Why are people still so blind to the fact that Clinton is just another conventional politician? How can we trust someone who voted to take us to war in Iraq – costing us thousands of lives – the lives of the men and women of MY GENERATION? This woman contributed to the current financial state of the Union by voting for this war and now, now she promises to fix it? Now? There is nobody who is of the prevailing school of thought in politics who can turn us in a new direction now. There is no light at the end of the tunnel with a Clinton victory and no promises of a better tomorrow from someone who in spite of her so called “commitment” to the working class continues to take money from lobbyists who represent the best interests of large corporations, not their employees. How is it that the blue collar workers are so easily deceived?

I know this was an anticipated setback by all Obama-ers but I still find myself stinging. And you know it’s like a car wreck – I’ll have to see what she has to say about all of this in her victory speech because I just can’t turn away from the carnage. And nothing, nothing makes me angrier than listening to the pundits talk about how in spite of his lead in the popular vote, and the fact that there is no way in hell that Hillary Clinton could possibly overtake him in pledged delegates, the Super Delegates might still overturn our chance to be heard. I’m tired of watching them talk about “the states that count”. What the fuck? I mean, I know that’s the hard cold reality of the thing but at least give us our primaries, at least let us pretend like the voice of the people counts to pick our CANDIDATES, since it’s the voice of the Electoral College which decides, ultimatley, the person who will lead this country for the next four years.

The Government has been aware of this behavior for quite some time, and has ignored it in part because there is no proving that someone is married “In Spirit” when they’re collecting on welfare, and in part because nobody wants to encroach on the beliefs of this religious cult. Make no mistake people – this is a CULT. I’m of the opinion having read Krakauer’s book on Mormonism as well as several others on the subject, and based upon my personal associations and interactions with Mormons, that all LDS followers are members of a cult. But – lest you say that I’m being unfair – I don’t feel much different about any religion, really. It’s just Mormons in particular I find to have pretty far fetched and out there beliefs. I mean, they wear sacred underwear for God’s sake. It’s not for misunderstanding their belief system that I find the Mormons to be crazy. It’s for having researched it to a point of near obsession.

This is a sampling of what I know about the Mormons in general:

A) They believe that Joseph Smith, their founder, unearthed several Golden Plates inscribed with the word of God. That he was led to them by God himself, and;

B) Having found these plates and having been magically bestowed with the ability to read them because they were in some otherwise indecipherable language, Smith got a bunch of guys together to look at the plates and sign a document attesting to that fact. So you see the whole credibility thing has been TOTALLY taken care of. Nevermind that I bet I could pay any number of vagrants $50.00 to sign off on a document stating that they’d also seen my golden plates from Heaven. Of course he couldn’t hang on to them – they were too sacred and they had to be returned to God. So it was on HIM to translate them. What a big job for such a little trickster (Smith liked to engage in other fun and scientifically sound activity in his free time, like magic and dowsing) There is also evidence to suggest that he engaged in several moneymaking schemes before stumbling upon a no-brainer – RELIGION!

C) Joe’s wife was none to hot on his polygamy revelation. This particular directive from God didn’t come down until after the Church was firmly established, and Joe’s rather un-Christian infidelity was pretty renowned at that point. Really, it was expertly timed and another move of genius by a man who by this time commanded a following of thousands. The religion was no longer in its infancy when this one was passed down from the heavens (don’t you think it’s right up there in terms of quality in Commandments from God as “Honor they Mother and thy Father and “Thou Shalt not Kill?” – It’s a classic, really, one for the ages. ) As you can imagine people (well, women anyhow) might have found it sort of an um…turn-off in an otherwise thriving new religion.

D) Before obtaining statehood, Utah outlawed polygamy in 1890. The majority of Mormons, evidently, took this in stride. But more than a few began forming sects, ranches, churches, and compounds, and continued this practice from the time that they became known as “Fundamentalist Mormons” to present-day.
The point I’d like to make here now is that the government has been allowing this to occur for so long that enforcing the law on these hundreds of brainwashed men, women, and children now is going to do those kids, in particular, more harm than good. Now before you get all worked up, I’d like to say that I am disgusted with the filthy, deplorable practice of marrying young girls to older men. Further I think that the rapists they rounded up (if they even managed to do that) should be sentenced according to their crimes. On the other hand, aren’t there preventative measures that could be taken in the future? For God’s sake, can we at least set the expectation for these people that they need to wait to marry their children until they’re at least 18 years old? Frankly I think that’s the best we can hope for.

Rather than paying foster families to feed and clothe these children for the next 18 years or so, wouldn’t it be a better investment of time and resources to monitor the activities on that compound (and others like it?). You’ve got welfare “single” mommies whom we all know are in fact married in plurality to these men. This gives the government an in. They have children whose names and ages are all on record with the state. You can’t possibly expect to do away with this arranged marriage thing, it just can’t be done. What you can do is ask to see 15 year old Emma or Sue when you go in to monitor the welfare of these children. There is clearly an at-risk age for these kids. Hmmm….Emma is visiting a friend right now? Well, I really must see her. Where does this friend live? Down the street with the 50 year old pervert guy? OK. That’s really unacceptable and we’ll probably have to take Emma away now.

Not perfect, no. Damage has already been done. But isn’t that really unavoidable? The bitch of the whole matter is that you can’t make anyone - in PARTICULAR Mormons, stop having children. So most of these women who’ve lost their children are still of childbearing age and this whole thing will continue indefinitely. Have no doubt about that. What we need to do here is take responsibility for the welfare of the at-risk children now. Don’t fool yourself, most of these kids cannot be acclimated into a life within normal society after a lifetime of brainwashing as history has proven. In case you didn’t hit up that last link, let me just summarize. The polygamists that we raided in the 1950′s were essentially the grandparents of the polygamists that we raided a couple of weeks ago.

Well, there’s my two cents.

I worked as a Rep for a company that managed HOA’s. For those of you who don’t know or care what they are but are for some inexplicable reason still reading right now, and HOA is a Home Owner’s Association. They have little rules, called “covenants” and all of the people living in the particular area pay fees to have those little rules enforced. Managing an HOA is I imagine something like being God. There are so many bad things going on all at once that it’s hard to know where to start. I suppose my single favorite experience here was writing violation letters. Again to clarify, violation letters are nastygrams that you can thank your neighbor for if your dog shit on their lawn or if your Christmas lights were out past January 15th. I had to find a diplomatic way to ask a woman to please stop having such loud sex in her condo and subsequently stop smoking cigars on the balcony after the event. If only I had saved that letter.

More to come, if I can think of them.

“I’m not very technical.”

Seriously people? Neither am I. My area of technical expertise extends to browser configuration and some basic functionality. Really. So stop calling in and prefacing your next statement with that particular catch phrase.

The next part is my favorite. That’s where this gets fun.

“Sir, are you using Internet Explorer to access the internet?”

“I told you that I’m not that technical. Could you just cut the jargon please?”

OK, stop just a minute. Did I just ask you a technical question? I mean I’m assuming that you got my phone number from the internet since all of our support is for WEB products. Yes I know what they say about assuming. So you had to get on the internet somehow, right? It probably involved clicking on an icon somewhere on your desktop.

“My what? What are you talking about??”

Wow – things have gotten out of control quickly haven’t they? Because now I’ve confused you with all of my technical jargon and you’re so completely and utterly obsessed with the fact that you aren’t in the least bit technical that you aren’t even willing to tell me if you clicked on the blue E on your computer’s desktop to get online. This is where my supreme communication skills come into play.

“OK if you look on the desktop – that’s the thing with all the little buttons you click on – do you see a blue E?”

This is really a trick question. I mean, if you’re not even savvy enough to know that you’re using Internet Explorer then let’s face it, you’re using Internet Explorer. Or – God help us all – AOL. Nevertheless it is my job to establish which browser you’re using to get onto the internet. That way if you’re not using IE, I can tell you to.

I could go on for well, hours about this crap. Please if you take nothing else away from this post (and it would be hard to do that since this post is pretty pointless) take this – never begin a conversation with Tech Support by telling them you’re not technical. We already know that. That’s why it’s called Tech Support.

Nevertheless, allow me to bore you with my rantings. I’ve been smoking since I was twelve years old. I’m now twenty-six. That means that I have been smoking for almost a decade and a half. Cigarettes were my constant companion through adolescence, through my troubled (OK, my troubles were self inflicted) youth. Through puberty, and yes *sigh* even through pregnancy. When nobody else came through for me, the Marlboro man did. Yes, I know, he’s been killing me softly all these years. Maybe it just makes it easier to say goodbye if I give him his dues. Maybe it gives me something to do with my hands besides smoke. Let me just share with you some of my current symptoms:

Headache
Stomach Cramping
Excessive Irritability
Post-Nasal Drip
Hacking Cough
Insomnia

Yeah, this quitting smoking thing is a blast. I had a teacher in high school who made it his mission to educate  teenagers about the dangers of smoking (most of the kids I went to school with came from lower class neighborhoods on the bad side of town) – he showed us studies, videos, court documents, and testimonials about how addictive and poisonous nicotine was for the user. He asserted that quitting smoking is more difficult than quitting heroin.

Now, let’s examine that further shall we? I’d like to think that’s true. Call me dramatic, but I like to think that right now I’m suffering more than a heroin addict. At the very least, can we say that my withdrawal symptoms are as bad as those of a heroin addict? What about a crack cocaine user? Crystal meth ? – sure. Anyhow, I realize that my suffering is of a self inflicted nature, and honestly I was a pretty self-aware twelve year old who had been forewarned about the deadly consequences of smoking cigarettes. So here I am, suffering more than a heroin addict ever could (OK, perhaps only AS much, I’m not giving you less than that!) and blogging about it.

Fuck, can Hillary Clinton just go away already? She’s like that kid in school that follows the cool kids around and nobody really has the heart to tell her that she’s not welcome but everyone does their best to at least be awkward about things and make sure that she has a chance to catch a hint about being utterly and completely unwelcome. I mean I know that Hillary missed a historical opportunity to be the first woman President and I’m sorry about that – I really am. But the fact is that this is not her time, not her place. Nor is it McCain’s. To the extent that I am capable of believing in destiny, I genuinely believe that Obama is destined to be the next President of the United States. I mean look at the guy. He’s bulletproof.

Yeah yeah, there may even be people who are still hung up on this Reverend Wright thing. So the guy is pissed off about the treatment of his people by White America? I’m pissed off about the treatment of my people by White America, and I’m White! And we’d be deluding ourselves if we said that anyone does not harbor some hatred, racism, homophobia, complete misunderstanding or unfounded fears at some point in their lives. We’re human, and that’s a sad human truth. John McCain has somehow managed to avoid any animosity over an interview that he did shortly after his release from a Vietnamese prison camp in the 1970′s where he referred to the Vietnamese repeatedly as “G00k$” – it’s right there for the picking on Google if you don’t believe me.

I’m not a proclaimed blogging political pundit. I have virtually no understanding of the game of politics in this country – which puts me in a pool of about 99.999% of Americans out there right now. The other fraction of our countrymen – a bunch of overpaid CEO’s, lawyers, and yes – politicians, are the ones who fully understand this game. Because of that understanding and the common schmo’s apathy about voting, that tiny percentage controls goddamn nearly everything – and I’m fucking sick of it.

Maybe that’s why I like Obama so much, because he discourages apathy and cynicism in the face of such seemingly impossible obstacles like a sense of utter defeat over politics in this country and tells us that if we give a shit about the current state of things it’s our job, our responsibility to stand up and at least make our dissenting voices heard even if they are not understood. Forgive me my tangent for a moment here but there are people who would die (and no I’m not talking about middle-easterners who have no understanding of or desire for democracy so let’s get back on track here) – die to be able to vote. Sure, I don’t know any of them. I probably can’t even point to their country on a map. I probably can’t even spell the name of their country. And if hard pressed, I might admit that I can’t really remember the last time I read a newspaper article about those people or if I ever have at all. But surely they’re out there. Just a surely as there are people with extra toes and ears and conjoined twins. They’ve just gotta be out there.

Anyway get off of your lazy ass and go register to vote or something. Otherwise nutjobs like me who might be angrier than usual because they’re quitting smoking and going through nicotine withdrawal will be deciding the fate of your country and you wouldn’t want that, now would you?