I heard part of Medved’s show today. He was, as usual, VERY annoying. Apparently, he’s detecting the first, faint, whiffs of armed rebellion in the air. This proves that, full of IT - or not, Medved’s sense of smell is fully functional.

Dealing with enraged sovereign individuals, Medved tried to calm those angry voices of reason, by providing covering fire for Messiah Barry.

Thus sayeth Medved:
Messiah Barry is NOT, Medved assures his listeners, a Commie Rat Bastard.

Hambo’s Reply:
If Messiah Barry isn’t a Commie Rat Bastard, he’s a Laurence Olivier class thespian, because his ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ rhetoric is alarmingly REAL.

Thus sayeth Medved:
Messiah Barry is NOT, Medved assures his listeners, trying to destroy the economy.

Hambo’s Reply:
If he’s not trying to destroy the economy, how does he hope to revive it when he’s punishing achievement/achievers, saddling our economy with ruinous debt, and NATIONIZING entire segments of the American marketplace?

Thus sayeth Medved:
Messiah Barry does not, Medved assures his listeners, hate America.

Hambo’s Reply:
If Messiah Barry loves America, why does he start every speech with "America sucks, but it’s not my fault".

Parting shot: As usual, Medved has his head up his ass. I need a lot more than Medved hot air to convince me that Messiah Barry isn’t an America-hating Commie rat bastard who is trying to flush our prosperity down the crapper.

Episode 1
When they checked the company's voice mail, on Monday (March 15, 2010), three of the firm's managers were perplexed by the machine’s introductory words on the first message: "Friday, two-seventeen".

For the next two days, they tried to analyze/troubleshoot the voicemail technology, to determine why it affixed a bygone date - February 17 - on a message that was received in mid-March.

On the third day, the crisis was resolved, after a free ranging rational adult arrived on the scene. After listening patiently, the free ranging rational adult explained the obvious to them: "Two-seventeen is the TIME, not the date."

Episode 2
With their first crisis resolved, the same trio of Einsteins aimed the free ranging rational adult at their next crisis, a 'broken' FAX machine.

"It just stopped. No matter how many times I pushed the button, it wouldn't print my second incoming page." One of them caterwauled.

"It’s an important message, and we’ve lost two days trying to recover it." Another manager complained.

Glancing at the FAX machine, the free ranging rational adult asked, "Did you try replacing the black cartridge?"

"Why?" The third manager asked, glaring at the machine.

Pointing to the FAX’s blinking status window, the free ranging rational adult replied, "Because this says ‘replace black cartridge’."

"Oh." One of them replied. "But, what about all the FAXes we lost while it was broken?"

"It saves them in memory until it can print them out for you." The free ranging rational adult explained, while installing a new black cartridge.

Demonstrating heroism, above, and beyond, the call of duty, the free ranging rational adult resisted the urge to smirk and/or gloat, when the ‘missing’, ‘lost’, second page emerged from the ‘BROKEN’ FAX machine.

Episode 3
My designated Elected Tormentor, the U.S. Congresspunk for my district, was full of himself, and IT, when he declared that he wanted to reach out to his constituents, so he could get some direct feedback on their concerns. Holy Town Hall, Batman? Yes, and no.

He conducted his Town Hall, using a mailer that was filled with loaded, leading, questions. No matter how you answered his grammatically-challenged questions, you were compelled to tell him what he wanted to hear.

Bottom line: His safe seat isn’t as ‘safe’ as he thinks it is. Vote this gutless wonder out? You better believe it, 'you're so FIRED', Sparky.

Parting shots:

1) All 3 episodes are true.

2) I am not the free-ranging rational adult in Episodes 1 & 2.

3) Furthermore, I am NOT one of the 3 technologically challenged Einsteins.

Properly-PIGish St. Patrick's Day Facts

Holiday: St. Patrick’s Day

What it is:
St. Patrick’s Day honors a Rosary True Believer saint. On its face, St. Patrick's Day venerates one specific flavor of Cross Cultism to the exclusion of all others. This blatantly Catholic holiday is inherently offensive to the differently-Catholic, Buddhists, Torah True Believers, Hindus, Mecca Maniacs, Wiccans and last but not least, atheists. Admittedly, most of the aforementioned groups will suffer in silence. On a more ominous note, it's a slam dunk that, some-damn-how, St. Patrick's Day is "offensive to Islam" and we all know what that means.

Who gets heartburn from it:
Setting aside St. Patrick's Day's supernaturalist implications, we need to consider several other features of the day that will set off one hypersensitive pinhead or the other. The militantly sober neo Carrie Nation's will be offended because this holiday is celebrated by imbibing adult beverages in great quantities. The fact that the holiday honors a - gasp - male is certain to catapult NO-NAD harpies into a panty-twisting hissy fit. The differently-heterosexual will be caterwauling because homophobic organizers won't let GLAAD BAAGs march in certain St. Patrick's Day parades. Greenie weenies will spout drivel about the ecological devastation caused by countless millions of drunken peabrains despoiling the landscape in their frantic search for four-leaf clovers. Last, but far from least, the fact that St. Patrick's Day is celebrated by wearing green is a deliberate insult to colorblind-Americans.

Supplemental information:
Everyone knows about St. Patrick, but most of what you "know" is probably wrong. For starters, his name isn't "Patrick". His birth moniker was "Maewyn", but he changed it to Patrick after he shed his pagan ways and set off on the highway to heaven. If you're thinking Maewyn doesn't sound Irish, give yourself a cookie, because Ireland's favorite Saint was born in Wales. Last, but not least, the story that he chased the snakes from Ireland is Irish hyperbole, because, there weren't any snakes to evict.

The American St. Patrick's Day festivities started in Boston, in 1737, which explains why a day devoted to a Saint who converted pagans to Cross Cultism is celebrated by massive adult beverage infusions. Spend mid-March in Boston and you'll understand how it could drive an otherwise "saintly" man to drink. Bottoms up, Beantown Sparky

Hambo’s Take:
St. Patrick’s Day is that day of the year when we have our sanity assaulted by a bunch of inane nitwits, most of whom aren’t Irish, couldn’t find Ireland on a globe if their life depended on it, and have a pathological hatred for green every other day of the year.

Green beer? Leprechauns? Stupid looking hats? Family, friends, co-workers and strangers nagging you about the lack of green in your attire? A frontal assault on your sanity by musical terrorists who bellow out "Danny Boy" every 3 minutes? Is this the best Ireland, the Irish, have to offer? Give me a break.

We get the part about national/ethnic pride running amok. We get the fact that, for one day of the year, it’s cool to be Irish. We get the fact that, after you cut through all the crap, St. Patrick’s Day has nothing to do with snakes, or holy rollers who chased them from the storied isle. For most of us, St. Patrick’s Day is an excuse to get blasted and slur our speech with a faux Irish accent. Ireland, the Irish, deserve better, and quite frankly, so do we. Besides, we already set aside a date on the calendar to get blasted, New Year’s Eve.

Porcus’ Take:
It's Porcus O'Publisher here, to give you some heads up on what being Irish is the other 364 days of the year.

Personally, I am complimented that people of all persuasions take the time to give a tip of the hat type props and celebrate an Irishman, who, allegedly chased the snakes out of Ireland.

But the wearing of the green every March 17? When I don't wear green, anything, on Saint Patrick's Day, and co-workers point that out, especially with my first name being...drum roll, please, Patrick...I simply reply with, "I prefer to let the wannabees do their thing." I've had Irish blood, much scotch, whiskey and beer pumping through my veins ever since my parents reluctantly claimed me from the maternity ward, and said, 'I guess he's ours, we'll take him.'

I don't need no stinking green to prove my heritage.

The FSOP is continuing the long, laborious, process of Emerilizing our PIG Doctrine. During the next few weeks, we’ll be transforming each element of the PIG Doctrine by making it a clickable link to a longer rant on that topic.

This venerable Hambo rant explores the following element of the PIG Doctrine, in greater specificity:

'Hate Crime' infers, erroneously, that there are 'noble' motives for committing a crime. Assault is assault and murder is murder, no matter what the intellectually flat-lining perpetrator has on his alleged mind.

Criminalizing Hate Is Criminalizing Thought

I hear that, led by John ‘Race Monger’ Conyers, the Capitol Hill Clown Posse Ethnocrats are determined to exploit the Donkey Clan majority in congress by running another hate crimes steaming load of bull crap up the legicrap flagpole. There must be something in the water these lefties are drinking because a week or two ago I wrote a piece about some Elected Tormentors added homeless people to the long list of hate crime ‘victims’. Conyers isn’t going that far off the cliff, but he’s going far enough to give the vast right-wing conspiracy heartburn. His idea is to add the differently-heterosexual to the protected minorities club.

Hate crime laws promote the notion that a criminal’s thoughts are more important that his actions. Such laws contend that, when a murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation, arson, vandalism or property destruction stems from a bias due to the victim’s race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity, it is especially heinous. The same crime, if perpetrated for any other reason - or, no reason at all - is, according to this hate crime mindset, less contemptible...more commendable. Hate crime zealots don’t give a damn about the crime itself, as long as the criminal committed the crime for the right reason, or - better still - for no reason whatsoever.

To put this matter in it’s proper perspective, I’ll quote from our Pin The Tail page in PIG’s Ethnocrat section:

A quick look at certain notorious Amerikan crimes brings this hate crime irrationality into sharp focus. James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, for racial reasons. Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy for political reasons. I find it impossible to say one murder is worse than the other, simply because of the assassin's motives. Hate crime advocates advance the notion that politically-motivated assassins like Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and John Wilkes Booth are more honorable, more praiseworthy, and less guilty than a racially-motivated assassin like James Earl Ray. Are the Kennedy brothers and Abraham Lincoln less dead than Martin Luther King? Did their friends and family find solace in the assassin's political motives? What about mass murderer Tim McVeigh? Would his actions be more vile if his motives were racial, rather than political?

Let’s make sure I understand hate crime as defined by Ethnocrats and other hate crime zealots. If I burn down my white neighbor’s house because his dog used my lawn as a toilet, I’m hate crime cool and, probably, the victim of a bad childhood. Conversely, if I burn down my black neighbor’s house because he’s black, I’m public enemy number one, and nobody gives a rip about my crappy childhood. Asinine? You bet, but hate crime zealots love this bovine excrement. A person who burns down someone else’s property is an arsonist, period; it doesn’t matter why the firebug did it. Arson is arson, whether it was motivated by a fondness for flames, where a dog does its ‘business’, or some form of bigotry.

A 'hate crime' is a politically motivated red herring specifically created to placate the whining victim groups. Instead of creating new crime definitions just to make ‘victim’ groups feel better, why don’t these whining zealots simply punish all criminals to the full extent of the law? We could start by abolishing all the excuses America’s bleeding hearts use to shift blame away from the criminal, but the excuse abuse, shyster-shrink cabal won’t allow that. This Ethnocrat, Don Quixote-like, tilting of the hate crime windmill is much easier, and much more enriching than doing something about the epidemic of real crime.

America must flush this hate crime legicrap and impose a justice system that adjudicates a crime based on the criminal’s actions, instead of the criminal’s thoughts. The foundation for this new system rests on this non-negotiable concept: Any individual who initiates force against another individual or that individual’s property is guilty, period.

Parting Shot: I still insist that it would be much easier, for all concerned if the Nanny State came right out and said "it". Why can’t Conyers simply say what he’s thinking: If you want to kill, assault, rob, or terrorize somebody, make damn sure it’s a straight white male Cross Cultist. In fact, why not go the extra mile and pass a law that mandates that all those no hate crime harm, no hate crime foul, potential victims wear a bull’s-eye 24/7/365? If you have the Capitol Hill race card retards on speed dial, feel free to pass this suggestion along.

You will find more properly-PIGish information on this topic: Here

Back in the day, I would call time on those fateful ‘Spring forward’, ‘Fall back’ days then change all my clocks, manually, to match the new DST setting accordingly. It was a pain. It was asinine. It was, as far as my life is concerned, just one more annoyance that ‘the man’ inflicted just to bug me (It’s very similar to baseball’s infield fly rule, that way). The upshot is that I hated it, but I managed to muddle through without stressing myself out.

Eventually, technology rode to my rescue when I started replacing the old, low tech clocks with digital clocks that kept track of those devilish Daylight Savings Time details: they changed themselves, automagically (I know that automagically isn’t a real word, nitpicker Sparky, but it works in this context.) By 2006 my clock resetting duty was limited to my lovely bride’s digital watch, a duty I performed willingly, without any profane Hambo pleasantries.

I still hated this Daylight Savings Time crap, but the disruption it caused seemed to be minimized, until, those Elected Tormentor bastards screwed everything up. Their tinkering means that my automagically adjusting clocks are doing their thing on the WRONG DAYS. One clock was so stressed out by this change, it had a complete nervous breakdown. In fact, it became so depressed it committed suicide. We tried all the extreme lifesaving measures, but it was gone. GONE, and it was so YOUNG!

I could go out and buy a new set of automagically adjustable clocks, but that’s probably what THEY want. I think that Big TIME - that damn clock-making capitalist cartel- bribed the Elected Tormentors to play these Daylight Savings Time games so they could make a killing on clock sales. They’re going to sit back, sell a boatload of clocks with the new DST settings, then, after their clock sales peak, they’ll bribe the Elected Tormentors to change it back again.

That’s right, PIGsters, I’m coming right out with it. Daylight Savings Time is a dastardly capitalist plot. Point the bastards out to me and I'll give them a CLOCKING they'll never forget.

It’s safe to assume that Constance McMillen isn’t the most popular inmate of Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi. How, you ask, did she garner that ignoble status? It was depressingly easy.

The first thing you need to know about our 18-year-old heroine is that she’s an out of the closet GLAAD BAAG. That fun fact reached critical mass, when Connie decided to attend the forthcoming prom, with her girlfriend - a fellow student. Making life thrilling for everyone concerned, Connie proclaimed that she would attend the prom wearing a tux.

Connie’s prom plans hit the first speed bump, when school officials brandished a ban on same-sex dates. They kicked the drama up several notches, after Connie responded with a non-negotiable ‘bite me’, and declared her intention of attending the prom, despite the same sex date ban. By this time, the ACLU was making menacing noises, so, declaring the matter an unnecessary distraction from their prime Educrap function, school officials hit Connie with their best shot. How? They cancelled the April 02, 2010 prom.

Game, set, match? Not exactly:

A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled. The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen, who said she faced some unhappy classmates after the Itawamba County School District said it wouldn't host the April 2 prom.

"Somebody said, 'Thanks for ruining my senior year."' McMillen said of her reluctant return Thursday to Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton.

The lawsuit seeks a court order for the school to hold the prom. It also asks that McMillen be allowed to escort her girlfriend, who is a fellow student, and wear a tuxedo, which the school said also violated policy. The district's decision Wednesday came after the ACLU demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it said it violated students' rights. The ACLU said the district violated McMillen's free expression rights by not letting her wear a tux. (FOX)

Proving that there’s still intelligent life in Dixie, a New Orleans hotel owner named Sean Cummings has offered to host a prom at one of his properties. He’s even willing to provide free transportation, in addition to free accommodations. In a rational world, Connie and her classmates would tell school officials where to stick it and take the prom on the road to the Big Easy. It’s my idea of a win-win solution.

Why is a New Orleans prom win-win? It eliminates GLAAD BAAG activists, Elected Tormentors, and ACLU asshats, each of whom has their own axe to grind. It leaves the Mississippi cess-school ‘unsullied’, by a teenage Y-naut and her girlfriend. Best of all it prevents this girls will be girls insanity from becoming LITERALLY, a federal case.

Whenever I hear that crap, it’s, instantly, obvious that the bloviating Elected Tormentor - like all the class warfare punks in congress - thinks everyone's rightful property, including yours and mine, really belongs to the Nanny State. In the Nanny State's warped view, the relentlessly greedy capitalists steal the government's money via tax breaks and GASP squander it on whatever thrills them spitless. That twisted attitude stands reality on its head, because, when you steal a guy's wallet then hand him back two dollars for bus fare, you're not giving him any damn thing. You're returning a small portion of the wealth that you stole from him.

Some rational adult needs to grab these greedy, public trough swilling, pissants by the scruff of the neck and lay some unvarnished facts on them. Since there aren't any rational adults available, I'll administer this reality check:

* Contrary to popular parasite-coddling myth, money earned by sovereign American individuals is not government property. It's not the government's damn money; it belongs, first and foremost, to those individuals who earned it. The government likes to gloss over this fact by calling an individual's hard-earned money a 'resource' or 'revenue'.

* You need to get real about tax refund checks. When you ‘get money back’, you didn’t put one over on Uncle Sam’s Tax Nazis. That refund means that THEY STOLE TOO MUCH MONEY FROM YOU, the prior year. It means that they stole it, used it, then returned it, WITHOUT PAYING ONE DAMN PENNY OF INTEREST.

* The only thing that stands between Uncle Sam and an armed revolt by outraged taxpayers is the withholding scam. They take it a little at a time, and they get THEIR cut of your hard earned money FIRST. They’ve got you so distracted that you don’t even count that part of your check as YOUR MONEY. If every American taxpayer had to write a check on April 15th for the FULL AMOUNT that Uncle Sam is stealing from you, those tax revolt barricades would be manned in a New York minute.

* A tax cut, by definition, goes to those who pay taxes. Since the top 10 percent of wage earners pay the lion's share of taxes collected [the data on this contention has been widely distributed and remains unrefuted] they will, quite rightly, get a bigger tax cut than those who pay little or nothing.

* Giving a tax cut to those who don't pay taxes is not a tax cut, it's a wealth transfer scheme. We need to call this by its proper name: WELFARE. The 'earned income tax credit' is a prime example. Let's say a family of four earning $29,000 pays $1,500 in withholding. When they file their taxes, they will get a $3,200 refund, thanks to this earned income scam. In other words, this welfare payment scheme gives them all of their withholding back, plus and additional $1,700 'donation' from kindly Uncle Sam. When you cut through all the bovine excrement, the EITC works this way: If you earn less than $33,000 a year and have kids, the IRS will give you back 2 or 3 times what they withheld for taxes. Ka-ching! When you get back more than you paid - double or triple what you paid - it's not a tax refund, it's a welfare check that was ‘laundered’ by the IRS.

* America's tax system punishes, criminalizes, achievement and rewards failure. If you're a born parasite, a loser who can't get out of his own damn way, kindly Uncle Sam will steal somebody else's hard earned money and give it to you. All you need to do is whine for it. If you're an achiever, Uncle Sam will tax you into the poorhouse. If, by some miracle you leave a sizeable estate, Uncle Sam will snatch it away from your rightful heirs, sell it and give the proceeds to the parasites who are feeding off the rotting corpse of the American dream. Stealing money from the one who earned it and giving it to someone who didn't isn't ‘class warfare'; it's an old fashioned mugging, with Uncle Sam’s Tax Nazis doing the dirty work.

* Achievers who transform ideas and hard work into big bucks aren't the parasites. The real parasites are the political punks who spend decades swilling at the public trough. The real parasites are congressional class warfare cretins who steal the rightful property of America's achievers and use it for their own benefit, by distributing it to their friends, supporters and the chronically-greedy losers who keep re-electing them to congress.

My hard-earned income is not a government resource. My hard-earned money belongs first, last and always to me. You're not doing me any favors when you announce that the next time you mug me, you're going to steal a little less of my money. Class warfare and the transfer of wealth scheme these congressional class warriors perpetrate is straight out of the Marxist playbook: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." That might thrill the Capitol Hill class warrior clowns spitless, but it has this pagan scribbler seriously contemplating a second American Revolution. Enough is enough!

[During a recent visit to the Objectivism Online site, I came across an exceptionally perceptive, well reasoned, posting in one of the discussion groups. In it, the poster, ‘Money Lover’, compares the demise of America, with the death of Ancient Greece and Rome.

I found the following passages especially enlightening and insightful:]

"The collapse of a civilization is a drawn-out process that does not happen within one day, nor even one year. Rome had been declining for centuries before Odoacer--the first Barbarian king--took it over in 476, and that particular year brought little visible change into the lives of the inhabitants of the empire, who continued to refer to themselves as Romans. Similarly, the United States has been adopting Socialist policies ever since the passage of the first "anti-trust" act in 1890; the 2008 election is just another step down a road we have been traveling on since before Ayn Rand was born. Assigning a date to the collapse of a civilization is an exercise in abstraction: one has to choose the date of an event that symbolizes the whole centuries-long process; an event that summarizes the essence of what brought about the downfall; an event that marks a point of no return.

Dr. Peikoff recenty called Obama "the first anti-American candidate." Indeed, while there have been many un-American candidates and Presidents in the past (in fact, most of the Presidents in the 20th century can be called un-American), none of them has been as avowedly anti-American as Obama. None of them kept hearing "God damn America!" as the gospel of God during their regular Sunday visits to the institution most responsible for shaping their sense of life, their ideas of morality, and their whole implicit philosophy. None of them had the likes of Bill Ayers as their closest associates. If we give them the benefit of the doubt, we might still say about all past Presidents that they were fundamentally well-meaning individuals who honestly wanted to secure a bright future for America, but were awfully handicapped as a result of the betrayal of the nation by its nihilist intellectual establishment. Obama's choice of his friends and mentors makes it clear that securing a bright future for America is definitely not his goal.

A nation cannot elect one of its enemies as its chief executive and survive for long. If we want to find a date symbolic of America's descent into statism, I cannot think of any event in the past, nor do I think there will be any event in the future, that captures it better than the election that turned the first anti-American candidate into the first anti-American president and gave him the full support of the House as well as the Senate. November 4, 2008, is the date history ought to record as the day the first American Republic fell."

"Thus, like all abstractions, assigning a date to the fall of the original United States is much more than just an idle academic exercise. Until it becomes widely accepted that we have not been able to keep the constitutional Republic the Founders gave us, everything that happens in America will continue to be seen as an American event, and as a product of American culture, i.e. of capitalism. Only when people become aware that Washington has been taken over by an element foreign to the nation's founding spirit will they stop identifying Washington's actions with that of a capitalist government; only then will they naturally think of it as having nothing to do with the original American culture.

Many patriotic Americans will say that it is premature at this point to declare the end of the Republic. Shouldn't I at least wait to see what policies Obama actually implements (given that he has yet to fully disclose the exact nature and extent of the changes he has in store for us) before pronouncing him the Odoacer of America? But I think, if anything, one has to wonder whether November 4 of this year is too late a date to name: the United States has been much closer to a democracy than a republic for several decades now. This was not the first election in which a candidate tried to gain the support of 51 per cent of the voters by promising them a little money, to be taken from the remaining 49 per cent--and did not even find it necessary to try and explain how his plan was to be reconciled with the inalienable rights Jefferson had written about. However, it was the first election in which the candidate flatly said into the face of a member of the victimized 49 per cent that his intention was to spread their wealth around, and that he knew this will make them vote against him, but it was the other 51 per cent whose vote he was counting on."

"It is time to make it official: Washington, D.C. has fallen to the Barbarians."

[It’s a very long commentary and I’ve already ‘borrowed’ too much of it. If you want to read it all, try this link: 476 Rome, 2008 Washington]

This week, while he was perpetrating my tax return, my personal financial guru, Iggy "The Grifter" Kowalski, sounded off on my pet theory for curing what ails Congress.

Me: "You’re looking good, Iggy."

Iggy: "There’s nothing like a two year stretch in a federal prison for tax fraud to make you a lean mean, spreadsheet molesting, machine."

Me: "You’re in a very cheerful mood. You’re not holding a grudge, because they made me testify at your trial, are you?"

Iggy: Aiming a toothy smile at me, he shook his head. "No harm done. It let me meet my hero, Bernie Madoff. Besides, everyone knows when it comes to finances, you’re a blithering idiot."

Me: Still worried, I reminded, "The last time you were this cheerful at tax time, you told me the U.S. Mint would need to put on an extra shift to print enough money for my refund."

Iggy: Laughing, he rolled his eyes. "Whine, whine, whine. I wonder if they still have that same hottie on their local auditing staff? You know the one, the tall, slender, brunette with the big cans and sexy accent."

Me: "She was there when they audited me last year, and I have her penciled in for this year, just in case. Sonia is a big fan of your work. In fact, she called you the Michelangelo of fraud."

Iggy: "The Michelangelo of fraud! I love it. I’ll have it printed on my business cards."

Iggy: After several minutes of nerve-wracking humming, he glanced at me over his shoulder. "I’ve been thinking about your pet theory."

Me: "Pet theory? Which one?"

Iggy: "The smiting one. The one where - what do you call him?"

Me: "Old Ka-Boom?"

Iggy: "Yeah, HIM. The one where HE wipes out Congress with an asteroid."

Me: "Oh, that one. What about it?"

Iggy: "It has a flaw, or two."

Me: "A flaw? What flaw?"

Iggy: "For starters, Old What’s His Name..."

Me: "Old Ka-Boom."

Iggy: "Yeah, HIM. Anyway, you’d need to ask him for a smiting which might present a problem, since he stopped taking your calls when you started calling yourself ‘A Pagan’."

Me: "I’m working on that one. One of my readers has a hotline to heaven, so I might be able to do an end run around the celestial disconnect."

Iggy: "PIGster J, your Professor of Piety, seems too serious about his supernaturalism to request a smiting, but I’ll concede the point."

Me: "You conceded much too easily. What else have you got?"

Iggy: Gloating, he hit me with the dreaded Iggy Smirk. "Old What’s His Name’s well documented fondness for fools, drunks, scallywags and moonbats would, by definition, exempt everyone on Capitol Hill via HIS ‘fools, drunks, scallywags and moonbats’ exemption."

Me: "Good point, but I might catch a break and submit the smiting request when SHE is getting on HIS last raw nerve."

Iggy: "I won't let you trap me into dissing Mrs. Old What's His Name."

Me: "Coward."

Iggy: Gives me the finger. "That distraction would require precise timing. Based on my encyclopedic knowledge of your investment strategy, I’m here to tell you that nobody is going to accuse you of good timing."

Me: "Is that it? ‘Pagan’ and that asinine Old Ka-Boom smiting exemption?"

Iggy: "That’s more than enough. However, you might want to consider the fact that America’s chad-punching retards are so clueless that they might just kick over a few rocks and elect another bunch of fools, drunks, scallywags and moonbats to Congress."

Me: Feeling smug, I gave him the finger. "I won’t argue the point, but, since they’d all be rookies, it would take them a few years to hone their craft to Iggy-class perfection."

Iggy: "A quasi-insulting compliment, but, considering it’s YOU, I’ll take it."

Me: "You’re welcome."

Iggy: "Ideally, they should put me in charge. I’d have America showing a tidy profit, in record time."

Me: "President Iggy? Bold new concept."

Iggy: "You better believe it, Sparky. I couldn’t do any worse than this Dumbo-Eared rookie who is the poster punk for losernomics."

When Iggy is right, he’s right.

.WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY AND WHAT'S HIS DAMAGE?

I am a sovereign individual.

My life does not belong to the state. It does not belong to that amorphous collectivist illusion "society". It does not belong some supernatural entity. My life is mine and mine alone, not the state's, society's, or a deity's. I demand no more...I demand no less...than the freedom to take those actions and act upon those thoughts that further the primary purpose of life: life itself. I grant no more...I grant no less...than the same consideration to every other sovereign individual. My life and the essential properties thereof - my intellect, my thoughts, my character, my integrity - are mine an mine alone. Since I am the sole owner of my life, the blame or credit for its conduct is entirely mine, not the state's, society's or a deity's. For good or ill, the buck stops here, Sparky.

As sole owner, stockholder and director of my life, I started my tenure by determining that reality is objective: the universe exists independently and is not a figment of my imagination. Objective reality is not a malleable, undefined, chaos that is subject to the whim and whimsy of a capricious supernatural entity. Objective reality is not determined by the unrequited needs of society. Objective reality is not enslaved, altered or changed by the insatiable demands of the Nanny State. Because objective reality is constrained by certain immutable scientific tenets, each and every object in this objective reality possesses - must possess - certain immutable properties which can be observed, measured and, ultimately, understood. A is A, so get over it, Sparky.

Reason, not revelation, chronic societal need or government decree, is the means by which I comprehend objective reality...the means by which I determine those actions required to sustain, conduct and/or improve my life.. Reason, not commandments from on high is the means by which I conduct my own life. Reason, not plaintive wails for the unearned fruits of my labor and/or intellect determines how I conduct my life. Unless coerced by the Nanny State's monopoly on the use of force, reason, not politically motivated hyperbole, determines how, when and why I conduct my life. Reason - not the Nanny State, society, or some deity - determines how, when and why I expend the fruits of my labors and/or intellect. It's my life, my call, so back the hell off, Sparky.

Whereas reality is objective and reason directs my life - my choices, my thoughts, my actions - the Nanny State, society and supernatural entities must butt the hell out, because I don't need their interference in my life. I will not, voluntarily, be enslaved by the Nanny State, "society" or a deity. I will not, voluntarily, surrender the fruits of my labor...I will not, voluntarily, surrender the fruits of my intellect to any individual or entity that hasn't earned them. Conversely, I will not demand, accept, or steal the unearned fruits of another individual's labor and/or intellect. When I require the services, the knowledge, and/or the skills of another sovereign individual, I will negotiate a voluntary, mutually beneficial, bargain to secure their cooperation. I will not exert force, or attempt to coerce a sovereign individual into surrendering his rightful property - real and/or intellectual.

My life and the products thereof are not commodities that must be manipulated, micro-managed, sacrificed to or redistributed by the Nanny State. My life and the products thereof are not public resources that must be plundered to placate any other individual's chronic need. My life is not a toy to be played with, twisted, and/or controlled by some perverse, supernatural entity. I will never, willingly, surrender reason's essential role in directing my own life to the state, society, or a disembodied supernatural entity. My life belongs to me, so if you plan to claim dominion over it, pack a lunch, because you're in for one hell of a fight, Sparky.

I am a sovereign individual.

Getting Down and Dirty with the REAL Hambo

Hambo claims to be a lot of things, the most believable of which is: noted freelance philosopher. He goes on to claim that International Society of Proper-Hyphenation (he made this group up) has, on three separate occasions, given him an award, in recognition of his ground-breaking efforts on behalf of diversity and social justice. He also claims to be an author, which isn’t as big a whopper as you’d expect. We’ve read his mini tome on Management Principles: Sirrom’s Theorem, but we don’t believe his bilge about writing a detailed history of the once prolific, nomadic WASP tribesmen who still can be found in such trackless American wilderness areas as: Grosse Pointe, Aspen, and Laguna Nigel. We can state, that when it comes to himself, Hambo has his way with the truth. On most other things, he’s alarmingly honest and truthful.

He’s a devotee of Orthodox Paganism, but is quick to point out that ‘regrettably’ it's not Classic Orthodox Paganism, which, as everyone knows, requires a sacrificial virgin. Tragically, in his mind, at least, modern society frowns on human sacrifice. Hambo decries this desecration of his beloved Paganism as ‘malignant Christian altruism and rampant God Squad sentimentality’. When pressed on this human sacrifice issue, he reluctantly concedes that the shocking decrease in the virgin population - an alarming decline so severe that virgins have been placed on the endangered species list - might have doomed this aspect of Orthodox Paganism, in any case. That said, Hambo quickly recovers with his patented ‘virtual virgin’ concept. He insists that his version of Paganism will accept a virtual virgin: a girl who vows that she only did it once and swears she didn’t enjoy it. Purists have denounced his resourcefulness, calling it Reformed Orthodox Paganism, a term which he has declared ‘cool’.

Hambo’s bogus business card lists ‘Commentary’ - his allegedly clever way of saying that he's very opinionated, on virtually any topic. His card further lists ‘Political’, his way of admitting that many of his endless opinions are subversive, hostile and generally antagonistic to anything and everything political. The third category on his card, ‘Satire’, is his dubious claim that, occasionally, parts of his endless outpouring of angry verbiage is funny, to a certain kind of reader. We’re alarmed to report that others have bought into this ‘humor’ claim and give him unwanted encouragement, when he goes off on one of his tangents. Okay, we admit it. He makes us laugh, too.

The most insidious thing about Hambo is his ability to bury his insanity beneath a cloak of convincing normality. If you met him on this street, while he's hiding behind this ‘just another forgettable dude’ disguise, you’d never realize the dangerous intellect which is analyzing your every word/action, plotting a way to vilify you in one of his infamous tirades. Doesn’t God Squad scripture warn of wolves in sheep’s clothing? Trust me, they had Hambo in mind when they wrote it.

In short, Hambo is dangerously disturbed...what a mental health professional would term ‘non-clinically bonkers’. Nothing, nobody, is safe from this self described freelance philosopher, so watch yourself. With Hambo on the loose, it's very scary out there.