Spankings need to be brought back!

When I was growing up, I was a wild child. I was crazy, self-absorbed, and destructive. I remember, clearly, discovering, at a young, that it was possible to break bricks; especially patio bricks. I made this discovery at the expense of my parents patio in our house in Michigan. I thought this was the neatest thing ever. You know who didn’t? Mom. Who thought even less of this? Dad. I got one of those “Wait till your dad comes home” lectures; and when he did, it was bad. You know what, I never broke bricks like that again.

There were many things that I caught butt-whoopin’s (spanking for my non-southern readers) for, and I can not think of an instance where this was repeated. I remember that I once answered a math homework (in the third grade) with successive numbers because I didn’t want to do the work; and, yup, I caught a whoopin. I never slacked on math homework again. In fact, I did not start repeating bad behaviors until I got too old for spankings.

Why do I say this? Because people let their kids run wild these days. I have a friend whose kid will just beat on people. You know he doesn’t beat on? Me; because after he popped me I popped him back and said, “It ain’t too fun when people hit back, huh?” I see these holy terrors running amuck in public places, and their parents try to negotiate with them, to no avail. It seems that we have given up decency, courtesy, respect, and other components of proper public behavior in our children so the children can be well adjusted, and the adults can be high-minded progressives.

I don’t know, I turned out okay, considering, and I had my backside tanned more than once. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can tell you this, it is wrong for me to be the person that has to teach a kid that hitting adults is not okay.

Later,

B

P.S. To those in my family who might read this, you are probably saying to yourself, “Brian talks tough, but he’d never do that to my kid.” If you kid hits me in the shamrocks, he/she is getting smacked.

Adventures in Travel

So, last Tuesday, May 13th, I was traveling to Montreal, yet again. What makes this trip special is that I was traveling from O'Hare instead of Indy. (Why? Because I needed to be in Chicago Friday, and I didn't want the extra driving when I returned Thursday) So, Monday morning, I scrambled around to get packed, and to get to work. I got my suit, clean clothes, undergarments, and toiletries.

So, I get to Sara’s, in Brighton Park, early Monday evening, plenty of time to enjoy hanging out with Mark, Sara, and Eli. (Except Sara was in Wisconsin.) I went to bed at a reasonable time, because I had to get up at o’Dark Thrity to make my 6:00am plane. I get on the Stevenson, to get the Dan Ryan, to get to 90 (I’m not sure if the 90, after the split, is the Kennedy or the Edens) to 190 to O’Hare. I park my truck in the econo lot way far away from the terminals, get on the tram, and head to the United check in.
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I would like to take this time to state the following: while I am a conservative, and I believe in National Security, I think the Department of Homeland Security has their collective heads shoved up their collective asses. I think FEMA was more effective post-Katrina than the DHS has ever been.
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So, I’m walking up to the back of the line and I open the pouch on my laptop case to grab my passport. SHIT, WHERE’S MY PASSPORT? Oh, no, I forgot it. I quickly ask the ticketing lady do I REALLY need a passport to go to America North? As they replied in the affirmative my heart sank: my passport is in my apartment in Indy.

I race out of the terminal (a mistake, addressed in a little bit), get on the tram, exit the econo parking (losing my cherry parking spot), get on the 190, then 90, then the Dan Ryan, then 80/94, then 65 towards Indy. At 7:00am Central time I call the travel company that Stanley uses and explain my screw up. They asked me if I checked in, which is a big fat NO, and then tell me I’m listed as a no show. At this time, I’m doing 95 mph on I-65 30 miles outside of Indy (did I mention that it takes $80 to fill up my gas guzzler) and I explain to the lady that I must make it to Montreal that night, and that within the hour I’ll have my passport. She tells me that she’ll talk to United and see what’s up.

I get to my apartment, take a shower, clean up, and put my passport in my wallet. The travel agent lady, Angela, calls me back and tells me that I can book a flight on Northwest to Montreal from Indy for $1,600 (good God, no) or get a new United flight out of O’Hare for an extra $1,000 (Oh God, I’m getting shit-canned.) After inquiring if there are any options that don’t require me being disgraced and fired she tells me if I can make it back to O’Hare by 2:00 PM Chicago time I can fly stand-by to Montreal: I’ll take the Deal Howie. I get to O’hare, get sent to the wrong line twice, and end up checking in. At the counter I’m told I can fly stand-by, or I can buy a guaranteed seat for an extra $100. At this point I whip out my American Express card and buy a seat.

The silver lining is this: low-level peons (that’d be yours truly) are required to fly the dirtiest, cheapest coach class they can find, no exceptions, but this guaranteed seat was a coach-plus/economy-plus seat, I was able to have an extra 6-inches (women, insert inappropriate comment here; I can’t believe I’m related to you dirty, old-birds) of leg room for my 2 hour trip to Montreal.

That is my ordeal of my trip to Montreal.

Later,

B

A Convenient Realization

Sometimes one must see one’s actions reflected back to them, by another person committing them, to see how atrocious they really are. Now, I’m a dyed in the wool conservative, and I’m proud of it. I think of people like John Leo, John McCain, Milton Friedman, some of the more sane radio personalities, etc when I think of Conservatives. To me a conservative is a person who believes in self-reliance and the idea with the proper incentives that most people will do good, and live a good life. To a certain degree, most conservatives, myself included, believe that there is a certain minimum moral standard that is grounded in right versus wrong; however, the minimally acceptable bar isn’t that high.

Now, the conservatives have their nut jobs: Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, any televangelist, and, of course, Bill O’Reilly. Now, I’ve always thought these folks were kind of, a little bit of, douche-bags. They were little off base, maybe a bit too far off into the tall weeds on some of the issues; but, apart from a few transgressions, not that bad of folks. I was wrong, dead wrong. How did I come to this realization? Two words: Keith Olbermann.

Keith Olbermann was a former anchor for ESPN. While he was there, he was a great anchor, maybe a little preachy and self-important, but great on Sportscenter. He was hired away by MSNBC, and there he has become the left’s answer to Bill O’Reilly. The guy is a douche-bag on the level equal to, or greater than, the previous list of douche-bags plus one. The guy’s snide-ness, holier-than-thou attitude, and pandering to the left is deplorable. I would say pandering to the Democrats, but he is so far off into the Coo-coo for Crazy Puffs land that it would be disrespectful to Democrats to say this guy is pandering to them.

After watching a few clips of this guy on YouTube, I came to the conclusion that his method of comporting himself was disgusting. Then the realization hit (much in the vein of ‘if you point your finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you’): this guy is a huge douche-bag and he is acting just like Bill O’Reilly, just with opposite politics. I no longer thing that the conservative shills are kinda douche-bags, they are full on douche-bags.

Bah, there are so few good commentators out there anymore. I think that John Leo, while very conservative, does a very good job of making good arguments and of keeping the conversation civil. I know that there must be people on the left who do this, I just don’t know them. (NPR does a good job of keeping their news and commentary civil, but they’re an organization, not and individual.) I just wish there was more intellectual discussion and less of the meta-arguments and ad-hominine attacks.

Later,

B