Wednesday, May 26, 2010

It’s time to put your pants back on

Most fashion trends fade as quickly as they appear. The 1960s produced Nehru jackets and bell-bottom pants. Multi-colored toe socks and leisure suits permeated the 70s. Members Only jackets and parachute pants marked the Reagan era and black rain coats and unlaced boots ruled the 90s.

Fortunately, these trendy fashions came and went in relative short order. That is the rule for fads; they flame out like cheap jet engines. However, one fad has refused to follow the axiom. It’s one that never should’ve begun and, sadly, shows no sign of decline. When will the youthful obsession with the saggy pants end?

Several municipalities have enacted ordinances to halt the downward migration of trousers. In 2008 the Chicago suburb of
Lynwood imposed a $25 fine for exposing three inches or more of underwear. Lynwood isn’t alone. Cities of diverse population and culture have enacted bans on saggy pants, with penalties ranging from fines to jail time.

Outlawing the practice, especially with incarceration, seems a bit exaggerated. Saggy pants are decidedly tasteless, but reveal no flesh. Laws already exist to deal with indecent exposure and no law can eliminate stupidity. Furthermore, if the wearer is too dense to comprehend the ridiculousness of their condition they’re likely too dense to understand explanations of that fact.

Unlike politicians who pretend all societal ills are remedied with a fresh set of laws, I understand that such laws only fuel the rebellious attitude that placed saggy pants in vogue. I also understand that the opinion of a middle-aged man won’t convince the saggy pants wearer that they look foolish. Therefore I enlisted the aid of some genuine experts.

Young guys have long adopted actions that older men know is ridiculous. But another constant are young men’s desires to attract young women. So I asked a few such women for their opinions on saggy pants. These ladies are 18, 19, and 20-years-old, respectively. All are friendly, humorous and thoroughly attractive. They are everything a young man would like to take to a Saturday night movie. Get this, guys, your underwear doesn’t impress them.

Amanda is a senior at East Lincoln High School (Denver, NC). She finds nothing cool about your saggy pants or the “bad boy” image they convey; you only appear trashy and disrespectful. If you show up at her house with your pants slung low you’ll be leaving alone. “The look isn’t attractive at all,” she says with a look of near disgust.

Michelle, a senior at East Gaston High School (Mt. Holly, NC) echoes Amanda’s sentiments, only more pointedly. She just doesn’t want to see your underwear regardless of the name on the waste band. “Saggy pants show that you have no future and don’t care about your appearance,” says Michelle. The failure to wear pants where they belong also causes her to question the wearer’s personal hygiene.

“It’s improper and rude,” adds Haley, a recent college graduate. Haley thinks saggy pants makes a guy look thuggish, immature and lazy, especially since the pants are purposefully worn that way. Low-slung trousers win no compliments from her, making even the cutest guy “completely unattractive.”

Low ridding pants differ from previous youthful fashions only in appearance. The intent is the same, to prove independence and individuality by contradicting established cultural norms. But that is flawed thinking. How does someone express their individuality by mimicking what the group does? How does one prove independence by following the crowd?

If clothing’s only purpose were to conceal nakedness we would all wear sackcloth. Clothing does convey the wearer’s attitudes. Guys, wearing your pants below your buttocks informs these three ladies that you’re trashy, unkempt, unmotivated and disrespectful. Do yourself a favor and pull up your pants. If not for the sake of decency and decorum, for the young ladies you try to attract.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Looking through a Greek crystal ball

When the Dow suffered a 1000-point nosedive some experts pointed a quick finger at Greece’s financial insolvency and social disorder. I’m no international financier, but it seemed odd that such a small Mediterranean nation could so affect the U.S. markets. Are we so fragile?

Greece’s population (10.7 million) is roughly equal to Ohio’s, and only 3-percent that of the United States. Geographically, Greece is about the size of Alabama. Their 50,948 square miles is miniscule compared to the United States’ 9.28 million. Alaska is 13 times larger than Greece and seven U.S. states exceed its population.

Greece’s GDP is about 2-percent of U.S output, a drop in the proverbial bucket. Thirteen U.S. states produce greater economic activity than Greece generates. Their exports are a fraction of our own and only 5-percent of the total Greek exports find their way to American shores ($106.8 million annually). Our exports to Greece are statistically insignificant.

Given the small role Greece plays in our economy, why did our stock market react so violently to their financial and civil problems? Well, it didn’t. It turned out that a trader erroneously entered a $16 million trade as $16 billion, sparking a massive sell off and the associated panic. Greek finances didn’t trigger our slide at all. However, their unrest can disturb U.S. markets if America’s future is seen inside this Greek crystal ball.

Greek rioters have torched buildings and lobbed Molotov cocktails at police. An Athens bank was burned, killing three bank employees. Why has incivility gripped this cradle of ancient culture and civilization? According to a union leader the Greeks are loosing their rights and their future. However, what actually fueled their rage is the imminent death of the free ride.

I hesitantly paraphrase Jeremiah Wright: Greece’s financial chickens are coming home to roost. Greece has long overspent its income and juggled its books. Thus public employees enjoyed escalating salaries, extravagant pensions and numerous unsustainable perks. That gravy train has now reached the edge of the cliff and the beneficiaries refuse to let go of the caboose. The riots are the result of Greece’s dependent class, people with no intention of providing for their own needs.

This should sound familiar; America is riding the same train. Just as Greece’s fiscal insanity has created a dependent class of government workers, America has also. In fact, we have created an even greater entitlement mentality.

The United States has a burgeoning public sector while private sector hiring is stagnant. Life’s necessities have become quasi-constitutional rights in the eyes of a gullible public and a pandering, manipulative government bureaucracy. Our government, just like the Greek government, has issued promises it can’t fulfill.

Our national debt is approaching 100-percent of GDP. Social Security and Medicare are going broke, their “trust funds” depleted and their long-term obligations beyond impossible. Medicare Part D will unquestionably follow both into insolvency and now we have a national healthcare system to boot. At least Greece’s politicians are attempting government austerity. Our politicians are doubling down on a pair of deuces.

The streets of Greece could be a harbinger of things to come. What happens when our government can no longer print its way into a fraudulent form of financial solvency? What happens when those who’ve long lived on the public dole discover that the cash cow is dry? If you think they’ll sigh and say, “Oh well. Better get a job,” you’re fooling yourself. They won’t graciously accept the end of the free ride, meaning Greece’s rioting might resemble a frat party in comparison.

Greece is a prime example of rewarding demand rather than production. Political exploitation and personal selfishness have reduced the once-proud Greeks to begging at the world’s feet. Their present may be a glimpse of our future.


Orignially published at AmericanThinker.com.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The conspiracy rages against oil and coal

Americans once loved nothing more than a good fight. But times have changed and our scrappiness has surrendered to a love of conspiracy.

Examples are myriad. Reagan cut a deal with Iran’s revolutionary government to detain American hostages until after the 1980 election. Neill Armstrong walked on a movie set and the Illuminati stores space aliens in cryogenic chambers at Area 51. Michael Jackson, Elvis Pressley, Timothy McVeigh and Adolf Hitler are alive and members of the bowling league in Dubuque, Iowa. There are “truthers” and “birthers” and neo-green earth-firsters, with the Kennedy assassination trumping them all. There’s little that spurs America’s imagination like a good conspiracy. So why not stoke the fire?

Isn’t it odd for a state-of-the-art oil platform to explode at this particular time? Less than a month after President Obama pandered to the country and alienated his base with promises of
offshore oil exploration there’s an oil disaster of epic proportions. Just what the doctor ordered.

In fact, Phil Radford of Greenpeace forecasted “devastating oil spills” that would “threaten our coastal communities” if expanded offshore drilling became reality. Right on cue a rig explodes and the resulting slick threatens to transform every inch of coastline from Galveston to Virginia Beach into an oil-soaked wasteland.

Odd, too, how this disaster occurred when skepticism over climate change
increased, global warming research began to unravel and Phil Jones, whose research drove the global warming argument, admitted that the globe hasn’t warmed in 15 years. What better way to “re-green” public opinion than with ecological catastrophe?

The platform’s owner said the explosion was due to a blowout, a condition where oil and gas is forced up through the well. But oil rigs are designed to limit blowout potential and prevent spills. Furthermore, hurricanes have set oil platforms adrift with nary a drop of oil spilled into the Gulf. So why this leak? Coincidence? Bad luck? Ha!

I say radical neo-greens rigged the oil platform explosion to turn the public against offshore oil exploration. Yes, the earth-firsters caused some collateral environmental damage. But that’s a common military strategy. Make small, initial sacrifices to obtain greater victories later. The icing on the cake is the tanker explosion at a San Antonio refinery. Strike another neo-green blow against the hated “Big Oil”.

What about the coal mine explosion? Coal is an abundant energy source. But not the cleanest stuff on Earth.
Clean coal technology, while progressing, is prohibitively expensive. However, the mere possibility of clean coal disturbs the neo-greens. Therefore coal must remain evil in the public’s sight.

Right on time there’s an explosion inside a coal mine that has a history of safety violations. Miners were trapped and killed, and America grieved with the miner’s families. National attention focused on coal mining’s inherent risks. And the media, fairly or not, treated the mine owner like the second coming of Ebenezer Scrooge. What better way to sour public opinion toward coal?

Conspiracy theories, by nature, are seldom to be taken seriously. That’s the case here. There is no evidence to suggest that the explosions at the Upper Big Branch mine, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, or the San Antonio refinery were the work of neo-green saboteurs. But if conspiracy is far-fetched, opportunism is the rule. These horrific accidents will not go to waste.

Oil and coal are equally hated among leftists. Oil contaminates oceans and soils beaches while coal poisons air and levels mountains. Oil destroys everything that coal doesn’t, and vice-versa. Environmentalists may not have instigated the disasters, but they’ll surely use them for political gain.

We are living the perfect storm. “Big Oil” and “Big Coal” are demonized for environmental recklessness. Neo-greens will profit from all three disasters, using them to condemn the energy industry and promote their favored projects. And that, my friends, is no conspiracy.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Political Correctness claims Franklin Graham

If there is to be a National Day of Prayer it shouldn’t become an exercise in politically correct nonsense. But when the Pentagon bowed to pressure from pro-Islamic groups and rescinded Rev. Franklin Graham’s invitation to speak, nonsense is exactly what the event became.

The opposition to the Graham invitation was vehement. A spokesman from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation called
Graham “hideously Islamophobic.” The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said a Graham appearance was “completely inappropriate.”

Why the hostility toward Franklin Graham? Well, because the truth hurts. Graham had the gall to proclaim what many people think but are afraid to mention. He called Islam an
evil practice, condemning Islam’s treatment of women and the indiscriminate use of violence to advance the Islamic agenda.

Graham offered this assessment after September 11, 2001. That was the day when 18 Muslim missionaries leveled the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and killed nearly 3,000 of our neighbors.

What’s overlooked is that Graham didn’t belittle individual Muslims and has extended charitable
assistance to Muslim areas. He simply claimed that a significant faction within Islam condones violence as a proselytizing tool. Islam has an extensive record to support Graham’s opinion.

You may recall the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Spurred by the Islamic Revolution that deposed the Shah, Iranian radicals seized the American embassy in Tehran. They took 66 hostages and held them for 444 days. Not to be outdone Hezbollah kidnapped 30 Americans in 1982. Several of those captives were killed and one survivor, Terry Anderson, remained a prisoner for more than six years.

The bloodshed and violence continued in 1983. Shiite fanatics exploded a truck bomb outside a barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 U.S. Marines. A Navy diver was executed in 1985 after Hezbollah hijacked TWA flight 847. The Palestinian Liberation Front commandeered the cruise ship
Achille Lauro, executing the wheelchair-bound Jewish-American Leon Klinghoffer. Klinghoffer’s body, wheelchair and all, was pushed into the Mediterranean Sea.

Libyan radicals joined the jihad, too. Libyans were involved in bombing the Rome and Vienna airports. Libyans bombed a West German nightclub where U.S. military personal often gathered. It was a Libyan bomb that ripped apart a Pan-Am 747 in midair, reigning debris on Lockerbie, Scotland. Muammar Gaddafi himself admitted Libya’s participation in Lockerbie, although fifteen years after the fact.

Al-Qaeda reared its head in 1993, detonating a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. Hezbollah, in 1996, used a truck bomb to bring down the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda again in Kenya and Tanzania, where 224 died and 4,500 were injured in attacks on the U.S. embassies. A small explosive-laden boat blew a gaping hole in the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors. Suicide bombers targeted American hotels in Jordan and car bombs killed 60 in Algeria. All were the work of Al-Qaeda.

A Muslim convert killed one soldier and wounded another outside a
recruiting station in Arkansas. With shouts of “Allahu Akbar” an Army doctor killed 13 American soldiers at Ft. Hood. The doctor had boasted to a neighbor that he would “do good work for God” on the day of his rampage.

Dozens of attacks and thousands dead at the hands of Muslims whose support comes from Islamic organizations and/or Islamic governments. Consider also the scores of brainwashed bombers who’ve targeted restaurants, bus stations and open-air markets throughout the Middle East. The common thread is the Islamic jihad against the infidels (that’s us) for the glory of Allah. Yet the Pentagon dismissed Franklin Graham so as not to offend Islam.

Something’s amiss here, and I think it’s our grasp on reality. If there’s to be a National Day of Prayer, maybe we should petition our Creator to open our eyes and restore our common sense.


This column originally posted at American Thinker.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Political Correctness claims Franklin Graham

If there is to be a National Day of Prayer it shouldn’t become an exercise in politically correct nonsense. But when the Pentagon bowed to pressure from pro-Islamic groups and rescinded Rev. Franklin Graham’s invitation to speak, nonsense is exactly what the event became.

The opposition to the Graham invitation was vehement. A spokesman from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation called
Graham “hideously Islamophobic.” The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said a Graham appearance was “completely inappropriate.”

Why the hostility toward Franklin Graham? Well, because the truth hurts. Graham had the gall to proclaim what many people think but are afraid to mention. He called Islam an
evil practice, condemning Islam’s treatment of women and the indiscriminate use of violence to advance the Islamic agenda.

Graham offered this assessment after September 11, 2001. That was the day when 18 Muslim missionaries leveled the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and killed nearly 3,000 of our neighbors.

What’s overlooked is that Graham didn’t belittle individual Muslims and has extended charitable
assistance to Muslim areas. He simply claimed that a significant faction within Islam condones violence as a proselytizing tool. Islam has an extensive record to support Graham’s opinion.

You may recall the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Spurred by the Islamic Revolution that deposed the Shah, Iranian radicals seized the American embassy in Tehran. They took 66 hostages and held them for 444 days. Not to be outdone Hezbollah kidnapped 30 Americans in 1982. Several of those captives were killed and one survivor, Terry Anderson, remained a prisoner for more than six years.

The bloodshed and violence continued in 1983. Shiite fanatics exploded a truck bomb outside a barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 U.S. Marines. A Navy diver was executed in 1985 after Hezbollah hijacked TWA flight 847. The Palestinian Liberation Front commandeered the cruise ship
Achille Lauro, executing the wheelchair-bound Jewish-American Leon Klinghoffer. Klinghoffer’s body, wheelchair and all, was pushed into the Mediterranean Sea.

Libyan radicals joined the jihad, too. Libyans were involved in bombing the Rome and Vienna airports. Libyans bombed a West German nightclub where U.S. military personal often gathered. It was a Libyan bomb that ripped apart a Pan-Am 747 in midair, reigning debris on Lockerbie, Scotland. Muammar Gaddafi himself admitted Libya’s participation in Lockerbie, although fifteen years after the fact.

Al-Qaeda reared its head in 1993, detonating a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. Hezbollah, in 1996, used a truck bomb to bring down the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda again in Kenya and Tanzania, where 224 died and 4,500 were injured in attacks on the U.S. embassies. A small explosive-laden boat blew a gaping hole in the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors. Suicide bombers targeted American hotels in Jordan and car bombs killed 60 in Algeria. All were the work of Al-Qaeda.

A Muslim convert killed one soldier and wounded another outside a
recruiting station in Arkansas. With shouts of “Allahu Akbar” an Army doctor killed 13 American soldiers at Ft. Hood. The doctor had boasted to a neighbor that he would “do good work for God” on the day of his rampage.

Dozens of attacks and thousands dead at the hands of Muslims whose support comes from Islamic organizations and/or Islamic governments. Consider also the scores of brainwashed bombers who’ve targeted restaurants, bus stations and open-air markets throughout the Middle East. The common thread is the Islamic jihad against the infidels (that’s us) for the glory of Allah. Yet the Pentagon dismissed Franklin Graham so as not to offend Islam.

Something’s amiss here, and I think it’s our grasp on reality. If there’s to be a National Day of Prayer, maybe we should petition our Creator to open our eyes and restore our common sense.

This column originally posted at American Thinker.