JESUS CHRIST, WOMAN!
Yesterday morning, in fact at 8:11 in the morning, the telephone rang and I was startled awake. I grappled with the damn phone and a woman's voice asked if this was Mr. Morseburg, and when I responded with a "yes" she began to tell me about an overdue payment which her company had failed to receive.

Well, I go to sleep somewhere between two and three a.m., and between then and nine or nine thirty, but usually around six, I feel that urge to pee. I don't want to wake up and somehow fight it, but eventually, as with most aging men, I have to give in. I must wake up, must get up, and damn it, must pee.

So, I pee. Then I have the trouble of going back to sleep. This is when I often resort to a sleeping pill. At 8:11 a.m., this is a bit early. So, yes, I said, "Jesus Christ, woman...". Obviously that was a mistake. She took offense at it and let me know it. So, I proceeded to tell her that she, like the rest of us, most be bombarded with four letter words, the use of the Lord's name in vain, and all sorts of things on TV, in the movies, on T-shirts, bumper stickers, signs, and so on.

It was here that she let me know that I was acting in an unprofessional manner, and proceeded with this liberal clap-trap, politically correct garbage, and if "you're not going to act in a professional manner, etc." Well, suffice it to say that I informed her I'd talk as I damn well pleased at this time of the morning, and it was then that she hung up. Sufferin' Succotash, Sandy, can you imagine that?

This is the third time in recent months that someone has tried to tell me to be politically correct on the telephone. Usually, I am a very polite and considerate person, even when I first wake up! Believe me. But this is the second early morning call I've responded to a bit sharply when it came before 8:30 in the morning. Hey, I'm almost 80 and I have earned the right to sleep a wee (no pun intended) bit later. How can she know? Well, damn it, anyone who calls by phone or knocks on a door before nine a.m. should be prepared for an irritated person.

Of course, she was also upset that I referred to her gender, but I am from the old school I mean, if you are a woman, either your voice, your figure, or certain characteristics will give you away. Since I was first born, I was fast learning the difference. After all, my father never opened his bra so that I could be fed! So, being rather intelligent from birth, my mind immediately registered the fact that there were two sexes and I have been very, very aware of it ever since.

It is the same with color. If you're black and I walk by, your brain gets a message from your left eye-ball that a "white guy is coming into view." And, likewise with me. If you're missing a leg, or walk crab-wise (as I do), I'll register that too. A lisp? An accent? A rough voice? Damn, I'm smart and I pick up on those little things. I know, PC rules say I am supposed to be color blind, gender dumb, and a bit stupid as well in order to get along in today's world. Perhaps I am an olde codger, because I do not intend to do so, unless, unless she'll accept, "Good Morning, Miss PITA (Pain-in-the-ass), what the f*** do you want now?"

And, here's the poem I wrote for my Urologist:
PROSTITUS UNITE US.

Oh, dear doctor, how nice it'd be,
If I didn't have to get up to pee,
At three and four and five a.m.,
Then try to go back to sleep again.

Instead of dreaming dreams so great,
All night I'm thinking urinate.
I rise to pee a wee think stream.
Is relief for me such a far-fetched dream?

(dedicated to Dr. Cumes by Howard E. Morseburg)

Sufferin' Succotash, Sandy, it's almost bedtime. Good night, y'all.

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SUFFERIN' SUCCOTASH, SANDY!
Well, with a heading like that, what would someone write under it? I'll bet you're wondering right now.

I'm not going to finish it up tonight. I have an Appraisal that I was supposed to have finished about six weeks ago, and until it is done, which should be tomorrow, damned if I am going to do that Blog. If I had delayed two or three or four Blogs, it probably would be done by now. Instead, my conscience is bothering me.

I should write Rachel Lucas too and congratulate her on her new home, but if she reads it here, that should be just as good. Only, I won't know it. I don't even have a counter yet, nor do I know how to insert pictures, etc.

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MILITARY SERVICE? AW, C'MON!
Today, for lunch, I spent $2.13 for two 99 cent burgers at Burger King. I took off the top half of the buns and in order to avoid a few calories, and as I ate them I glanced around the room.

Two young people, perhaps around 18, a young man and a young woman, sat nearby wolfing down fries and hamburgers and large cokes, both of them around 30 pounds overweight at least. A 12 year old who was 15 to 20 pounds heavier than his companion, was eating a tray full of the same foods at another table. Six young Latino women in uniforms sat at another table, one of them fairly overweight, and then a middle-aged man who packed at least fifty extra pounds ate at another table, six inches of belly hanging over his belt. You know what I'm talking about, you've seen it.

Back in the 30s, 40s and 50s, the nation did not have this problem. At six feet tall, I weighed a steady 165 until I was around 45 years of age. But the people who worked with me, and my friends, all were quite slim. There were fat people, sure, but no where near the percentage of the population that you find today.

Yes, at my age I am losing a bit of height, and feel overweight at 175, but damn, I am not packing 230 to 260 pounds like some of these young people! Damn. (Then I've got a friend who was in the 82nd Airborne in WWII, at 6'2" he is carrying around 270 pounds. )

Most of these younger people would benefit from a year or two in the Service. They'd learn good habits, get lots of exercise, and that fat would burn off day by day until they were trim and well developed.

Many of them would get their first lessons in patriotism as well, learn a love of country, instead of this anti-democracy virus they encounter in many of the schools around our nation.

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Actually, too many Americans have lost their stomach for war. There are ten kids and young people in South Los Angeles killed in a single weekend with little outrage, but the loss of one soldier a day in Iraq brings on such a furor that we may have won the war, but yet we may well lose the peace.

We are no longer willing to make the necessary sacrifices that are necessary to win a war and stay winners.

The same people who whine and cry over the loss of each soldier (and don't think that I want to see a single one of our men or women die), are the same people who apologized to Japan because we dropped two atomic bombs on them. Sure, at that time, when I was a part of WWII, my life and thousands of other young men my age were at risk, and they estimated that we'd suffer 500,000 casualties in the upcoming invasion of Japan, but yet these bleeding hearts now say WE were wrong to save OUR lives, instead of killing around 200,000 Japanese in order to stop the war immediately.

Well, war does take lives. And, to win the peace, it also often takes lives. However, more lives are lost to gang warfare in this country than in the Iraqi war, and more young lives are lost daily on the freeways than we're losing there as well. They're willing to accept that, right?

We're doing a good and necessary job in Iraq. It's not over yet, believe me.

Our problem in the U.S. is that we've eliminated the draft and national service; the younger generation does not believe that freedom may require some sacrifices. Too many Americans would rather be slaves, like in Cuba, than stand up and fight, to bear arms for freedom. We've grown soft, too soft. You can see it every day, just look at the 20 year olds with four inches of flab hanging over their belts!

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QUDAY AND UDAY: OUR STUPIDITY
When some of the Iraqi people are questioning whether or not the bodies shown them on TV and in their newspapers are really Uday and Ouday, in our zeal to convince them we open up the viewing to photographers. But now, now they find that they're the work of...yes, of an American style mortician's art, to make these bodies look like whom they're supposed to be. What they saw yesterday, bearded faces all banged up and bloody, is not what they're looking at today!

Keeeripes. Jeeeeeeeeezzz. What stupidity.

If I were one of the less sophisticated citizens of Iraq, I'd say, "See, see how they can duplicate a body, see how they can change them! It must be a Uday and Ouday double. It is American trick. This is not what we saw in paper the other day."

Not only this, but they're offering the bodies to the family, so they can be buried like heroes, or a shrine made for the corpses. It is utterly stupid. It is inane. The funeral might prove to be the starting point of a riot, or a rally for an attack on US forces.

And, the stitching across the chest and down the abdomen shows further tampering. They should have covered that up and let them see the face and legs. The less we show them and the less there is to confuse people, the better it will be for everyone.

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GARBAGE DISPOSAL TIME

Saddam's two anamalistic sons, Uday and Qusay, are dead! Like the old western tintypes of dead outlaws that were circulated around the country a century and more ago, we've now seen their bullet-riddled bodies on TV, and so has the rest of the world, especially the Germans and French.

Gruesome, yes. But, so what? of course we'll have those bleeding hearts all around the world crying that we should be so cruel as to display these pictures, but in the 1800s they photographed the bodies of outlaws in order to prove to everyone that they were dead, and essentially, this is the same reason these images have been flashed on TV world-wide.

We're saying, "They're DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. FINI." They've been stopped from torturing, raping and killing Iraqi people. That regime was responsible for more than 400,000 Iraqi deaths, plus all those people killed in the war with Iran, the Kurds, the Shiites, and Kuwait. These two monsters were an active part of that murderous regime and they would have inherited the mantle of power from their father, Saddam Hussein one day.

The cry-babies who say we should have captured them haven't looked at the facts; we did try to capture them and they wounded four of our soldiers and then fled into the upper floors which were built like a fortress and almost siege-proof. Screw them. They wanted a fight, and they got a fight. We stood safely off and blew them full of holes.

Some of these same people who think this was gruesome are the ones who make movies with all kinds of torture, depravity, blood and guts, or the ones who pay their good money to go to the movies and revel in such crap. Bloody-liberals who love to watch scenes in which the killing is enough to chill your blood, but who have some odd, twisted reasoning that lets them admire such men as these, monsters such as Saddam and his two killer sons will disagree with what's been done. These are the people who don't wish to impose the death penalty on such killers.

Me? I'd rather avoid such movies and instead revel in the deaths of Uday and Qusay. In fact, I might even like to see them tie a rope around their ankles and drag them behind a Humvee up the main boulevard of Baghdad, stopping every block to let people photograph the scene. In the Mid-east, this is normal for many people and it delivers a strong message to the snipers and those who ambush our troops. Now that's when gruesome really appeals to me, when the people who kill and torture get their just dues!

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BREATHES THERE A MAN WITH SOUL SO DEAD..
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land."

I've been gone for a few days, made a trip to Los Angeles to view some art, and to visit a few clients. Boy, was it hot.

I spent a day with Spike Nasmyth, an F-4 Phantom pilot during the Viet-Nam war, a man who spent more than 2300 days in the Hanoi Hilton, the notorious prison in Hanoi where American airman were imprisoned, often beaten and tortured, endured months in solitary confinement, and finally came home to resume their lives. We do not know what problems are, we don't know suffering and pain, the way these men knew and experienced it.

One pilot spent 7 1/2 years under these horrendous conditions and survived; he died just a short time ago, but you can bet that he never fully recovered from that experience. Now we celebrate and honor prisoners who spent less than a month in Iraqi jails, but ignore these most courageous men who went through hell because their government asked them to do so, but many Americans condemned when they arrived home.

Spike wrote a book about it, which he will be sending me shortly. It's one I am going to treasure, believe me.

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VENOMOUS SNAKE BITES OUR CHILDREN

The Los Angeles Times is only one out of hundreds of newspapers nationwide that hides a venomous snake on the cartoon pages, one that lies in wait for our children and ever so fiendishly sends his message to them through a combination of drawing, and a story-line that drives home his message each and every week. He's a master of political indoctrination, adept at hiding his true intentions with a few days of humor before he strikes again, clever, manipulative, scheming,

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HUFFINGTON & PUFFINGTON

At times when I read Arianna's column, I picture another frustrated President-elect Hillary, shrill, strident, demanding, damn the torpedos, I was Michael's backbone and don't you forget it, type of woman. Wasn't it Ulysses who encountered those Greek harpies on one of his voyages?

Hey, if Michael had ever come out on issues as strongly as Huff & Puff Arianna, he'd be a power in Republican politics today, whether he had been elected Senator or not. She thinks she's an expert on literally everything and everyone, and there's certainly no one in the present administration nor a single thing they do that meets with Arianna's approval.

I think Michael Huffington would have made a good Senator for California, but it seems to me that dinner at home after a Senate session would have been plain Hell. Huff and Puff would have every newborn covered and pampered in every way until they're 21, which sounds more like Greek Socialism moving into Washington.

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THE LONE RANGER, SUPERMAN & SPIDER MAN
Americans love their comic books, and they love their heroes, like The Lone Ranger, Superman, Spider Man, Super Woman, etc., fictional characters who butt into all sorts of problems that don't pertain to themselves, but being good-hearted, they pop in and risk their lives to take on the bad guys in order to help good triumph over evil.

We've all grown up on this genre. Now many of us are well in adulthood, even old age, and we're still following these Buttinskies, only in the movies, right down to the earliest one on the comic pages, Dick Tracy, a forerunner of all the other heroic comic strips.

Well, that's sort of what we've done in Afghanistan and Iraq. The bullies, the bad guys, the Taliban, had take over in Afghanistan and they were holding the population hostage. Three million people had fled their homeland and were camped in miserable conditions just over the common border with Pakistan. They had no where else to go. They were living in tents and dependent upon food from the U.N. and other nations to keep them alive.

Even though they had given us terrible provocation to do something in the nineties, little was done either to destroy Bin Laden or curb his penchant to do evil around the world. It took a new administration and decisive action to put a halt to that kind of terrorism.

Little is said about it today, but literally a miracle happened after American troops defeated the Taliban. Those three million people left those camps and went home. Never before in history has such a mass migration home occurred like this. Never. When you think of the costs to the UN alone of trying to take care of this multitude, it is staggering.

They're not out of the woods yet, but damn it, those who are so against the current Administration should at least recognize the good that has come out of the war there, the good for a nation that was suffering under the lash of the Taliban's enforcers, and to those who had been driven from their homes.

We cannot report that everything is going as planned, but one thing you can be certain of, the millions who have returned are rebuilding their homes and businesses, and given the freedom to do so, they will once again be part of a thriving vital nation.

The anti-war movement is so vitrolic and venomous that they won't even admit that some good for millions of people has come out of that action, nor even the current one. That's stunted mental growth, if you ask me.

In Iraq millions more were expected to flee when the U.S. forces invaded their country, and so camps were set up for them across the borders. How many fled? From what I have heard, less than 100. Doesn't that tell you how much they must have feared the U.S. and what we would do to them?

We stopped the executiions of thousands of innocent Iraquis when we caputred Bagdhad, the torture of many more, by members of the extremist Baath Party. In spite of the destruction of much of the infrastructure, citizens of Iraq have remained at home and they are slowly rebuilding their lives. There are still members of Saddam Hussein's army at large who are causing problems, but all in all, our young men are the super heroes once again, inheriting the legacy of Superman, Super Woman, Spiderman and even Flash Gordon.

We had reason to be Buttinskies, and we're there and the people in those countries well know that they are safe with Americans temporarily in control. Oh yes, like the Lone Ranger we'll ride off into the sunset one of these days, leaving the folks there a lot better off than before we got there, believe me. Hey, if you read the comics, you do believe, don't you?

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GUNS, AGAIN
Almost every news story dealing with drug busts lists the amount of drugs, cash, cars and guns confiscated by the police or the DEA. The numbers and types of weapons and ammunition are mind-boggling. Considering the fact that these raids are infrequent due to the investigative work involved, it is doubtful that they are arresting even 2% of the drug dealers in the country. Perhaps I am wrong, but at the most...let's say 5%. The firepower that's out there on the streets, therefore, must be tremendous.

This does not even take into consideration the gangs around the country, or the outlaw motorcycle clubs, and other assorted nasties who prey upon the public, jewelry store and bank robbers, or just plain ordinary thieves. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions. of guns in the hands of criminals and anarchists.

There has to be a balance of power, and that balance can not be maintained with our local police, plus the FBI and DEA. It simply does not compute. If there were ever any kind of a natural catastrophe or a civil disturbance where these bands of thieves got together, they would rule the streets until either the National Guard or Federal Troops could be mustered. As unlikely or rare as this might be, according to some people's thinking, we have to keep such things in mind when discussing gun control.

Our forefathers were quite prescient when they drafted our Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Amendments. They meant to cover all such eventualities, those which could be forseen and those which were completely unpredictable. The police presence about the country is very thin, very very thin. We are mostly a law-abiding citizenry, so the country gets by with such a sparse uniformed protection, in spite of the fact that there are so many armed bandits about. One reason for this is that we also have a rather well armed group amongst our citizens, and also that so many of them are quite proficient in the use of their firearms.

For example, one druggist I knew armed himself after one hold-up, and the next time he faced armed thugs he killed both of them. The town had been averaging several hold-ups a week, but there were no hold-ups reported for the following two weeks. Obviously our local thugs were not illiterate.

And in Santa Barbara, the jewelry store next to my gallery was held up by a gang of thieves. The owner saw it from upstairs and came downstairs with a shotgun. He killed either two or three of the thieves, which stunted their careers as gunmen.

In either case, the police would have arrived after the fact, so once again an armed citizenry proved to be of value in law enforcement. There are those who will 'tsk, tsk' and talk about a fair trial before twelve jurors, but my viewpoint is they faced six jurors in the chamber of a gun and the verdict was final.

A young man I know was visiting a friend who worked in a jewelry store when it was held up by several armed robbers. He was made to get down on his hands and knees and crawl the length of the counter into the back room with a .45 against his skull. He said the robber was so nervous that he could feel his hand shaking because the gun was bouncing off his head. Do you think he'll ever forget that? No one who faces a gun in the hands of a crook ever forgets it. I, therefore, have no sympathy for the thief who gets killed while engaged in his chosen profession. In a two year period, within two blocks of another business I owned, one jeweler had his throat cut, another was wounded, and a third killed his assailant. That's like a war zone! Another friend, an art dealer, was tied up and robbed, but he and his wife became so paranoid after that they never were without a ferocious Doberman. If we're an honest and law-abiding citizenry, we do not deserve to be subjected to such depredations by criminals, and we do deserve the right to defend ourselves.

Therefore, we do need the right to arm ourselves, if we see fit, and the benefits to society as a whole far outweigh the occasional harm that may occur.

The Government cannot disarm the anti-social element in our midst. The only ones they can disarm are the honest and law-abiding citizens. The only ones who will obey such mandates are the law-abiding (if they lose their sanity), and when you disarm the law-abiding, then the evil-elements and the police are the only ones who are armed. The Second Amendment was the stroke of genius which had the effect of allowing an armed citizenry to keep government in check, as well as to keep the armed thugs mindful of the fact that not all potential victims will allow themselves to become victims. At times that is a very effective deterrant.

There is one fact that is certain: when the populace is disarmed or arms are strictly controlled, the crooks have enough common sense to know that they can enter almost any home without fear of being shot, and the number of home invasions and robberies simply has to increase. Only a tyrranical government has the power to enforce discipline to such a degree that everyone is intimidated. Then, the crooks turn to robbing the government through conniving and theft of government materials, because tyrannies possess all the wealth.

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POLITICALLY CORRECT OR NOT? BULLCRAP.
Once again, let me stress that I am not a real Sports Fan! Yet, it is part of the news and I do go through the Sports Section of the L.A. Times each day, so that at least I have some knowledge of who is who in different sports, except for Soccer. I at least knew when McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hitting home runs a few years ago, and where they stood each day.

Dusty Baker, manager of the Chicago Cubs, just got his tit in a wringer. Why? He said that Black players do better on hot days than Whites. After all, the race he's discussing does come from Africa, is used to the tropics, and Whites are not. Now, in years past a couple of fine baseball men have been forced to resign in disgrace because they were Whites who opined about popular misconceptions about Blacks.

Well, Dusty, do you know what? I've always observed that most of the White race comes from colder climes, and most of the Black race comes from real hot places, like Africa, and right or wrong, I've had sort of the same opinion. So, who the hell cares? Dusty may be right. He may also be wrong, So, I may be right or wrong, just like Dusty Baker, but does it really matter? Does it really matter? He's a credit to the sport. He's a credit to his race. He's a credit to humanity. If he were a relative of yours or mine, we'd be bragging and damn proud to let people know it. Let it pass, for cripes sake, let is pass.

I don't need his autograph. I've got 5,000 sheets of paper flying around here at it is and don't know what the hell to do with them all. Maybe double that. But, I'd shake his hand and be honored, whether he thinks that as a White guy I am not as good in the heat as a Black guy or not. Look at these Black guys who come out of remote parts of Africa and become world class runners! Isn't it possible that there is a tiny, tiny bit of difference in the Genes? Or the centuries in the hot climate acclimates them more quickly in the heat. Now, all I have to do is to say that Whites do better in the cold and snow and someone will shoot me down on that one.

But, who's to say that it may not be true? And if someone absolutely proves it true today, another scientist may disprove it twenty years down the line. What difference does it make?

Right now I am thinking that millions of Blacks and millions of Whites may also share his opinion. Well, we may all be stupid and seemingly racist, but why make a big issue of it? That's when the problems begin, when someone has to start a big fight over what amounts to little or nothing. Balderdash!

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WAKE ISLAND & THE HISTORY CHANNEL
Last night I watched the History Channel and the story of Wake Island. I enjoy reading history and also watching it on TV's History Channel. I don't like the usual phony Hollywood versions. Writers too often insert fictional incidents that distort history in favor of entertainment, but in doing so, our children accept this garbage as truth and remember this false history rather than learn the truth. The truth they ignore is often far more interesting and entertaining that that which they concoct, even more imaginative.

When I was a kid I read everything I could get my hands on. I'd check out at least five or six books a week from either the church library, the school library or the local library, but by the time I was around fifteen I was mostly western pulps and sci-fi pulps. My uncle had thwo foot stacks of them around the whole outside porch at the cabin on the lake and summer days I read from sun-up to sun-down and then by flashlight in bed.

All that suddenly changed when I was about 19 (1943), and our Liberty ship was being loaded for a trip across the North Atlantic and through the Artic to Murmansk, USSR. I bought some tomes, real classics, and some history books. I also bought Mein Kampf and Das Kapital. (There are close to half a million references to it when you enter it in Google). I concentrated on more serious reading after that. Then, whenever I could find them in port during the war, the newspapers. To this day I read from one to three newspapers a day.

My three children are great readers too, but the one son, Jeff, is by far the greatest reader I have ever known. He's also a fine writer about art. He is also completely self-taught. I guess we all are, because none of us went beyond high-school, but as a family we are fairly knowledgeable about American History and keep up with current events.

Most of the day I live in silence. No radio and no TV. I like to let my mind keep me entertained. When I drive, I seldom use music to keep me company; my own company is good enough. I also believe my attention should be on the road, the traffic, and my driving anyway. Lordy, when I was covering up to 60,000 miles a year I saw people reading books, newspapers, maps, combing their hair, bouncing up and down to music, and you name it...I probably saw that too. Driving is really a life or death situation too often, and therefore requires our full attention.

But this Blog started off about the History Channel and Wake Island, right. Well, it is history that tells us what our country is all about, what we fought for, how we fought, and the sacrifices made by our fellow countrymen. However, it is not always taught in this manner. For example, in the Santa Monica High School they were distorting much of our history, teaching the students that we were evil people who took over this country, and that now we have a Facist government. They also refused to follow the state mandate that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited each day in class.

One student stood up to the school's administrators and eventually forced changes to bring them more in line with the directives from the Department of Education in Sacramento. That's all it takes at times, one person to stand up and object when he or she finds something wrong, and to persist until it is corrected.

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DOWN GOES CHARLIE CHAN AGAIN
Just the other day I saw an announcement where the revival of the old Charlie Chan TV shows is being canceled because of the objections of some Asian or Chinese organization. They're still mad because Chan was played by a White person, with taped eyes. The producers are, I guess, going to cave in again.

What bullcrap!

For centuries all parts on the Chinese stage were played by men, and I do mean women's parts. Cripes. What do we need now, for Chinese women to begin protesting centuries of discrimination? Go rent the video or CD of My Favorite Concubine. I never watched too much TV, nor much of Charlie Chan, but once in awhile I did and I enjoyed it, taped eyes or not. And, who knows, perhaps with a Chinese actor the series would have been a flop! There was no guarantee of success; it took the writing and the acting together, and obviously both were right for the time.

I'll tell you one thing, while the Chinese Communists were executing millions of the landowner/merchant class, watching an innocent half hour of Charlie Chan (or was it an hour), was a lot better for our view of the Chinese, than to read the horror stories of the despotic rule of the Red Regime in Peking.

We're seeing more and more Asian actors, and I rent foreign films, including Asian, so don't piss me off by shooting down Charlie Chan. That makes a hell of a lot worse impression on most of us than the absense of Chinese actors fifty years ago. Oh yes, we've got to be politically correct. Bullcrap, bullcrap again.

What weenies these TV producers are. They're afraid to stand up for their rights. I'm awarding them the BC Medal (Bullcrap Medal), and Wimp of the Week Membership. So solly, Cholly.

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BLACK MYTHS AND MISSES
There are a lot of dumb Blacks in this country; there are also a lot of dumb Whites in this country. Proportionately I would say the percentage is about equal in the White population as it is in the Black population. Being White I might think that there are 2% to 3% more dumb Black people, but a Black reader might disagree and think that there are 5% more dumb Whites overall. Who in the hell can come up with a correct figure? Like when I read "each night more than 30 million children go to bed hungry" I say to myself, more bullcrap. Six million have this disease. Eight million that one. All these high figures are supposed to get us upset. Where do they get them from? I think they're: Absolutely bullcrap.

When I follow Sports (which I don't to a large degree) I see Black sports superstars outnumbering White ones at a tremendous ratio advantage. i.e. Basketball, for example, seems to be about 80% Blacks to 20% Whites. I guess I could research it on the Web, but then, it is something that is quite obvious whenever you watch the Lakers, or the Jazz or the Celtics play.

Athletics to some may simply be thought of in terms of physique and muscle, but I know that that just is not true. It takes brains to play baseball or football or basketball, and even to be a tri-Athlete, or a long-distance runner. It takes brainpower similar to that of a good chessplayer, because almost all sports require an uncanny knowledge of intricacies of that sport, as well as understanding the psychology of the opposing players. It takes memory as much as conditioning; it takes mental preparation as well as ability. These guys are real heroes, real leaders, real examples, because in Sports, excuses don't count.


They didn't give Sammy Sousa an extra five home runs at the beginning of the season, did they? They don't give Shaq two points before the game. As I said, you stand and deliver in Sports, excuses don't count! When I read the Sports Section of the Los Angeles Times I pay close attention to such things, to the stories and the statistics. I think they're important. Here you find some truth. Every star player stands on his own, alone on his or her merits.



Therefore, I don't agree with this Superior Race dogma espoused by some White Supremeists. In fact, often when I see their photos or interviews on TV, my impression usually is...that these people are about two steps removed from intelligent life on earth. On the other hand, when one views those TV shows devoted to trashy situations, the participants seems almost as devoid of intelligence as White Supremeists, and since so many of the guests on those shows are Blacks, it doesn't do anything to help my argument here. At times there are two White women or two Black women fighting over a Black man who has been two-timing them. For some odd reason, the women always seem so much more articulate than the man involved, and I'll not push the Remote control button because I am so intrigued with the language the guys speak. If I can't understand them, how can these women understand them? What is the attraction? But then, out pops another guest, some White guy with a face full of metal studs and he seems to speak a similar language, un-understandable, like he just came off a space-ship from a planet on the very outer rim of the Universe.

What am I leading up to? I think that if the Black people are capable of winning in sports, where they do not get any additional points, but have to fight for every single position, then they also have the same ability to be winners at academics. It all depends upon your priorities.

I expect no less from a person of a different race than from one of my own; I believe that they are all equally capable, racially speaking. Again, there are dumb Blacks, dumb Whites, and even, even dumb Asians now and then. So, when it comes to having smarts I give everyone the same credit; that's why I am courteous to everyone, no matter what their race, color, religion or even...even (I hate to admit) if they're Democrats.

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TEACHING HATE
I'll say again that most Americans are decent law-abiding citizens who mind their own business, and the ones I have met in my travels around this country are courteous, courteous to you no matter who you are or what your background is. Race simply does not make that much difference to them, and they don't .

To those, let's say, who are Black or Brown or Asican descent, or whatever, just how much discrimination do you really experience, or how often are you slighted because of what you are? For crying out loud, NO MATTER WHERE WE GO IN THIS WORLD, WE'RE GOING TO FIND THE SAME THING IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER.

You're Black? Big deal. In Africa countries where they're all Black they slice people's arms and legs off simply because they're from a different tribe! How many were slaughtered in the Hutu/Tutsui massacres? 700,000 in less than a year! All over Africa this has been going on for fifty years now, millions killed, millions more have starved to death. Considering the inhumanity exhibited between tribes, the last thing in the world I would want to call myself is African-American. In Liberia they show kids on TV, ten years old, out killing local people in the current rebellion. If you research Ida Amin's history, you'll be grateful that you live in a land such as ours, where you're safe from tyranny such as that.

Remember, even in the south before the Civil War, the slaveholders were but a small minority of the White population. In the North, people simply went about their own business and had nothing to do with Slavery. Yet, there are Black people today who distort history, compose songs of hatred towards the Whites, who teach hatred in the schools, who blame the Whites for all their problems.

In one story I mentioned a young man who had his throat slit from ear to ear, and survived, but it was a close call with death. He drove a cab in San Diego, earning money for his college education, but in violatin of company policy he drove two passengers to a section of town he had been told to avoid. There while one passenger held him, the other slit his throat. It was done by a Black man, who robbed him of his earnings that night, less than forty dollars. He has that scar today, visible to anyone who looks in his direction.

But, here's the real point of the story:We visited his family in San Diego a couple of years later, and his father and I went to a local bar for a quiet talk and a beer. A Black man sat down alongside of him. Somehow the three of us got into a conversation and I expected the young man's father to get upset, but he didn't. He was as courteous to that man as he could be! He did not hold him racially guilty of the murderous attempt on his son's life, nor the weeks the young man was in a coma!

The actions of one man of color had nothing whatsoever to do with another man of that color. Neither do the actions of any White person today have a single thing to do with the actions of White slave holders over 150 years ago.

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JUST A BRIEF NOTE
Recent national news item about Brad Barnhill and his wife, Catherine Donkers, challening the courts (he claims he will take it all the way up to the Supreme Court) because she was arrested for breastfeeding her child while driving: I suggest they change their names to: Brad Dunghill and Catherine Bonkers.

Things will make more sense then.

GOING TO THE RACES, AGAIN
(Revised at 9:33 p.m. and still going).
Well, I never attended college, unless you want to count six months of night school some time after I quit the Sea. Those who served in the Merchant Marine during WWII did not get any Veteran's Benefits, even though serving on what were essentially auxillary warships, since we were armed with cannon and had a Navy gun crew to man them...with the assistance of the merchant seamen as potential loaders.

Yet, I thought that I'd already had a fairly good education, having visited 28 different countries, and had months of leisure time at sea in which to read and learn. At least the geography I had studied in school became more a part of my life.

Just a Traveling Man
Then, after the war I went into sales, mostly selling items direct to the consumer from business-to-business or house-to-house. Over the course of time I was in 46 states on the mainland, plus Hawaii, and traveling in this manner I have been in more homes across the nation that just about anyone you know. I doubt that there are 1 out of 10,000 people in the country with that kind of experience, and who have visited in more homes than I have.

It was another continuing geography lesson, visiting the different states, their capitols, little towns, big cities, clear around the country. I didn't have any difficulty knowing one state from another, because in school we were taught such things. Today many students cannot name the states adjacent to their own.

For awhile I was selling household items for which we collected $1.00 each week in southern Connecticut. New Haven, Bridgeport, Waterbury, etc. I also ran a sales crew doing the same type of business in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You really get to see how people live. every race, color and creed. It's interesting. You get to sit in their living rooms, dining rooms and kitchens. Within a few minutes you become acquainted with the whole family, and at times even their neighbors when they suddenly drop in.

I worked through almost every type of neighborhood you've ever heard of, and did it without any problems, day and night.

After TV became a staple in the home, I had to learn to contend with it, so usually asked them to turn it off or even turned it off myself before giving a sales pitch. After all, I wanted their undivided attention. That applies to your home as well. If you want to get a kid's attention, take the remote and shut the damn TV off. Never try to compete with the TV. You cannot do it; they're professionals on the tube and they know how to keep the viewers attention. So eliminate the professional attention grabber from the arena by shutting it off.

Don't think you can do it by turning down the volume. Most bars with a TV screen up in the corner don't have the volume up, but just watch people's eyes when you're talking to them. They constantly flick up and down. You don't have their full attention, and that motion on the screen may be absorbing more than half of it.

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Section B

In my experience I found that close to 99% of the people you encountered along the way in life were decent, courteous people, no matter what their race, no matter what their culture. I found it in the north, I found it so in the south. I found it in the east and in the west. Sure, I traveled in the south in the forties and fifites, and I saw those signs all over the south: No Colored, Whites Only, White Fountain, Colored Fountain. Yet, most people had nothing to do with those signs. They had to live by the same rules, as I did when the bus driver insisted that I move up front (see below).

Certainly it took the Civil Rights Movement to change things, and some southerners fought it every step of the way. But it wasn't all southerners. Most of them simply sat on the sidelines and watched things unfold. Up north too, most people simply minded their own business. As they saw it, it wasn't their problem and so they didn't get involved. On the whole most Americans are decent law-abiding citizens, and they treat their fellow Americans decent enough to their way of thinking. Some people of color or different race take unbrage at the way they're treated, not realizing that some people treat almost everyone in the same manner. They get insulted, not understanding that the man or woman may simply be a jerk, rude or ignorant to people of every color, including their own.

I saw a black woman walk out of a gift shop recently because she thought she was being ignored because of her color. I had been in that shop several times and found the clerk rather slow and inefficient, while also rough in her treatment of customers. There was a Post Office in Los Angeles staffed mostly by African-Americans, and from numerous visits I can tell you that they were seldom courteous to Whitey, but always friendly to Black people.

Then again, could my perception of the situation there have been as erroneous as the woman who left the gift shop in a huff?

Today, There's More Hate than Ever
Today, there is definitely more hate than ever. In fact, I think that in many areas of the country, they teach Black children to hate Whitey. They ignore the fact that most Whites never did hate Blacks. Sure there are those who do, but I've known Irish guys who hated Italians, and Protestants who hated the Irish Catholics. Such things go on all the time. Just read the newspapers and you'll see it is all around the world. Look at India, where tremendous clashes between Hindu and Moslems have left thousands dead. Or in Liberia, or Bosnia, Kosovo.

We are currently teaching people to be super-sensitive, thin skinned, resentful, nasty and contentious not only in the schools and colleges, but through contemporary songs and music, on TV. The game gets deadlier all the time. Instead of ignoring inadvertent or ill-advised remarks, we're teaching people to be confrontational in minor situations that are at best unfortunate mistakes and making major problems out of them. In other words, too often they're making mountains out of molehills.


(More to follow, tonight.)

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GOING TO THE RACES

A few minutes ago I wrote on Glenn's Blog (www.HiI'mblack) that I think these people who say, "I'm colorblind", as an indication of how chummy they are to people of other races are full of bullcrap. There's some columnist who is always writing about how he has taught his children to be colorblind. To me he's a jerk. That's not possible.

If you've got two eyes, unless you're completely stupid or have a serious neurological disorder, they flash messages to your brain regarding color of skin, color of hair, type of hair, clothing, attitude, and so many other clues. Even this damn computer I am working on cannot even come close to collecting, registering and sending information as quickly as the human eye to the human brain.

I recognize everyone everywhere for what they are, and in most cases I can differentiate between Korean, Japanese and Chinese, etc., as well. If you're not processing such information, you're either moronic or useless. Every black person recognizes white, so why shouldn't a white person recognize black? It is the same with Asian people; a Japanese person knows at once if the person they're facing is Chinese or Vietnamese, etc.

Back in 1951, I think it was, I was driving down a lonely road in Alabama, and there was a car pulled over, with a flat tire, and a woman standing there helplessly in the hot sun. So, I stopped behind her, got out and changed the tire. Fifteen minutes later she was ready to roll, and in thanking me, almost with tears in her eyes, she said, "No white man has ever done anything like that for me before!" Yes, she was a negro, as they were called in those days. If a carful of white guys had come by, they'd have most likely kicked my teeth in, if I was lucky.

I changed a tire for another elderly woman one day, and she was on her way home to Idaho. Since I was also heading across country to Utah, I followed along behind her car for a couple of days. She later sent me an article from the local paper; she was a woman doing a man's job, making a living digging ditches to support her grandson. She was white.

And then, late one cold night, middle of winter, in a snowstorm in Connecticut I also changed a tire for a lady. She sent me a little alarm clock as a present. The gist of each story is that in each case my eyes took in all the facts, but how I made use of the information was what was important. In an age when chivalry had not yet been dealt some pretty deep stab wounds, there was a job to be done and I did it. I pity the drivers of cars that had passed each one before me, because they missed a chance to do a good deed, and certainly, in case number one, to know that your help was truly appreciated.

I was raised in integrated neighborhoods, by integrated then we usually meant Italians, Germans, Irish and a few others mixed in the stew. Three miles south it was all Italians, or in another area, all Polish. Negroes? A few. But in those days the Whites had more difficulty getting along with each other than they had with the Blacks.

In WWII, the Merchant Marine was the only fully integrated service, and I was a merchant seaman for five years. Sure, most of the men in the Steward's Department were negroes, but we worked harmoniously and we all got along quite well together.

In 1956 I was the National Sales Manager for a company headquartered in Chicago and I often attended a church in South Chicago. I stood out like a sore thumb as I was the only Whitey in the whole church. The Prophet always thanked me personally for attending from the pulpit, and a couple of times we sat and discussed his ministry. Some friends thought I was risking my life to go there, but they'd never been in South Chicago and didn't know a thing about it. It was safe, and the music was always enervating! They "sold" religion better than the churches in our area, and being a salesman, I really appreciated that.

Another story: I think it was 1952 when I got on a bus in downtown Atlanta (GA), and sat just behind the side doors. The bus didn't start up and someone kept talking, but until I was tapped on the shoulder by a negro woman, I didn't realize it was the driver and he was addressing me. "Move up forward, sir," he said. Now, I usually sat in the back of the bus in New Jersey and New York, so it meant nothing to me, and I replied, "I'm okay. I'll stay here." In a stronger voice he replied to me, "Sir, this bus won't move one inch until you move up front."

Now, at that time I was not in the deep south to make political statements, nor was I a Rosa Parks, nor of negro blood, so I moved up one seat, which satisfied him, everyone else too, and the bus moved on.

You see, Rosa Parks was smarter than almost anyone else. Years after that incident, Solzhenytsin wrote: We are victims because we allow ourselves to become victims. I think it is a quote that should be in every compendium of useful quotations. She simply refused, absolutely refused, to allow herself to be made a victim any longer. Internally she resolved the issue and addressed it. I could not have addressed that problem, because it was not my problem. She could and did, because it was her problem! She was the first one with the courage to address it.

Now, everyone who sits on a bus in Atlanta and other southern cities recognizes at once whether or not the person next to them is a White or Black, with long or short hair, and all the other details, unless, of course, they're stupid. It's not what your eyes process to the brain that counts, it is how you treat that person that counts and nothing else.

Oh yes, another time, honest, another long stretch of road, and I was changing a tire for a ditzy blonde woman who kept running up and down the roadway, and around the car, as if she thought I was going to rape her. Jeeezzz. So not only did I change her tire for her, I also saved her from being raped. I simply changed my mind.

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GUNS, GUNS, GUNS
I 'm a professional salesman, and as I traveled the highways of America, I didn't look for trouble. I drove 40 to 60 thousand miles a year traveling the 10 western states as an artists' agent selling fine art, long lonely miles daytime or nighttime. I was always aware that there were risks, and I'd had friends who were forced off the road and at gunpoint made to drive a few miles off the beaten track, their ignition wires cut, and then robbed of everything they carried. All the time, the two young men and four women were at the mercy of the gun-toting bandits.

That was a warning to me, so after that I carried a loaded gun with me in my car, and whenever I had to pull over to rest during a long drive I kept that gun under my pillow. It was a .22 S & W, not too much of a gun, but enough that I felt I could either scare off an intruder or do some damage with it if the situation called for it. It was also inexpensive for practice plinking now and then, and not too noisy.

I was (am) neither a tough guy, nor a gung-ho gun nut. I simply realized that under most circumstances if I ran into trouble on the road, that it was going to be up to me and me alone to resolve it. My money, hard-earned money, was with me in those cars and vans in the form of a collection of fine art, and I was not going to trust my livlihood nor my life to the good-will of a crook with a gun. That, to me, would have been stupidity. It was most likely stupidity not to carry my 7.65 Mauser or the Czech pistol acquired during WWII, a bit larger bullet with more stopping power. The S & W was my selection though, and it due to my choice not to act in a stupid manner by allowing myself to become an unwilling victim.

I'd read enough articles about salesmen being robbed, and some killed, to understand what my options were. The police may be hired and trained to protect us, but each and every murder you read about in a newspaper, magazine or book, or see on TV, is simply more stark-naked proof of the general inefficiency of the police, no matter how much they'd like to protect everyone. The truth is, they cannot. They cannot predict where trouble is going to occur, nor be there in even 5% of the cases when it does.

There is no way we can be 100% safe, in fact no way we can even be 10% safe under the law. We're always at risk, but we can put the odds more in our favor if we understand those risks, what the odds are, and do what we can to shift them more in our own favor. In order to do that you must have a weapon of one kind or another, and know how to use it if you find it necessary. All in all, while lacking experience, I still felt confident enough to resist evil or peril if it should come my way because I had a weapon.

A friend, who was a jewelry salesman, had two cases of expensive turquoise jewelry snatched from his hands in Los Angeles, CA. one morning. He grabbed a gun from his boot (he had just returned from Arizona), fired a shot into the air, while shouting, "Stop, thief." The thief dropped both cases and they came open, but by the time Paul had gathered up the jewelry, three police cars were there and he was roughly handled, bruised, and arrested for discharging a weapon within city limits. Well, where were the police when the thief grabbed his jewelry cases? He was sentenced to probation for a year and spent some money for a lawyer, but he also kept his hundred thousand dollars in jewelry intact, and didn't lose the three weeks it had taken him to drive the remote reservations of Arizona to buy it.

The previous summer several indian jewelry salesmen had been robbed and then killed. Paul had made the decision that he was not going to be the next victim, and he was not. You can drive for three hours down some of those roads in Arizona and not see a single Sherif's car or Highway Patrol officer.

Paul's son was followed one day by three guys, watching him visit jewelry stores in one town, and then out onto the highway in Arizona, a long lonely track of road. Finally, deciding to confront things head on, he pulled over. They stopped behind him and the three rought looking guys got out and headed towards him from both sides. Suddenly flinging open his door, he jumped out with a .45 in his hand, then quickly fired one shot in the air and as he brought the gun down they were suddenly heading off into the brush as fast as they could run. He fired two shots into the radiator of the parked car and one into the tire of the car and quickly drove off. Extreme, you bet! You can suggest a hundred different answers to that one, but obviously they didn't turn him in to the Highway Patrol, because he drove all the way back to Phoenix without being stopped.

One evening I apprehended a man who had just taken more than $1,000 worth of my things from my van, and I got them back. If I had not been mentally alert and prepared for it, I would not have recovered my belongings. Did I take a risk? You bet.

Was it worth it? You're damn right it was. At one time the American people were that type, independent and self-sufficient, but today we're shifting over to laws and rules that favor the crooks and hand them all the advantages. Well, you may do so, but not me, buster, believe me that isn't my way.

I don't look at it as taking the law into our own hands. I look at it as assisting the law when they just happen to be absent from the place where the real action is, that it is my duty as a citizen to keep the criminal at bay or to apprehend him so that he won't be stabbing ny neighbor in the middle of the night.

There is a class of people who are thieves, murderers and scam artists by choice; it is their vocation in life. We have to recognize that fact, live with it, and face it. It is our responsibility to thrwart them at every turn. And, it is our duty, if they threaten our lives or those of our family, to take whatever steps are necessary to stop them. If that includes killing them, it is justified. Law and order do not prevail unless each citizen helps to enforce the law.

All the preachers, all the churches, and all the good-will in the world is not going to make evil disappear from the face of the earth.

When the good honest citizens give up their guns, the crooks will be the only ones armed No matter how many times this is repeated, it bears saying again. Crooks simply do not comply with the law, especially a law which requires them to disarm themselves. Their stock in trade is guns. Their means of earning a living is through guns. Your means to resist them is also guns, not simply guns in the hands of the law, but guns in the hands of private citizens. The 2nd Amendment assures you of your right to keep a gun, not only to defend yourself against mauraders, but also to supplement those trained by the state to defend the Union.

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AUSTRALIA TO SPEND $118 MILLION TO BUY BACK GUNS
Rachel is right again. Two kids were murdered at school, two, just two, and so the Australian government intends to buy back 65,000 guns at up to $7,000 each, to take guns out of YOUR hands. Buy back? Hell, they neve owned them in the first place, and it is YOUR (Aussies) tax money they're using to buy those guns. They tax the honest citizens, then use their money to buy their guns from them!

What a racket. What a scam. What a brilliant way to cheat your own citizens. I'm going to buy two dozen guns, move to Australia, sell out my arsenal to that moronic government, and then return home with a pile of dough. I hope to get out of there before one of their armed crooks robs me of it, though. There's always some risk, you know.

Crooks do not sell back their guns. They'll buy more. Disarm the honest people and only the crooks are left with the guns. Stupid reasoning by Aussie officials.

Cars kill more kids in a day than some nuts do running into a school and firing at students. More children die playing sports in school in a month than get shot in school in a year. More kids die riding bikes, or skateboards, or roller blades, or surfing, but GUNS get the attention of the softies, the anti-gunnuts.

Common sense? It has nothing to do with it when you begin crying about kids getting shot in school. The media, whipping the public into a frenzy, has more to do with school shootings, than anything else. They'll make a movie out of it and give more glue-sniffing kids the idea to "go forth and shoot thy classmates" and then blame it on the GUN! Wow. What reasoning. The GUN is to blame. The GUN did it. Oh crap.

The crooks gain more and more leverage over the honest citizen. The police are already outgunned, and the only ones they can eventually turn to is an armed and alert citizenry.

Burglars now invade homes in Great Britain with impunity, and any homeowner who defends his property with a gun is in for trouble, deep trouble. Next comes Australia. After that, the good ol' USA.

But, as you know, I'm for INFIRMATIVE ACTION. I want us old fogeys to have special permission to carry handguns, to keep them at home, so we can defend ourselves. Believe me, I'd rather go down with guns blazing at the invaders than to sit there and watch them loot my home. Screw 'em. Anyone with a handicap, like me for example, should be able to plug these creeps right in the ol' gonads. That's what I call: INFIRMATIVE ACTION.

In fact, I'll bet that even though it's years since I fired a gun, I could shoot both of them off with just two shots.

Well, maybe three. My hand is still extremely steady, but the eyes aren't as good. But no more than three. If I missed one shot, I'd bet it'd hit the twig in the center they're fastened to.

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BIFF, BAM, THINK SPAM
Just returned from three days in Las Vegas. No, I did not go to gamble. I look at all that construction there and I know where the money came from; it came from the pockets of millions of losers, losers, losers.

A friend who lived there passed away, another WWII veteran gone, a former Navy man who flew radar patrol along the Atlantic Coast searching out submarines. Long hours of lonely and dangerous patrol work in the PBY's, amphibious planes. He was 88. So, each day there are fewer of us left.

Upon my return home, I found 257 emails in my mailbox, and only ten were legit. What a waste of time each and every day to sort through all the crap!

Here they're so concerned about the telephone solicitors and I'd say I get maybe five or six calls a week, with nothing more offensive than well, telephone solicitors soliciting to switch my telephone. Congress has spent the time, money and effort now, and passed a law about what is essentially a minor problem. Yet, in all the calls I have received over the years, not one has mentioned penis enlargement pills or tricking young women into sexual acts and then photographing them while they're doing so, and although annoying, it really ain't that bad. Computer porn, nudity, scams and other forms of computer generated email is far, far more insidious, treacherous, and vile than the problem of telephone solicitors.

As much as I hate (yes, hate) Fidel Castro, at least by limiting the use of computers in Cuban homes and schools, he has kept that drivel out of the children's way, and Cubans out of harm's way. That is the only positive thing I can see about that s.o.b.'s administration. Everything else is negative.

One of these days I am going to get back to the subject of the benefits of Infirmative Action.

Supposing Sammy Sosa had had five runs added to his score, as part of Affirmative Action?
Supposing Jackie Robinson had had the benefit of a "free home run" each game he played?
Or Tiger Woods was given a six handicap, four for his father and two because his mother is from Korea?