gross misunderstanding of why movies are made in the first place, beyond making sure big stars get big paychecks, and I do not care even a little about that.

Its either that or being a critic is a fill in job until you get to write about more important stories maybe. Maybe it is where the interns start, I have no clue.

Movies are made for the entertainment value to the ticket buying public.

Period.

End of definition.

I can't remember the last time I went to a movie expecting for the flick to explore some deeper reality or explain the meaning of life to me. I do not go to movies for spiritual guidance (and I'd be hard pressed to name anyone who does) or life advice, genre study, or character development or any of the other points that reviewers write about.

Does your boss really say to you "Go watch this movie and then rate it against our scale of genre studies, story development and reality metrics".

Not very likely, I think.

You said in your review :

"Even in his derelict state, why would the presumably super-studly Hancock have no lady friends?

Why would humiliated criminals ever think they could strike back at their nemesis?"

Huh? Did you see the same movie I did?

Have you ever seen a Superman flick?

Ever heard of Lex Luther?

Would you date a self destructive booze bum (or would you want your sister to date him)?

Was he supposed to have a beer swilling, tube top wearing, trailer park mama for a sidekick in his trailer?

What exactly is your point in writing this thought for millions to read, in Variety of all places, in the first place?

Yeah I had to suspend belief, and I know I can't fly or knock helicopters out of the sky with cars, but that's why they call it a movie, and not reality !

If digression was your point, you scored.

Listen, all the critics (including you) got the plot explanations right, all of them (including you) basically tell you what the story is about. Just about all of them (including you) accurately portray what the main characters are about. I think just about everyone of them (including you) got it wrong when they went off on a tangent talking about how it measures the superhero genre or points that don't get tied up and finished or why certain things happen the way they do. Generally speaking I don't believe this generation of movie critics understand their job (including you), and certainly they do not understand the audience that buys the tickets (including you). Don't get me wrong, I suppose that many do. Sometimes they get it right. Occasionally, a movie sucks so bad you can't help but see it too.Personally, I'd be thrilled to be a critic and I think it would be exciting and a generous way to spend my time. I would use the word "pedestrian" to describe what I see from most critics in today's media though.

Most of the time though, whenever a critic says a film is mediocre, they are wrong. For example, They said the latest "Die Hard" movie was bad, they were wrong. Coincidentally, "The Sixth Sense" was a great movie as well (nothing to do with the lead actor- Bruce Willis). The reason they were good movies is because they were entertaining. Why else would you write about it? Why do I care about the analysis of special effects, or at what minute point something happens. I mean I know who the Cohen Brothers are, but not many people go to see movies based on who directed or produced a show as a main reason for buying a ticket (unless maybe it was Spielberg or George Lucas or Robert Rodriguez and possibly the late great Stanley Kubrick) . If I could see a movie reviewer (like you for example) judge a movie first just by this one element (Is it entertaining?), I could accept pretty much anything else you had to say.

Using all the "self important, make it up as I go , let me look artsy-fartsy" definitions as a reason or an excuse to write a bad review is not my idea of how you look at a movie in the first place. It is not main priority. Lets face it, this is not investigative reporting, and your probably not doing the job to go into this "lets kill this film discussion". It should be more like a book report than an obituary, I would think. If you don't like writing movie reviews or don't like being a critic, I humbly suggest you then write something else or get a better job you do like.

I pretty much don't give a rats ass if John Wayne made a movie about a stagecoach and this movie is about one too. Why is that important? Should this film have been compared to every other Super-Hero/Action Hero movie ever made? Does it mean if I make a western, then it should be reviewed and judged against every Clint Eastwood , John Wayne film ever made if it has a similar plot?

Of course not.

Here it is and it is real simple. Start right here first.

Movie is entertaining = Good Movie. Big Sales.
Movie is not entertaining = Bad Movie. Low Sales.
Not much else needs be said, but feel free to expand on this theme and then beat the crap out of the dingy theatre that you had to see it in and the lousy or great marketing job that was done to promote the film. Save the movie metrics for the film schools and your presentations to the film industry.

P.S- If you are reviewing movies for the general public, you give them too much credit in using a word like "Dramaturgy" in your review. It was an unnecessary literary stretch and I am guessing you had to use a thesaurus to actually use the word correctly or maybe you won a bet by being able to actual write it in a sentence and get it published. I am really surprised your editor did not strike it and make you use a word that every one would understand. I had to look it up to be certain of its meaning. I suspect it is one of those insider words that only movie people or academics know or use. I would love to see a poll of theatre goers who actually knew what it meant.

But I digress.

Just one man's opinion. I guess you get what you pay for.

cc to :

Dana Harris
Editor, Variety.com
dana.harris@variety.com

Olivia Hemaratanatorn
Managing Editor, Variety.com
olivia.hemaratanatorn@variety.com

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

I take it back (even though I can't)

 

You can’t ever take it back

 

You ever have an argument with someone (like your wife or a co-worker) and end up saying something nasty like “ You are so stupid !” or worse?. I know I have heard this a multitude of times and always thought to myself, “Boy, they will regret saying that later”. In the middle of a spirited discussion we sometimes forget who we are talking to or maybe we just don’t care at the moment. You build relationships and friendships and alliances out of blocks just like LEGO toys and we take them apart about the same way. The blocks are many, many things and can be called by a lot of names, but the concepts are pretty simple to understand and most difficult to live out loud. The problem is that ugly stays ugly, no matter what you say after the fact. You can apologize and attempt to make amends all you want, but you rarely can replace what you destroyed.

In order for someone to be called your friend or something like it, I think you have to have a mutual understanding. Along with that is a sense of self that admits that the person we reference here is worthy of your attention and is compatible with your hopes, dreams desires and thoughts. Somewhere along the way we develop traits we assign to these people like trust, forgiveness, truth, compassion and so forth. We tell our wives they are beautiful (even if they aren’t) we tell our friends they are funny (even if they are offensive sometimes), we tell ourselves we can tolerate certain things to make allowances for someone’s character (even if we really don’t like it).

Then along comes an argument that starts out with a discussion of ideas and ends up being a rant against concepts. We trash the other persons character, ideas, thoughts, desires or dreams. We forget that we can just agree to disagree and move on. We want to be right. We want to have the last word. We have to exert control and we have to dominate. We want our ideas to be the standard of what things should be and not the oppositions ideas. We say something mean or hurtful or embarrassing or belittling or just downright stupid. We curse. We slam doors and throw things at each other. It ceases to be a discussion of ideas and turns into open warfare designed to inflict pain. We call each other vile names in the heat of battle. Alls fair in love and war is what we think.

Until the next argument.

When the cycle repeats itself, we hear about what we said the last time we fought. In this endless cycle of argument Armageddon we continue to lob word bombs until we hit our targets and then we retreat into our bunkers of silence until we calm down and can be more rationale.

What happens next?

We either repudiate the other person (and their ideas)  altogether and split from their company (divorce etc) or we call a truce and think our hateful speech but don’t say it or we try to apologize and take back the ignorant things we said in the first place. It is an endless cycle of build, destroy, rebuild that takes a whole lot of work to maintain and is difficult to keep up with because the load just gets heavier and heavier.

Very rarely have I ever heard of anything positive coming from total destruction except in a very large global sense. It may have been absolutely right to stop Tojo and Hitler, however  a lot of damage was done along the way to make it happen. Sometimes, even in modern warfare there is no value in trying to rebuild.

Nagasaki was not rebuilt after  WWII. It was destroyed by an atomic weapon and then everything that was there was scraped clean and new was put in its place. When the twin towers fell on 9/11, they were not and will not be rebuilt. they were completely destroyed and something altogether different  was designed to replace it, because it was not possible to replace what had been destroyed in the exact same condition as it was before the planes crashed.

Fighting and spraying verbal shrapnel at each other is a choice. It is a hard choice, but a choice nonetheless. You can at every opportunity choose to engage in linguistic warfare or not. I told my wife something when we first started going out 2 years before we got married that is true to this day and I hope is true to the end of our lives.

I told her I don’t fight. I choose not to , not because I cannot, but because I know myself. I know I can’t fight fair and won’t fight fair. I do not have the ability be civil during an argument. I have to either keep the discussion below storm level or leave the premises if a fight erupts around me because I know I will be “in it to win it”, so to speak. At least I know my limitations, I guess.

Instead of fighting, I promised her that if her opinion ( opinions are not facts) on a subject were different than mine, that I would agree that she had her own opinions and we could just agree to disagree, on whatever the subject was. So far it has worked pretty well. I know she doesn’t agree with me sometimes, yet because we have the ability to peacefully coexist we can be two humans with two different sensibilities and still love each like we did when we got started more than 12 years ago. She is a Democrat (for example) and I am a Republican.  Love transcends difference ?

What you cannot really do (in my own humble personal opinion) is ever successfully take back a stupid, mean, hurtful, spiteful thing you say during an argument. Sure you can buy flowers and apologize your butt off, but I think somewhere deep in the recesses of the other parties mind their will always be the nagging doubt that wonders if you really meant what you said when you were mad and were engaged in your "warfare with the enemy". I don’t think you can take it back any easier than you could take back an exploded bomb. You may be able to fill in the hole, but the bomb was still dropped and it still exploded. There was carnage associated with it.

Once you say it, it belongs to you.

Forever.

 

Thankx for reading my rant ! 

 

bigmike

 

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/  

 

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

 

Check out my business at http://answrtek.com

 

 

Fantasy AND Reality - Check Please !!

 

Fantasy is never the same as reality.

 

Sometimes we confuse reality of what we have and deserve with the fantasy of what we want.

 

How many times have you heard yourself or others say “I wish I had a better job”, or “I wish I had a better car”. 

 

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard these phrases and many more just like them in the past 30 years or so.

 

I have probably been guilty of saying it as well, especially when I was much younger.

 

My father was a stern disciplined kind of guy. Mr. No-Nonsense . Usually he meant exactly what he said. If Dad said be home at 10:00 p.m. and you came home at 10:01 p.m., you were still late. No excuses, you were going to catch hell for breaking the rules. He was a hard core teacher in the college of hard knocks. He was serious about most things in life, but all in all I'd say he was a great Dad for a guy like me to have . I liked to break rules and stretch limits and drive my parents absolutely nuts when I was a teenager, but hey Don’t get me wrong, he had his moments where he was over the top, gregarious and a non stop jokester and made up his own ridiculous curse words (because my mother objected to cursing), but for the most part, he believed what he believed and he was a pretty good Dad. He would endlessly repeat the same phrases over and over again until I could (and my 4 brothers could) recite them in our sleep. He loved his family and was married to my mother for about 150 years or so. He wasn't mean or vicious or overbearing , but he had a manner about him which made you listen and bicep muscles that could crack walnuts. He could do almost anything he put his mind to. I once saw him play the trombone ( When the saints come marching in no less) with no training after one of my brothers was griping about how hard it was , and I know for a fact he never had a lesson. He just said what's so hard about putting your lips a certain way and moving this tube back and forth?

 

He used to say things like  “Crap in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills up first” and “People with their heads in the clouds get hit by trucks”. He’d say that no matter what you were going to for a living , for example say if you were …”Going to be a ditch digger, be the best damn ditch digger there ever was”. He had a phrase or a turn of the word for just about everything. the only thing he would not talk about and give advice on was his service in WWII. I understand why now, although at the time I didn't have a clue.

 

This rough hewn simple advice had a morality to it that was pretty rock solid simple. He simply didn’t think that wishing something to be better would ever make it to be better. He always thought positive results were attained through hard work. He didn’t believe in luck or coincidence. He thought the only way to get a pay raise was to work harder for it and demonstrate that you deserved it. Its pretty simple once you strip away the fluff and the chatter and the emotion. You want a better job or better car or a better marriage? Plan for it and work for it and then go after it. Ask yourself “What is it going to take for me to be able to buy a new car?”, find out and then take steps to make it happen.

 

Pretty much the same thing with everything else in life. You know what to do. Your own parents probably told you over and over again. Now you just have to go do it.

 

Nike ( The athletics company) pretty much has it right in this regard "Just do it". That's all it takes.

 

I know at least one of my brothers is going to be shocked to read this rant, because I’m sure he thought I was never paying attention (especially during the 1970's).

 

All I have to say to that is “Semper Fi”.

 

Next :You can’t ever take it back

 

 

Thankx for reading my rant ! 

 

bigmike

 

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/  

 

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

 

Check out my business at http://answrtek.com

 

Enabling is the same as doing it

Being an enabler is about the same thing as doing the deed.

 

What is an enabler , you ask? Truth is it is not all that complicated, it is easy to explain, just hard as hell to personally accept..

 

Here is an example.

 

Say you have a spouse or child or relative or friend who takes about every penny they have and buys drugs or alcohol with it and then consumes said products (in quantity).

 

If they come to you and ask for the money, and you know they are going to buy drugs with it (or whatever), and you give it to them, knowing they are going to buy booze or whatever, then you may as well have bought the booze and poured it down their throat. You have become an enabler. You are their avenue to the funds used to purchase the products. Same thing applies if you give an arsonist matches, a teenager cigarettes or make excuses for someone and how they act with your permission. They are responsible for the act, you enabled them to act the way they did.

 

Don't confuse enabling with Love. You are not showing someone love by buying their addictions for them, they are not showing gratitude by saying thank you when you give it to them. You are hearing their addiction thank you and that is all. Your kid may throw a fit because you won't buy their cigarettes, however if they develop lung cancer will you feel the same way about it if you knew you provided the smokes? They will still get the smokes, they will still smoke, you will not have actively contributed to it in any way though. An alcoholic will drink whether you give them the money or not, they will find a way. Homeless poor ass people smoke every single day with no money at all , sometimes for days at a time, so it is a prime example of meeting your addictions creatively, with no one else contributing willingly to the problem. I've seen it. A homeless person will go to extraordinary lengths to get cigarettes if they really want them. I've seen them take butts from ashtrays in front of businesses, pick them up from the street and then plastic bag them to be re-rolled  later in rolling papers and also straight panhandle them from complete strangers in order to "feed the need". Same thing with money for booze or drugs or anything else really. An alcoholic will suffer through whatever they have to suffer through in order to get their hands on their drink of choice.

 

There is a older guy ( in his 60's) who stands at the Interstate exit near my home about 3 - 4 days a week. He has a sign that says simply "Please help". I asked him one day what happened to the old sign he used to show which said "Will Work for food". He shocked me a little bit with his answer, however I think he was being completely honest. He said, "I don't really want to work, and I'm not really looking for food. I need money." What are you going to do with the money I asked? He said "Go across the road to the ABC liquor store and buy some beer and some cigarettes." At least he was being straight with me I think. I told him he should change the sign to say "I need money", because help is not what he was getting. He laughed. I asked him if he was hungry. He said he was because he had not made enough yet to go eat yet.I went across to the Wendy's restaurant and bought him a #3 combo and a drink and gave it to him. He asked me for some spare change. I told him, "I will feed your nutritional needs, I won't feed your addictions". The cool thing was he said he understood and didn't blame me and he thanked me for the meal.

 

I didn't want the guy to starve, after all this is America for crying out loud. We are the richest country on the planet. Nobody should ever starve in this country. I'll waste the same amount of money I spent on a #3 drinking coffee or reading the Sunday paper, I'm probably not going to miss the $5 at all.

 

I'm not gonna be the guy who makes it OK for him to drink his life away though. 

 

That particular problem belongs to him. 

 

The question is ?... Are you an enabler? Me? I gave it up.

 

Next : Fantasy is never the same as reality.

 

 

 

Thankx for reading my rant ! 

 

bigmike

 

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/  

 

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

 

Check out my business at http://answrtek.com

 

Give money, never loan it

 

Give money to help others, don’t ever loan it

 

I know, before you say it, this sounds like a load of crap doesn’t it? Why in the world would you just give money to another person without an expectation of repayment?

 

Well, before you get too deep in disagreement with me, let me clarify it for you. I never said you couldn’t expect to receive repayment. I just said philosophically, it makes sense to me to call it a gift and not a loan. I know, I’m weird. I think that sometimes we argue over semantics so much that we lose the meanings of what we say in the fiery dust storms of what we meant to say.

 

Here’s the thing.

 

Say for example a friend of yours (a very good friend) asks you for a $500 dollar loan. They promise to pay it back in 30 days. You agree and loan them the money, with the 30 day promise and you agree to a flat interest charge of say 10 %. The person borrows the money with the promise to pay it back plus 10 % in 30 days.

 

45 days go by and no payments come in. 60 days and 90 days go by and no payments come in.

 

You call your friend and can’t reach them.

 

You go by their house and they make excuse after flimsy excuse as to why they don’t have the money.

 

6 months later you still haven’t received a dime back from them as promised for the loan you made.

 

At this point you are probably thinking about your friend in a negative way aren't you?

 

What now? Do you call them all hours of the day and night and make threats ?

 

Are they still your friend? Are you now thinking like a loan shark? Are you gonna send “Vinnie the Nose” to their house to either get your money or break their legs? What exactly are you going to do about the money or about your friendship? How important was your friendship? Lets say you needed the money for something important like a car payment or rent of your own. What the heck do you do now? Chances are you have lost a very good friend forever over a measly $500 and your car payment is going to be late. 

 

Sucks all around doesn't it? You are probably going to say something about whose fault it is or are going to say how the person was not a very good friend because they "lied", about repaying it or something along those lines.

 

I think it is stupid and it makes very little difference who you assign the fault to. I also think you based your deductions about friendships on a very fragile basis if you do.

 

Does this resonate with you at all ?

 

I submit the problem is not the friend. Maybe it is in their agreed intention in promising something they could not deliver, but as they say “The road to hell is paved with good intention”

 

The problem is,  in my humble opinion, is in how you thought about the initial loan in the first place.

 

If you had thought about the money as a gift with a payment plan and you could afford to lose the money, it would not have been any different to you than if you had bought $500 of stock from a company that then went bankrupt. You might have been disappointed that the money was gone maybe forever, but you may still have had a friend. You may have been able to forgive them and help them through a rough patch. You might even have gave them a little more time or even a little more money if they needed it.

 

If you couldn’t afford to give the money away and take a chance on losing it altogether, you couldn’t afford to loan it could you? It's better to tell your friend that you don't have the money to loan than it is to lose a friend over money you couldn't afford to lose, no matter if the amount is thousands of dollars or 10 bucks for gas. The amount in question makes absolutely no difference at all.

 

I think I’d rather have less money and more friends anytime.

 

I wouldn't want you as my friend if you would dump me over money.

 

Next :Enabling is the same as doing it

 

Thankx for reading my rant ! 

 

bigmike

 

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/  

 

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

 

Check out my business at http://answrtek.com

Just Play Nice

 

Just Play Nice, (fighting is a last resort always)

 

OK.

 

If you are responsible for you and for your own actions and you cannot lie to the person staring out at you in the mirror, then why do we fight with each other?

 

The cold truth is if you examine the rationale we use, the reasons are pretty stupid and the rationale is pretty thin. I suppose you could assign all kinds of conditional statements to this observation and make the argument that fighting is sometimes necessary and I would probably agree with you. For example, a soldier fighting for their country under orders to fight, is a valid reason. I can think of dozens of other examples to fight that are probably  legitimate. I am not talking about any of those reasons however where you might say “What if ….you were attacked, you were being mugged, a stranger starts swinging at you, a large person is beating on a small person, etc, etc, etc.

 

I am talking about normal people beating the hell out of each other, verbally and physically, not criminals or gangs fighting for money, drugs etc.

 

Consider the following: According to the U.S. D.O.J, between 1998 and 2002:

• Of the almost 3.5 million violent crimes committed against family members, 49% of these were crimes against spouses.
• 84% of spouse abuse victims were females, and 86% of victims of dating partner abuse at were female.
• Males were 83% of spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderers
• 50% of offenders in state prison for spousal abuse had killed their victims. Wives were more likely than husbands to be killed by their spouses: wives were about half of all spouses in the population in 2002, but 81% of all persons killed by their spouse.

Matthew R. Durose et al., U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 207846, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Family Violence Statistics: Including Statistics on Strangers and Acquaintances, at 31-32 (2005), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fvs.pdf

 

We fight for stupid reasons. We fight because we can’t control our emotions. We fight because we think we are defending a concept (like the so called “respect issue), we fight because we have poor communication skills, we fight because we want to exert control, we fight because we abuse drugs and alcohol, we fight because we are taught to at an early age.

 

Here’s the thing.

 

Fighting usually doesn’t solve anything. Ever. Sure in a war, we may fight and win, but when is the last time you heard about a long successful marriage attributed to a series of good old knockdown drag-out fights? Fighting with each other is a choice. A choice we actively make and usually we lose in one way or another. Even if the fight is just an argument with no blows thrown, we lose. I may have no imagination, but I cannot imagine a scenario where my marriage would be strengthened because I was meaner and nastier than my wife was in our last fight.

 

Remember , you can always add to a conversation , but you can never take back an ugly insult thrown in anger.

 

Like I tell my kids , every time they go out the door "Be Good", your mother probably used to say "Play Nice".

 

Hell of a concept huh?

 

Next : Give Money, Don’t loan it.

 

Thankx for reading my rant ! 

 

bigmike

 

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/  

 

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

 

Check out my business at http://answrtek.com

Try to Lie to the Mirror

 

 

Try to Lie to the Mirror

 

You ever notice how some writers are better at one set of story lines than they are at others? Someone once asked Stephen King why he wrote mostly Horror novels. His answer, while not exactly reproduced here as a quote was something like …”It is what I know and I am good at it”.

 

Makes perfect sense to me.

 

Why does a physically large man beat on his small wife? The answer - Because he can and he is good at it. He chooses to be good at it. Do you think he gets up in the morning , goes into the bathroom, looks into the mirror and says to himself “Today, I will beat her until I can’t see either of her eyes.”  I think if he were the same size as his wife, she would stand a better chance. He is a bully and a criminal because he chooses to be so. He is an idiot to be sure, but it is his choice nonetheless.

 

The point is this.

 

Does the large man know (assuming he is not totally insane and then has absolutely no awareness of his actions) that beating his wife is fundamentally wrong on so many levels that it can’t be explained as a correct and right action no matter how hard he tries? Does he understand that with each blow to his wife all he is doing is exerting physical dominance and assuming control and showing his power over the physically weaker person?  Can you imagine a scenario where he would go into the bathroom the next morning after a horrific beating he gave to his smaller wife the night before, and look in the mirror and be comfortable with his explanation?

 

Could he in affect, lie to himself  and convince himself that he believes he was right to beat her because she shouldn’t have asked him how was his day? Do you think an alcoholic has the same type of conversation with himself? Does he truly believe he is right to drink 7 days a week? Did the guy that robbed the store and shot two people wake up the next morning and say, “I feel good , I think I’ll shoot two more people today !”

 

Of course not.

 

You can lie to everybody else on the planet (and if you are a politician you can lie to everybody on the planet all at once) , and you can spin the truth all you want. You can make up circumstances that explain your actions and may even justify them at some level.

 

What you can’t really do is go look in the mirror and lie convincingly to the one person that truly knows the difference.

 

Try it some time.

 

Next : Just Play Nice

 

 

Thankx for reading my rant ! 

 

bigmike

 

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/  

 

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

 

Check out my business at http://answrtek.com

 

You are responsible for you

 

You are responsible for you

 

A rock thrown from your hand, crashes through a window and breaks it. You threw it on purpose. There could be any number of reasons (even entirely legitimate ones) why you threw the rock, but the facts are the facts. You threw a rock, the window is now broke and you did it. You can blame it on error, the wind, and dumb luck or you can claim it to be an accident, however the facts do not change because you do not like them.

 

You threw the rock and it is your fault the window is now broken.

 

This is a negative example of the thanking God theory from the previous post. It stands to reason that if the winning hit in a baseball game is due to Gods divine intervention, then the rock being thrown and the window being broken is because God did not intervene? Or is it because free will dictates the outcome?

 

I think it is more likely that the hitter practiced a lot and the pitcher threw a pitch that the hitter could hit. I don’t think it had a lot to do with intervention. God may have set him up for the hit by allowing his mind to be clear , by allowing his body to exercise, by keeping him focused and giving him good eyesight, but ultimately I think when he stepped into the batters box, God pretty much said “OK kid, lets see what you’ve got”.

 

The hitter (or the rock thrower) is responsible for the outcome.

 

The CEO got a Hummer because he convinced a bunch of other rich people to allow him to have the money to get one.

 

A team wins, a CEO gets rich, a murderer kills and a rapist rapes because they choose at some level to do so. The same factors are in play in most every case, with very little exception. Mental illness may be one area where this does not apply as handily, but then you have to believe that it is our divine self interest to have people wandering around committing mass murder.

 

Life is a series of choices. We come upon “T’s” in the road all them time. If we go left we shoplift a candy bar. If we go right, we pay for it. Simple as that and inescapable at the same time. You are responsible for you. You win, your fault. You lose, your fault. You don’t play, again, your fault.

 

Easy – Peezy. Nothing to it.

 

Next : Try to Lie to the Mirror

 

 

Thankx for reading my rant ! 

 

bigmike

 

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/  

 

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

 

Check out my business at http://answrtek.com