Friday, June 20, 2008

Short-sighted

Obviously it's not a great insight to realize that people often act against their own best interests in pursuit of short-term gain, on both big and small issues. People care more about the economy now than global catastrophe in the future, corporations care more about the next quarter's earning report than about the long-term survival of the company, people smoke knowing that it's going to ruin their health one way or another. Sometimes something strikes you that brings it home, though.

I briefly met a woman earlier today who appeared to be in her 40's. She's attractive, well-dressed, obviously takes care of her appearance, etc... But she had skin that was just this side of leather. She had clearly spent a lot of time sunbathing or sitting under a tanning light. It amazes me, that with all the evidence walking around among us attesting to the damage that sun does to your skin (to say nothing of cancer), people will still sacrifice the health and appearance of their skin for a few years of bronzy glory. I for one don't see why people like the bronze look so much anyway. In any case, this woman would have looked noticeably more attractive with smooth, unwrinkled skin. And hey, it's her body, but since she clearly takes pride in her appearance, it seems out of place.

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6 comments:

Toast said...

I for one don't see why people like the bronze look so much anyway.

Amen to that. I love pale skin.

Anonymous said...

In response to those who say I have no good reasons to vote for McCain over Obama, having been a Hillary supporter, here are my reasons:
OBAMA IS NOT QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT AND COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
WHY?
No one can name a single important achievement for this man.
For the record, Barack Hussein Obama is a first term U.S. Senator. Obama served only 146 days as a new senator before deciding he was qualified to be president, at which time he largely stopped his duties as senator to campaign for the highest office in the land.
Do you really believe 146 days of on the job training makes one an expert on anything? Yet it is Obama’s greatest accomplishment, in terms of qualifications for president.
Obama claims he’s a “Uniter.”
A “uniter” of whom? A black community organizer, in the tradition of a rabble rouser. Also a twenty year member of a black activist church, run by overtly anti-American racist pastors, a friend to anti-capitalism leftists in search of proletariat control of all private resources and assets. And he’s a husband of a woman who only became proud of America for the first time in her life, when it became clear that her husband might become the DNC nominee.
But “uniter?” How? No evidence of his uniting ability.
Under great political duress, candidate Obama denounces his life-long spiritual leader and his church of twenty years and has even withdrawn his family from that church. But before the nation became familiar with his religion of racism, he described his relationship with Rev. Wright this way…
“What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice. He’s much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I’m not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that’s involved in national politics.”
And what does Obama know about National Security?
Can anyone list Barack Obama’s national security experience? Does he have military experience? Intelligence gathering experience? What is it on Barack Obama’s empty resume’ that offers us some proof that he knows anything at all about securing a nation of 300 million?
There is NOTHING in Obama’s past which gives even the slightest indication that he is in any way qualified to be Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, and responsible for national security. Nothing! And we are a nation currently at war with a nearly invisible international enemy of the most brutal kind.
Can Obama lower gas prices?
Like almost every Democrat politician, Obama sees the temporary gas price crisis as only an opportunity to grab more private resources and central power. Democrats are already calling for taxing oil companies into lower gas prices, as if those oil companies will not pass 110% of those taxes down to the consumer in even higher gas prices.
Other more extreme Democrats are skipping right past higher corporate taxes and straight to nationalizing (same as communist confiscation) the entire oil industry, removing it from the private sector and making it a government owned and operated entity. Obama opposes most efforts to increase domestic production necessary to keep pace with domestic consumption. He supports the idea of penalizing the industry for turning a profit, which translates into improved 401k retirement returns for average Americans. !
Democrats think Obama has a stellar character, but on close examination, we find otherwise.
For most of his life he ignored his mother’s white side of the family, as if they never existed, except for that period of time when he had no where else to go and the white grandparents took him in and gave him everything a child could want, but recall, he referred to grandma as a “typical white person.”
I suppose I’ll be called racist for pointing out that Barack Obama Jr. has chosen to ignore the white half of his family entirely, while writing books about the magnificent influence of a black father who abandoned him at the age of two, only seeing once again at the age of nine, before being raised by his white grandparents in the absence of either parent.
Why are his supporters looking the other way when Obama’s personal commitment to “giving” falls far short of the mark.
As reported by the Chicago Tribune, “Giving, service and compassion are recurrent themes on the campaign trail for Sen. Barack Obama, but he has only recently dug deep into his own pockets to support charitable causes.”
The Tribune column makes a very good case concerning Obama’s not-so-charitable past.
Obama tax returns shed a bright light on just how un-charitable the Obama family was, before they were under the bright light of national politics.
“In 2002, the year before Obama launched his campaign for U.S. Senate, the Obamas reported income of $259,394, ranking them in the top 2 percent of U.S. households according to Census Bureau statistics. That year the Obamas claimed $1,050 in deductions for gifts to charity, or 0.4 percent of their income. The average U.S. household [$32,000 income] totaled $1,872 in gifts to charity in 2002, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.”
“On their just-filed 2006 tax return, Obama and his wife, a hospital administrator, reported taxable income of $983,626 and claimed deductions for $60,307 in charitable donations. In 2005 they earned a combined $1.65 million and gave away about $77,300.”
According to the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University, even as Obama becomes richer and richer, he continues to give well below the average American.
According to tax returns, the average American household gives 5.9% of income to charity. Throughout Obama’s life, he has given on average only .4% of his income to charity. Even the bright light of public scrutiny has only been able to loosen up the grip on his wallet to 4.7% in 2005 and 6.1% in 2006.
Now, the big one—Is Obama a Muslim or a Christian?
His half brother in Kenya says he was raised Muslim, which should come as no shock to anyone since he is the son of an African Muslim turned atheist father, Barack Obama Sr., who gave him the Muslim middle name Hussein.
His mother was a white atheist from Kansas, who obviously had a thing for black men. After divorcing Obamas father, she married Lolo Soetoro, another East-West Center student from Indonesia, the largest Muslim population in the world.
In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng was born, and where Barack Hussein Obama attended schools in Jakarta until the age of ten, where classes were taught in the Indonesian language, until he returned to Hawaii to be raised by his maternal grandparents.
Barack Hussein Obama was indeed raised in the Muslim faith in the largest Muslim population in the world.
But more importantly, both his mother and his father were socialists and that played an even larger roll in the making of the man who became a twenty year follower of the Rev. Wright and a Chicago “community organizer”.
This is all blind cheerleading for the most unqualified individual to ever seek the Oval Office. That’s what this whole campaign is about. He’s the media darling that is sending up their ratings and increasing their bottom line.

What we are is at risk of being run by folks foolish enough to think Barack Obama is qualified to be President.
The best thing we can say about Obama is that he gives good mouth!
That's not enough to lead us out of the Bush quagmire. At least McCain has the kind of experience to know what he doesn't know--enough about the economy so he will surround himself with people to fill that void. Unfortunately, Obama thinks he has all the answers. I don't think so.



Judgment? I don’t think so.
Uniter? I don’t think so.
Patriotic? I don’t think so.
A leader we can trust? I don’t think so. I was a Democrat until I watched my party launch this fraud on us. Now I’m an Independent voting for McCain.

fridge said...

hahaha. that's awesome. completely unhinged bat-shit crazy and awesome.

A Hillary supporter could probably find a few reasons to support McCain over Obama. But, that rant is nuts.

John Howard said...

That can't be real. It's either a joke, or just someone pretending to be the woman from the interview. It's one thing to believe that extremist right wing lunatics believe things that crazy, but I can't believe anyone who calls herself a lifelong Democrat, and was able to convince NPR that this is true could believe all that crap.

Mike said...

Chris, how the fuck did that creature find her way over here?

Was she responding to the tanning post?

Chris Howard said...

Chris, how the fuck did that creature find her way over here?

Was she responding to the tanning post?


No, I reviewed her NPR interview of a couple of weeks ago in this post. Apparently, she found it and commented, and I responded in this post. I think she just stuck her last rant on the latest post rather than scrolling down to the correct one.

That can't be real. It's either a joke, or just someone pretending to be the woman from the interview.

John , I think it's really her. She has a dating blog that Mr F found. This comment was just a copy of that post. She also has a website.