Random thoughts on the passing scene:

The best thing about buying a house is that it puts an end to the exhausting process of house-hunting.

Although Ronald Reagan was the only actor to become President, he was one of the few politicians who was not acting.

Do the people who make computerized products with a zillion features ever stop to consider whether the feature that many people want most is uncomplicated use?

A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass has footnotes explaining what words like "arraigned," "curried" and "exculpate" meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation.

Too many in the media act as if decency is a violation of the First Amendment.

If the same number of people who have been killed in terrorist attacks in Iraq over the past year had been killed on the battlefield in one month, it would not have been nearly as big a news story in the media. Terrorists get more bang for the buck when papers like the New York Times make each individual murder front page news, day after day.

People sometimes ask if I have tried to convince black "leaders" to take a different view on racial issues. Of course not. I wouldn't spend my time trying to persuade the mafia to give up crime. Why should I spend time trying to convince race hustlers to give up victimhood? It's their bread and butter.

Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all -- inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all.

To too many teachers, social workers and others in occupations with pretensions of being "professional," what being a professional means is not having to listen to common sense from ordinary people, much less develop any of their own.

Great Predictions Department: "I do not mind saying I think they are taking a gamble." That was Red Sox owner Harry Frazee after selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

The same people who were urging us to "get over it" and "move on" during the Clinton scandals have themselves still not gotten over the presidential election four years ago. They are still bitter that the U.S. Supreme Court would not allow the Florida Supreme Court to illegally interfere with the election process.

Those who are preoccupied with "making a statement" usually don't have any statements worth making.

Why can't anyone get the University of California system or the University of Texas system to reveal the graduation rates of black students, now that affirmative action has been ended in these institutions? Are they afraid the statistics would show an increased rate of graduation, as critics of affirmative action have long predicted?

Before women's fashions began to feature exposed navels, I had no idea how many gals had unattractive midriffs.

Everybody is an environmentalist in the sense of not wanting to breathe polluted air or drink polluted water. But in practice the term has come to refer to a pagan nature worship cult that readily sacrifices other human beings on the altar to their dogmas.

Of all the theories that persist despite tons of hard evidence against them, the champion is the theory of "overpopulation." The evidence was against it in Malthus' time and has been for two centuries since then. The next time someone tries to sell overpopulation hysteria, ask them to name just one country that had a higher standard of living when its population was half of what it is today.

I have always been offended by the song that says, "Everything is beautiful in its own way." If everything is beautiful, then the word "beautiful" has no meaning. If everything were purple, there would be no word "purple" in the language because it would not distinguish one thing from another.

Good early morning folks.

Ever notice how some people are still fixated on Clinton's blow job, even in the midst of this war and occupation?

Some people act as if the separation of church and state is a bad thing, but it's theocratic repression that brought a lot of people to this country in the first place.

Ever notice how the last two wars in the Middle East were started by presidents who have oil fortunes? I see a pattern here.

I read some instructional material that blamed unemployment on the minimum wage, and homelessness on rent control. That sounds like something written by a landlord who owns a sweatshop.

The conservatives on this site insist on calling the liberals "fascists", when it was conservative patriotic nationalists who were the fascists in the 20th century.

The totalitarian socialist regime in the USSR, led by Stalin, was also centered around nationalism, as were the socialists in Turkey, Iraq, and Libya. I guess you could say they were "nationalist socialists".

Why are people so defensive about eating meat? It's just a dietary choice, not some kind of qualification to get into heaven (unless your religion has some restrictions).

How attention-starved must someone be to post incediary comments on this site, especially those folks who oppose the mission of this site?

People who sell their labor, alone and without help from a company often call themselves "small business," but look deeper into it, and these folks are actually one-person temp agencies.

Ever notice how nobody seems to know more about Black politics than white supremacists? It seems like they keep up on it more than Black people themselves. At some level, I suspect they have a desire to own Black slaves.

Some years ago, it was the vogue among conservatives to say that people are born unequal, and that's why we shouldn't strive to make things equal. It's hard to tell whether they mean that we're unequal in terms of abilities, or are born into different classes and social groups. Whatever they meant, I think that both kinds of inequality exist, and that's precisely why we should strive to make things more equal, so those with the ability can develop their talents, despite what class or social group they're in.

The New England Protestants believed that wealth on earth was a sign that you would end up in heaven when you died. I bet these were rich people coming up with this idea.

Everything is ugly, in its own way.

Ethics and aesthetics are the great issues of the day. Truth and beauty, they say, are real; a problem always arises when you try to discuss this, however, because there are differences in opinion about what is "good" and "beautiful." Truth and beauty cease to refer to the "real", but are negotiated between people, with, and within, language. In this unstable situation, what each person believes becomes a "vote" in defining "truth" and "beauty"; language and thought become political.

In these unstable times, cults, ideologies that give "answers", fascism, and reactionary politics can arise. They simplify truth and beauty, giving refuge to individuals who are threatened by the existence of libraries, the internet, freedom of thought, and the idea that all people are somehow equal in their right to think and act to affect their own lives.

Given the opportunity to increase freedom, there are always many who will seek to go back to a time of less freedom, when truths were allegedly simpler.