Delete This Account

what does that mean, and what don't you get from my previous posts? if i owned a business, i would hope i was not a greedhead. and i would hope i would not use my business as a personal piggybank and start building a golf course in my backyard. and i would hope that if i owned a business i would not have to tell my employees that they're being laid off two days before christmas because i'm "maximizing profits" and moving some of my manufacturing overseas. i would hope i could operate a business that could remain competitive here. of course, what happened over the past 10-15 years in this "global economy" makes it difficult to compete, and thus, just might require certain government oversight. but of course, we know where you stand on that. so, you're absolutely right, if i owned a business i would punt all my employees out the door and move to freakin' sri lanka. there, i said it, you're right. make you feel better. jw

and that's why we make an effort write it down, man. as for what i know or don't know, i'll take a stab, because i'm guessing that Joe don't seem to understand what my definition of a rebel is, particularly in reference to my opus. i was referring to the rebels in the piece. -- outlaw journalist rebel: Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, who's no longer with us. -- poet rebel and, when in the mood, a noble ass and utter deviant (in the most sincerest sense): Bukowski, who is no longer with us. -- religious rebel: Graham Greene, who attempted to capture the essence of faith versus practicality, and where humanity and compassion just might fit in the equation. (he's no longer with us). -- and fall-down-drunk, defiant, pissants, who kicked success down the street like an old soup can every chance they could (thus living the true spirit of who gives a fluk rock and roll) type rebels: The Replacements. (and they've broken up, and Bobby Stinson has died.) even forgot to add Mr. John Cash. about all who's left is Mr. Steve Earle on that end. but Joe, show me anyone in the blather, blather anti-tax movement (or any other modern movement or iconic figure who hasn't been manufactured by some talking farthead radio or TV program) who possesses a whiff of this spirit, then i'll give you that. but until that happens (and I don't think you're the Woody Guthrie-type either) go on living that plastic dream, because i don't know that when you get to old st. pete's gate and tell him you spent your life's goal advocating against taxes whether or not he'll roll his eyes. whether here or up there, i'm pretty sure there's gonna be a toll to pay. jw

i like that. there's nobility in that, though i think you're confusing me with someone who knows something. ... obviously, you would be mistaked (sic). jw

a sheep is not a rebel. neither is rush. and neither is olbermann (if that might satisfy some balance). there are no voices left, but mere followers is the point i was attempting to make.

not entirely true. you're referring to ultra-capitalism, which is profit for profit's sake, also known as greed. true capitalists, starting with Henry Ford, actually realized that gouging the employee didn't work, because there'd be no one to buy his cars. so he raised wages. that's very much unlike today's m.o., in which enron, wall street and corporate decisions to move factories offshore to reap increased profits has helped put the western-based economies into the fix that they're in. but what do i know, i'm simply anti-whatever it is that you want to call me. jw

if you want to compare yourself with the wall street bunko artists that gathered in billions of dollars of bonuses, sure, you're a greedhead. or if you're part of the pharmaceuticals who are gouging the American public, well, you'd be guilty, there, too. if pillaging and raping were your business in the 900ds then i guess i'd refer to you as a Viking. should i stop now? jw

um, absolutely none of this concerned me until i arrived in the United States and for the first three months while my wife and I were uncovered were forced to pay something close to $6,000 for health insurance which is close to 6,000 percent more than I paid out of pocket in Canada for the first 37 years that i lived there. yes, yes, yes, you're going to bring up taxes, but i never ever ever had to fill out a form or was turned down for service whenever i visited a hospital or clinic. and never did i ever go -- or fear of going -- bankrupt while in canada. ... but you're absolutely right, Fingon, since you've been involved with both Canadian and U.S. health care systems, then you know what you're talking about ... oh, waitaminute ... jw

right, they failed so much that they succeeded. jw

i saw that b.c. is getting absolutely ravaged. is it that bad up, and as strange as this might sound, "north of the border?" and, is this an indication of a dry summer (heaven forbid for too many bad reasons!), because i can't imagine this has anything to do with over-development as they have in southern cal., etc. jw

didn't realize the Chapin connection. i'll have to listen to that. what i'm referencing is The Replacements, my favorite band. and i hate to rain on your parade, there were several upper case letters. The Replacements. HST. though, i feel terrible that i also didn't upper case Charles Bukowski and Graham Greene, authors i truly respect. as for my reason to write in lower case, i write in upper case when i get paid. why waste the extra key stroke when i'm not (and that's no disrespect, because all of my letters have been written this way for as long as i can remember). and who said, i was drunk this evening? jw

yeah, fools! run 'em out a town. who's with me? jw

hour? couldn't resist. jw

no, just a good bartender. hey, how was that flight. truly hope it was a good one. jw

¶ well, i'm back at camp and stuck in the same stinkhole hotel in suburban rochester, this time with a view of some man-made plastic courtyard that's supposed to make it feel like i'm in peoria or des moines, boise or poughkeepsie. hell, this could even be winnipeg, because for all i know there's a mini-mall plaza up the street with a subway, burger king and a liquor store. ... oh, waitaminute, there is. and i'm sure Nanker will once again question why i'm disparaging suburban rochester and minimalls and office parks. ¶ so sorry once again for raining on pink applebee parades, freeway ramps and munro muffler shops, because i'm sure we all have a perfect vision of growing up somewhere, however crooked picket fenced that just might be. ¶ ¶ but that's not the point of trying to tie this thing together, because there's absolutely little glamor on the road no matter where you are. and as i wrote, i follow the code of anywhere being better than here, because this could be paris (you pick, texas, ontario, france), and i'd still be working and they'd very much seem the same. and that's what i think that people don't get when they wonder what the hell i'm writing about. ¶ and yet they seem to know exactly what type of sod-card-carrying-left-wingnut-liberal-media crackpot i just might be based on a thread-bare post written out of the joy of writing. good god, too many people take things far too literally, and yet there are a few that understand what it means to have jingle-jangle loose fingers that can fly on the keyboard and produce something as obtuse as a nepalm sunset. ¶ but no. everyone has the answer to everything, and i realize i'm guilty of that, too. ¶ ¶ but that's not the point here either. ¶ ¶ this day started bad and quickly got worse when i finally checked into this place and realized that my work was never close to being done: the nflpa elected to finally respond to goodell's announcement that the nfl had absolutely no plans of cutting the benefits or pensions of retired players. ¶ so a day in which i was sidetracked from whatever i was supposed to be working on -- and ken, i hope to call you soon, well not tonight of course -- became completely obliterated. and that was before i was forced to repack and move to another room because something in the room they gave me wasn't working. ¶ ¶ and here i am, "upgraded" to a 2-room suite, and i put quotations marks around upgraded because you'd figure an upgrade would actually put you in a different town like, say, dublin, with an open bar stacked with jameson. but i guess them's the rules, and there's only so much the folks here can do with the economy the way it is. hell, obama's so terrible that he's getting criticized for experiencing too much success with the cash for clunker's program. but there i go, again, watching far too much jon stewart. what are you gonna do? but it's true that the hot-diggity-dogma dogs on fox do try a little too hard. and perhaps it is best that walter cronkite passed before things got too fair and balanced on cable. ¶ but what do i know, i'm just another half-drunk punter without an ounce of perspective or capability to draw upon my own life experiences to determine what i should know or think rather than being another drunkfart of humanity. and yet, i did grow up idolizing The (one and only) Replacements, so i guess i aspire to what inspires. and when it comes to the mats, there was no such thing as being too drunk. and HST never let me up. while chuck bukowski never put me straight. and graham greene always made me wonder. ¶ ¶ perhaps i shouldn't post this. and i know there's going to be someone out there ready to copy this exact graf with a response, "if only," or something like it. well, too late. this is what you get when i've got time on my hands, and a loose keyboard to finger. ¶ ¶ but really, the point of this is -- and i know you've been patiently waiting for this (well, one can dream) -- is to point out that sam mendes rocks. after all the baloney that's gone on to undo this day, i sat in front of this tv and watched "away we go," and found it fascinatingly real, surreal, naive, "robust" and dare i say it, perfect. ¶ ¶ and now that i've confused everyone with this thing that took me 14 minutes to write (and another 14 minutes to edit), it's time to post this with a certain uncrooked finger salute ... and a glass raised high. ¶ for a country supposedly full of rebels, there sure ain't many good ones left to follow. ¶ ¶ jw

with all due respect DC Tom, this goes to the point i was attempting to make in regards to the current administration (and yes, i understand some of my blame should go back to the days of President Carter), which failed to realize that it just might have spread itself way too thin by opening another conflict without cleaning up the first one. even Cheney cautioned against going all the way to Baghdad in Iraq I because it would prove to be a quagmire, and yet ... things could've been simpler. but then again, if only the U.S. had nukes then ... jw

and once again, chicken little pronounces that the sky is falling. it's always falling, it never sinks or rises, but always falls in this town in seems. jw

buddy, i follow the code of The Replacements, who once had a song titled, "Anywhere's Better than Here." more often than not, i find this to be true no matter where I am. but if you want to hole up in a hotel room that overlooks nothing but parking lots and office parks and you can hear the rush of the freeway on your balcony, that's great. go wild, buddy. there's much to like about Rochester, but not on those nights. jw

i'd like to go away, but you fail to explain how what "Lone Superpower" means in your world. the U.S. spread itself so thin in the Middle East theater that it relegated control of the Afghanistan conflict to the Canadians and Great Britain, who held their own but couldn't douse the fires that lit up once the U.S. essentially left. now that the Americans are back, things are only a little better, and yet there are still good people falling on a daily basis. and my reference toward England was due to the attacks and threats that have hit that country. American is not alone in this conflict, and to suggest that is the case is wrong. jw

happy flying. i can only imagine how beautiful it is up there. jw

never called him an idiot. belligerent and brash, but not an idiot. and as for the U.S. facing "unique" threats, once again, you overlook other nations, particularly England. it's the sometimes navel-gazing mentality here that strikes me as odd and worrisome. and so what i wrote my post half-drunk: what's been your excuse? jw minor sober edits for grammar and clarity.

not correct, Jim. the Queen is merely a figurehead in Canada, but has no real authority over parliament or the prime minister. still don't know what happened with the "Tritium." strange. but it wasn't me. oh well. it didn't make any sense. jw

which was precisely the point of my original post, and why this nation has drawn skeptical and leery views from some corners. it goes toward the absolute corruption of power. and when bolton made his flippant comment about America should be the only country with nukes, it creates anxiety and worry about the swaggering mindset. and once again you contradict yourself by saying, "you don't want anything to do with the rest of the world. But ..." so which is it, you seem to want to have it both ways, which is what essentially sunk the British Empire, beginning with the American Revolution. (it's somewhat of a stretch, the point i'm making, but not altogether flawed, in my opinion.) the trouble i find is that, for all it's power, America either still doesn't understand it's place on the world stage, or does understand it, but would rather not accept the responsibility that comes with it. either way, it opens the door to criticism which leads to a the U.S. taking a defensive "what'd we do?" stance and eventually leads to the decision to rename french fries to "freedom fries." jw

Jim: i don't know what the hell tritium isotope is to begin with. somehow, something from July 29, 8:52 p.m. (welll before I ever watched the Daily Show that evening for that matter) somehow got posted in as something that I wrote. I did not delete anything. This thread began well after then. no offense, but i don't time travel and this entire thread began on July 29, 11:51 p.m., 20 minutes after I watched The Daily Show. someone put Tritium into my post, and it wasn't me. jw

i don't appreciate you "adding" Tritium isotope into my post. i never wrote that. you included it. and that's wrong. jw

could the operation been done earlier, just asking? jw