Halloween Used to be Fun

As a kid of 8 I liked Halloween. It was the only night of the year I was allowed to roam the streets at night. I had to be responsible for my brother and sister, but so what? I was out at night like Batman. My dad figured it was safe enough because we lived on a naval base in Hawaii. Before that, we lived in South Central L.A.(aw, HELL NO), on a country road in Japan, and a naval base in Guam (Dad had to walk with us). After about an hour trick or treating, my sister had enough and we brought her home. My brother and I emptied our bags and went back out. I was dressed in this store-bought fake spider guy costume and my brother was a clown. We walked to the very edges of the neighborhood and came home well rewarded about 10 pm. We thought we might be in trouble since our usual school night bedtime was 8:30. The old man didn't care because it was Halloween and he didn't have to go out with us. He also rifled through our candy and took a few Reese's peanut butter cups.

When I was 9, my parent's bought the family home in Granada Hills, California. My sister didn't want to go out for Halloween. Our baby brother was only 2. So it was just me and Geoff. I don't remember our costumes. All I remember it was cold and windy. Most of the kids wore coats over their costumes. What kind of superhero or monster wears a plaid coat? When I got home, I soaked in the tub to get feeling back in my joints. The next Halloween we wore costumes that kept us warm. I was a USC football fan complete with jacket and beanie.

My dad died of a massive heart attack when I was eleven. After that, Halloween was like any other night except for the costumes. When I was 13, I discovered this trunk my dad had with his gear from Viet Nam. That's right, my dad fought in 'Nam. I found all this authentic military gear--US Navy fatigues, boots, a knife, L-shaped flashlight, and floppy hat--all I needed was an M-16 (a toy version I found at some local toy store). I had extra uniforms for my friends Charlie and Joey. My brother Geoff didn't want to hang with us because he was too busy smoking weed with his friends. Except for our pillow cases, we looked awesome. About an hour into our rounds,
we stop at this house. "Trick-or-Treat" we scream. This long-haired guy comes out and shuts the door behind him. He then proceeds to lecture us about the "baby-killers" we represented and the evils of our troops. Confused, we just stared at each other.
I told the hippie to F*** off. My dad was my hero and nobody was going to bad-mouth
him. This was 1978.

Two years later, I went out on Halloween with Charlie and my friend, Dave. Dave and I just wore our suits we wore for Jr. High graduation. We were modern day pimps complete with gold chains. Country music was all the rage because of the movie, Urban Cowboy, so Dave borrowed a cowboy hat with feathers to be a cowboy pimp. Charlie painted his face to look like Peter Criss from Kiss and wore a brown leather trenchcoat with no pants. He was a flasher. We didn't go out for candy. We just walked around and visited people we knew. Half of them offered us bong hits. Dave and I declined. I'd like to say that was the last time I dressed up for Halloween, but I did it one more time.



In 1986, I stopped at a Halloween party with my girlfriend (now wife) just to say hello. We were not in costume. Charlie was there dressed as a caveman with some cavegirl I've long forgotten. My friends, Gary and Bret, were dressed as Arab sheiks and kept offering to buy my girlfriend. As we observed the crowd, I noticed how skanky the women were dressed: "Head" nurses with knee pads, French maids, schoolgirls, and hookers. We left for dinner and a movie.

In 1988, my wife and I ended up at a Halloween Party in the house they claim Debra Winger, actress from the aforementioned Urban Cowboy, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Terms of Endearment supposedly grew up. The same Debra Winger recently called for the release of child-rapist and fugitive, Roman Polanski. I have no idea who invited us but we got there late and people were hammered. My wife came as Raggedy Ann and I was Raggedy Andy. My costume was designed for someone about 5' 8", 175 lbs. I'm 6' and weighed 198 lbs. at the time so it didn't look good. I wore the sailor hat/yarn wig but I refused to paint my face. I haven't worn a costume since.

My former employer liked for us to dress for Halloween when the psycho employees and their clothes matched. My boss ordered my department to dress up. We said no. She insisted. We compromised. All but one of us wore matching glasses and a red ball-nose. She wasn't happy, but she never asked again. Two employees I can't forget: One was an artist/bodybuilder that most of the women wanted, before he came out of the closet and dressed as a playboy bunny. He might have made some guy happy, but he died of AIDS a few short years later. Another was a girl who showed up dressed to the nines in a black party dress, high heels, hair and make-up. Although she normally sounded like a girl, she dressed like a male college student. After our applause she volunteered she might have looked this way more often if her uncle hadn't repeatedly molested her when she was a little girl. How do you forget that one?


My daughter was born in 1993. She loves Halloween. Over the years she has dressed as Big Bird (twice), Tinkerbell (twice), Snow White (the irony), a dancer, and a Fanta Girl (Orange). This year she wanted to dress as a nun. Yes, a skanky nun with fishnets and high heels. She tried the costume on for us. My wife and I consider ourselves reponsible parents. We fought with her about it. It has since been returned. In two years, she'll be 18, a legal adult. Then it's on her.

Halloween is no longer that one day we get dressed up a play pretend. It has become SKANK IT UP, GET HAMMERED, AND GET LAID IF YOU CAN night. It caters way more to adults than children and it has become a huge business. I'm all for businesses making lots of money. Let's just keep our underage kids of the pole as l;ong as we can....

Conservative vs. Liberal

This was sent to me by one of our readers:

Good Thoughts...

If a conservative doesn't' like guns, he doesn`t buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegeta! rian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful.
Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Back Off Nanny State! Why Government Doesn't Know What's Best For You

Sigh... People who believe the government should take care of you. That we are too stupid or incompetent to take care or ourselves, that somehow wee need a cradle to grave nanny state. Here's another I told you so! Government forcing companies to put calorie listings on the wall because supposedly when consumers see the amount of calories on the wall they'll start to consume fewer calories which will lead to leas obesity and less health conditions that are damaging to consumers. So all the government slobs who want to control everybody's life and think, "If we just had the proper education, if we just required business to do the right thing, then people will eat more healthy." Guess what? It turns out all the big governrment slobs were wrong. Not just wrong, but DEAD WRONG!

A study was recently done by several professors at NYU and Yale whether or not calorie postings actually changed people's behavior. They tracked consumers of four fast food restaurant chains; McDonald's, Wendy's Burger King, and KFC. They did it in poor areas of New York where there are high rates of obesity. Half of the customers noticed the calorie counts. 28% of the customers that noticed them said it influenced their ordering. 9/10 said they has made healthier choices as a result. The researchers checked their receipts and found out that people had actually ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law had went into effect! Not only where they wrong about how these calories posting would effect behavior, the people that they poled lied.

New York City is one the nanny cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles filled with government officials who know better. They think as they stoke their beards, "I know what we can do with these poor fat people. We'll just inform them, we'll educate them and it will change their consuming habits." NO!

Nobel "Peace" of Garbage

On September 11, 2001, I turned on the TV to see what looked like an abstract picture that made no sense. One of the World Trade Towers was on fire and the other was gone. Someone was giving a report but it sounded like “Blah blah blah” to me. I was transfixed on the image that didn’t make any sense. Fast forward to this morning. Some story was being reported on CNN but all I could focus on was the box in red below: President Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. After I got over the shock, I started laughing.

When I was 13, the award went to Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel for negotiating peace between their two countries. The next year, Mother Teresa won it for work with the poor, sick, and dying in India. Back then, the Nobel Committee cared about results. Today’s award was akin to giving out trophies to kids who just signed up to play AYSO soccer before the season even started. I bet the guy who won for Science just rubbed two sticks together and made FIRE. Was President Obama awarded for his magnificent (We Are the World) rhetoric, great many speeches, and TV appearances and magazine covers? Doubt it—it’s because he’s not George W. Bush. Fear not, this all happened for J-Lo (sans rhetoric and speeches) and everyone got sick of her, too.

Just yesterday, the Obama Administration was having meetings on what to do about the WAR in Afghanistan. By his accepting this “prestigious” award has the Nobel Committee hamstrung the President? It was bad enough President “I will listen to my generals on the ground for real answers , not just what I want to hear” is hemming and hawing on giving General McChrystal the additional soldiers he has requested to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Now he has to worry about being President of the World. I daresay it makes me laugh. Instead of troops, he can send Afghanistan 40,000 blankets—winter will be there soon.

Today the Nobel Committee gave an award for HOPE and CHANGE. Without accomplishing very much, the President HOPE’s to do things to advance peace by doing things that will make America weaker. A weaker America will allow CHANGE for the worse. There will come a day in the world of grown-ups that the President make decisions that will propel our military into action. Our troops will crush whatever opposing force (Iran) is in the way. Then the fickle world who loved him so much will throw him under the bus.

Lastly, I want to give a shout out for former President Bill Clinton. The man was our President for two terms. He’s raised billions through his foundations for humanitarian causes all over the world. He was once called our “first Black President”. One term President Jimmy Carter has a Nobel Peace Prize. Former VICE President Al Gore has a Nobel Peace Prize. Dead terrorist and PLO leader Yassir Arafat received a Nobel Peace Prize. If Vice President Joe Biden gets one before Slick Willy, it would really show what a worthless award it truly has become.

Cap and Trade: How Obama is an economic illiterate

In January of last year, then candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board under his plan of a cap and trade, electricity prices would "skyrocket." He said it would bankrupt coal, gas, and all sorts of traditional power plants. Keep in mind that these power plants actually make power and cheap power. Obama seems to be illiterate on basic economics.

Politicians want to seem like they're "doing something" when in reality all they are really doing is waving around a piece of paper. Not even the Kyoto treaty would detectably impact climate change. They all want to say this did something, but of course they don't want to go on the record of  voting for a direct tax because that's transparent and that threatens the jobs of any member who votes for it. So they come up with a brilliant shame called cap and trade. It's a rationing scheme with a number (the cap). The state decides how much of something the private sector can use. Like nylons or gasoline in WW II, this is is gasoline and electricity from disfavored sources, or in shorthand electricity production that actually works. They set a cap and allocate allowances (rationing coupons) to use electricity. You can sell them if you for fail or move and, you have to buy them if you succeed or stay here.

Now as always on this blog, I disclose all. The cap and trade does not put an electricity limit on every company. However, that's part of the scheme. The Obama admisntiartion says not to worry; that it only covers energy intensive sectors such as energy production, manufacturing, steel, ceramics, glass, chemicals/plastics. What's there to worry about right? None of those things factory into the economy... huh? The same types of companies that have been hit really hard in Euerope with their own cap and trade regulations will be hit really hard here. In order to use the extra electricity they need, they'll have to buy electricity credits from other companies that aren't using their limit of electricity. Those who commit the ultimate sin in America today which is to succeed and those who succeed domestically will have to buy more of these allowances from someone who fails. So the incentive to fail is great, or for example as we saw under Kyoto in Europe the following happens. When cap and trade went into effect in Europe, China reopened old refrigerant factories and said, "Nice treaty you have here, it'd be a shame if you violated it. Of course I could shut down this factory I just reopened for the purpose of being paid to shut it down. If you give me a bag of money, I'll give you a piece of paper saying YOU REDUCED YOUR EMISSIONS. That's all part of the cap and trade scheme, and part of the mess you will always get into when the government sticks its big fat sticky hand into the private sector,

HOW MUCH WILL ITS COST YOU?
The administration expects to raise in revenue from 100-300 billion dollars a year. Just to put this in perspective, the biggest tax in American history, adjusted for inflation was that tax issued to pay off WW II which was $107 billion per year. This will be by far the biggest tax increase in American history. What it does mean to the average household? A CBS reporter said 200 billion lifted from you wallet would be the equivalent of a 15% increase in income tax or about $1761.00 per household on average!

The president's budget director testified recently testified to congress saying, "Consumers pay these taxes. Believe it or not, businesses pass taxes on to the extent they can (did congress really not understand this concept?), and of that they can't, they leave." It's pretty frightening that congress didn't understand a really basic economics principle. But then again, it appears that Obama is an economic illiterate.

So the cost to the average cost to the consumer just for buying the allowances would be that figure. Now you take to the overall loss to the economy and increased prices for everything that has energy in it. Start with energy itself, electronic goods, anything that requires energy intensive manufacturing, appliances, food for example. The cost of everything that has energy in its life cycle goes up. That means it hurts the poor and seniors first and worst because they spend a lager portion of their income of food on electricity and transportation.

Thank goodness that it's currently stalled out in the senate, for now. Most people just don't realize how damaging to the economy this would be. Cap and trade is a horrible idea and another example of the disastrous results of big government.

Absent-In-Chief

The Story of Stuff is a very frightening animated documentary about the product life cycle by political activist Annie Leonard. The video was sponsored by the Tides Center, a non-profit group that provides sponsorship for progressive projects. The documentary is being shown in elementary schools, although it has been banned in some school districts. The video criticizes excessive consumerism which in it self doesn't sound so bad. After all I do think we are a little too materialistic sometimes. Annie introduces the government with the image of a tank "Some people think we should use a tank to represent the government. After all the government spends half our tax dollars on the military. It's the government's job to watch out for us, take care of us; that's their job." (The figure she presents is very inaccurate. She got the figure from the War Resistors League website. The figure is more accurately ranged at 20-25% which I feel is way too low).
 
What!? Last time I checked the job of the government was to protect us. In specific, it's the job of the federal government is to protect us from foreign and domestic enemies. Last time I checked, the job of the president was commander-in-chief, not a spokesman for a government run health care program. So far Obama is doing a pretty good job of getting his voice out there. He's made appearances on David Letterman, ESPN, The Obama Channel (MSNBC), and every Sunday news morning political talk show except Fox News. Fox News is the cable news network with the highest ratings by the way, but that's beside the point. His voice is sure getting out there although the public by a majority is against his proposed government run health care option.

Now when it comes to Obama's job as president, absent-in chief seems more fitting. So far our "commander-in-chief" has managed to have time to schedule t.v. appearances, but was only able to speak with Stanley McChrystal once since his inauguration in January. So far he has cut the defense budget, abandoned our Eastern-European allies with the missile defense shield, tried to close Guantanamo, and has demoralized the CIA. Some how we are suppose to believe we are more safe? When it comes to Obama's most sacred responsibility he clearly is failing.

America is Burning

The unemployment rate hovers at about 9.8 per cent. Home foreclosures are still on the rise. Personal bankruptcies are still on the rise. Heath care “reform” battles take place every single day on television.

General Stanley McChrystal, America’s top general in Afghanistan, is asking for more troops to better fight the Taliban. Iran tests both short and long range missiles capable of hitting Israel, the Arab world, and Europe. America decides to pull missiles for defense out of Poland and the Czech Republic to concentrate on the Aegis System, which was state-of-the-art when I was in high school. All these challenges confronting America and what does the President do? An Olympic run to Copenhagen!

American ideals are burning down all around us (literally in my area of Southern California) and the President and First Lady fly to Copenhagen on Air Force One to persuade the International Olympic Committee to give the 2016 Summer Games to their beloved city of Chicago. First, the First Lady gives a laughable speech about herself and her late father. There were a lot of “I” and “he” statements but not much about what CHICAGO would bring to the table. Then the President spoke and it just got worse. It was a mixture of “I Have a Dream”, “We Are the World”, and “I was in Chicago on election night last November when America chose me, an historic event if you recall…” Again, not much about what CHICAGO would do for the Olympics. Chicago was eliminated in the first round of voting.

As Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer puts it, “It seems to me that a lot of the Obama Presidency is a contest between his intelligence and his arrogance…” Our President couldn’t convince the IOC to grant us the Olympics and he thinks he can convince Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program? Well...yeah!

The worst thing that happened to the Obama’s Administration was rushing through and passing the stimulus bill. We all got to see the President’s arrogance in action. Very few of us were familiar with Chicago-Styled politics but we now can see it on a national scale. It was supposed to save or create jobs and keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent. Somehow we got to 9.8. Good thing those earmarks were in it.

During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, he made all kinds of promises that constituted HOPE and CHANGE:

Transparency in government
More troops to Afghanistan (the real war of necessity)
Close Guantanamo
End the war in Iraq (the war of choice)
Repeal “Don’t’ Ask, Don’t Tell”



Now the President’s job approval rating is at 49 percent and dropping. Could it be that he might be taking America in the wrong direction? Nah…we’re just idiots.