JUDGMENT DAY, USA

Oh, the clamor and the rancor of it all! The saga of the pompous American philandering potentates continues. Two governors of New York and one mayor of Detroit have joined the growing “BILL CLINTON SOCIETY OF ETHICS AND MORALS.” Oh, we hear, “The Democratic Party is disintegrating,” as if the Republicans are epitomes of sainthood.

Well, the new New York governor is undoubtedly going to keep his job. Who cares if he does coke, pot and screws around? He’s black and half-blind, so he gets a free pass.

Rationalizing right along… There was the mayor of Washington, D.C., (so happens to be our nation’s capitol), who bought and sold cocaine and took bribes, got tossed out of office on his way to jail, served time and got re-elected…. Well, he was black and everyone knows that the charges were trumped up, anyway, (forget the video).

How about some non-political idols? The daughter of a well-known and famous hotelier who did porno films, modeling, high-class acting, coke and booze…. That’s her, the one who thumbed her nose at the law and did a couple of days in the pokey because of it. Or her actress friend, also a porno star, coke and booze addict, mother…. who continues to be followed by flocks of reporters and to headline nightly entertainment news?

Let’s not forget the President who approved of the burglary at a Washington office and apartment complex, then actively participated in the cover-up until the day Congress decided to pass an article of impeachment against him, thereby forcing him to resign. Well, that was okay, of course, because of his great China policy, so he deserved…was entitled to…a Presidential pardon.

And, of course, the “other” President, who lied under oath, pardoned hundreds of federal prisoners on his way out the door, sanctioned the pillaging of White House computers and office equipment as his helicopter lifted him for the last time…the guy who gave new meaning to the word, “is.” He’s got a cute southern drawl, beautiful hair, and a nation full of sex-crazed women dying to know what’s so different about “the angle of his dangle.”

Try and teach your kids about morals and ethics in THIS climate!

Now, then, back to the Presidential campaign: we have, on the one hand, a candidate who shocks the nation into reality when they discover that he’s been going to church and listening to hate-white-America speeches for 20 years. Come on, people! The guy is a smooth talker, carries himself well, and he’s black. That is all any of us knew about him, absolutely nothing else, and we stood ready to elect him to the highest office in the land.

On another hand, we have a female candidate, wife of a former President, who herself is tainted by several legal scandals, degrades those who guard her by calling them all kinds of derogatory names, bullies her friends, buries her enemies, and who openly was a member of and supported an anti-American political group during college. Now, she gets caught in a lie, calls her chief opponent on his choice of churches, and we are finally ready to dump her?

Is it not ironic that half of the nation’s registered voters are still ready to elect one of those two to the Presidency?

On the third hand, we have a candidate who was the closest of friends with Charles Keating of the famous “Keating Five,” who was the chief investigative Senator into the doings of Jack Abramoff, the now-imprisoned lobbyist who raped tribal treasuries and paid off members of Congress for illegal favors. The Senator, in leading his committee to indict Abramoff, managed to escape his own receipt of contributions by giving it back and he refused to investigate other members of Congress who were accused of being on the Abramoff take. But, since he spent a few years in a Viet Nam prison sucking on rice, the other half of the nation’s registered voters are ready to put him on Pennsylvania Avenue.

What I don’t get, in all of this, is the audacity of the American electorate when they denied the opportunity to be President to one guy because he spends $400 on haircuts, another one because he’s “too Christian” and another because he’s a Mormon.

Obviously, we Americans do have our priorities in life straight, don’t we?

I vote we quit the pretenses and get rid of our ethical and moral mores so we can sleep well at night. Frankly, I’m tired of tossing and turning over it.

I must end now. I see my neighbor has gone off to work and here’s my opportunity to go over there and screw his wife.

Obama: Let Those Of us Who Are Without Sin Cast The First Stone!

I first visualized this piece as being a self-righteous diatribe on the subject of blame. I was going to point out that our society is moving further and further away from acceptance of the responsibilities for our own actions. We have rationalized the word "blame" away... almost into extinction.

As I worked my way into this epistle, I was going to point out that Obama has become almost "Clintonesque," in the sense that he first appeared on FOX and denied that, over a 20-year period of going to "that church," he had never heard the Reverend "Wright" say a "wrong" thing. As that obvious fabrication festered over the weekend, Obama's camp realized that their numbers were dropping and they had better do some serious damage control.

So, Obama went on nationwide television and came "clean." Yes, he had been to "that church," yes, he had heard some of "those words," yes it was disturbing to him, and the good Reverend was retiring and no longer active in the Obama campaign. Then, he stepped into the bucket of poopoo that this article was going to be about. He started to justify the offense.

Does this all sound like Bill Clinton, or not?

"The man is like a father to me. He married us, he baptized our kids, my mother was white, we lived in a poor neighborhood, my father came from Kenya, the slaves were mistreated, the subject of race in this country has been simmering for decades......" Therefore, and in the best interests of the future of our country and the coming together of black and white... and brown.... let us forget the mistakes of my past and press on to the greater mistakes of my future, because they should be automatically excused as well. Is it not natural that those last words would follow?

I was going to elaborate on this. We have become a nation of people who are unwilling to accept the blame for our actions. The girl literally screwed a governor out of his job, but that's okay because she had a troubled childhood and left home at the age of 17. The guy shot his mom and dad to death and stuck an axe in his sister's head, but that's okay because he was getting a failing grade in math. That guy over there grabbed a shotgun and a pistol and killed 43 people, but that's okay because guns should be outlawed.

Actually, Obama's speech would have played much better with me if he he had stood before the nation and said, "Yes, that's my church. Yes, I go there most Sundays. Yes, I know Reverend Wright said those things. But, that doesn't mean I am guilty of saying or doing wrong things myself by association. Judge me not for my associations and what they say, judge me for what I do and how I, Barrack Hussein Obama, act. But, sadly, by the end of his speech I halfway expected him to start discussing the definition of the word...."is."

Were this guy to become our President, and were Al Queda to invade our country and bomb our bridges and kill our citizens, would Obama say.... "That's okay, because they live under rocks in the desert and they don't eat well?"

Then, I was going to start alluding to my own life, and to expound on the fact that "guilt by association" is not a fair way to judge people. And this is where I ran into trouble.

I spent over 30 years in the casino industry at upper management level positions. In my early days in Vegas, there was no way that someone in my job would not encounter, or even "associate" with, some pretty dark characters. Does that mean I ever killed anyone? No. Does that mean I never got a hooker for a customer?

Wham! I hit the wall of my self-righteousness.

Have I ever lied? Have I have stolen? Have I ever used the "N" word? How many of us in this country in this year of 2008 can deny ever doing something wrong in our lives? Now that is a profound realization and most difficult to put your arms around and embrace. Maybe, it dawns on me, we should not be so quick to judge Barrack Obama.

Does that mean that I am going to back Obama and vote for him? Hell no, he's way too far left for me. Besides, I think there's more damaging stuff to come to the surface about Barrack. But, I'm not going to throw him under the bus for attending "that church," either. If any one needs to be thrown under the bus first for their misdeeds, it's the Clintons. That's a fact you cannot deny if you give it enough pause to fully consider it.

So, don't be in such a hurry to cast the first stone. Judge not that ye be judged.

In closing, this will offend some but, it will also serve to exemplify how I view race. To me, there is no difference between brown and black and white. It's what is in the heart and soul of the person wearing that skin that matter to me. For that reason, and that reason alone, my opinion of the Reverend Wright is that he's nothing but a damned nigger.

I said it, I meant it, and I accept the blame for doing it.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly And The Face Of God

I have just encountered one of the most unpleasant slaps in the face of reality that I think anyone could ever face.

Let me begin by rationalizing my hatred of an untenable and unlivable marriage away. In this process, I will reach an ugly truth.

She was a lovable thing, vivacious and beautiful and wealthy in more ways than one. She had a healthy sexual appetite and, all things on the surface would add up to every man's dream. But, there was something wrong with her psyche. I think she was bipolar.... manic depressive? She could switch from being so wonderful, so great.... to such a bitch.... not in the middle of a sentence, but in the middle of a word. And, "bitch" was the understatement; it was pure hell trying to cope with her and I eventually gave up. So did her prior two husbands.

I hated her. She screwed me out of a verbal commitment regarding our new house that, if honored, would have netted me about $125,000 in profit. Then, she lied under oath at the trial and that cost me about $20,000 in cash. I accused her of being Satan on the face of the earth, and that was probably another understatement.

She just died of cancer...head to toe.

So, I'm driving down the road contemplating the goodness of God when the ugly realization hits me. I could have been responsible for her death.

The rationale here is this. Most medical professionals will tell you that, when the chips are down with a patient, prayer helps. The more prayers, it seems, the more strength the patient has to fight whatever it is that's dogging him. I myself know of several instances where the patient has been given a limited amount of time to live and he / she has beaten the odds.... But, a large number of people were actually praying for the recovery and the strength to make it happen.

Now, then, if positive prayers will give strength to the injured and sick, will negative prayers and thoughts have the opposite effect? There was a guy in Vegas who was an accountant for a casino and he was a total asshole. Everyone hated his guts. He was riding his Harley down a Utah highway one day and ran smack into the radiator of a Mack Truck. Did everyone's hatred and negative thoughts about him actually lead to his death?

If positive prayer can heal, can negative prayer hurt? It would seem to me that the answer is logical. If the power of prayer can do one thing, cannot it do the opposite? Maybe therein lies the lesson that we need to learn to forgive people of their trespasses against us.

You know, she was possessed by mental and physical demons beyond my ability to control. Yet, the goodness in her shined out many times and many ways. Do I have the right to condemn her to death because her soul is trapped in a physical body that had problems?

With all of the hatred in the world today, where religions, politicians, ethnic groups.. you name it... where everyone builds their animosities toward each other, is there any ultimate end to all of this beside annihilation of ourselves and each other? When the last shot is fired or that last bomb goes off, who is going to be left to forgive anyone?

Well, in final retrospect, I guess that there will then be no one left to blame.