The Onion: Open Relationship Gives Couple Freedom to Emotionally Drain Other People

Source:The Onion- Joe & Sally Wilson from Smithville, Ohio. Actually, I have no idea who they are.

Source:The New Democrat

Sure, why take your frustrations out on your spouse when you can take them out on your mistress. Instead, you could just say, "Honey, look, I don't want to argue this with you," and go meet your mistress and have it out with her instead and then if there's anything you didn't cover with her, your wife will be there at home for you to finish off your critical arguments about whose turn it was to wash the dishes or pick up the kids from school or pay the monthly porno bill. Marriage is just to valuable of an institution to waste badgering your own spouse. Especially when you have so many women who are free (and need money) and you just meet them instead and take out your frustrations on them. And leave the important discussions about who should pick up Johnny and Sally from their soccer practice. Who should cook dinner, who should answer the phone and really go at each other on such life and death important issues like that. And leave the real arguments about who is spending too much money on the credit card with your mistress. And go off on her about spending so much money on fur coats, jewelry, weekend getaways, etc. 
Source:The Onion

NFL Films: Jim Brown Ultimate Highlights

Source:The New Democrat

For anyone who's not a math junky or a professional accountant or statistician who understands more than numbers and stats when it comes to sports and is actually interested in what goes on in football games and how plays happen and what the offense has to do to be successful and exactly what the defense needs to do to stop the offense, I'm going to explain why Jim Brown, the former great Cleveland Browns running back, is the greatest running back of all time, if not the greatest football player of all time. And then I'll even throw in some numbers for the younger stats-addicted generation as well.

To look at Jim Brown, sure, you could look at his numbers and say they were very impressive, especially considering he only played nine seasons and 116 games and rushed for over 13,000 yards, averaged 5.1 yards per carry, and scored over 100 touchdowns. He averaged over 100 yards a game rushing in his NFL career as well but that still wouldn't be enough to give Big Jim all of the credit he deserves, and you would need to go much further than that.

Another way to look at Jim Brown would be his size and physical talents: 6'2", 225-230 pounds, 4 or 5 percent body fat.  He could outrun not only a lot of receivers back in the 1960s but also outrun a lot of receivers today. He ran a 4.2 or 4.3 40-yard dash; I mean, he was literally a human horse with all of that power, size, and strength constantly going up against defenders; he was not only stronger, bigger, and faster than another man of that size and and speed coming right at you, but you had to stop him and that meant tackling him.

The way I look at Jim Brown is the way I look at all running backs; that is, what do defenses have to do to stop him? Based on that alone, forgetting about the stats for a minute, Jim Brown is the greatest running back of all time because he was simply the hardest to defend against and was always one broken tackle away from scoring because of his size and speed. There are plenty of running backs with that quality but no other running back was a bigger threat to score than Jim Brown.

The Today Show: Charles Manson (1987)

Source:The New Democrat

Charles Manson has made a couple of admissions of guilt. I'm not a lawyer but this is what it sounds like when he says perhaps he should've killed more people. I'm paraphrasing here, but that is pretty close, and perhaps the closes, he's come to taking responsibility for the brutal Manson Family murders of 1969 of people the Manson Family didn't know or had ever heard of. The interviewer asked a basic straightforward question and got a fairly straight answer from Charlie.

I believe a borderline silly question has to be asked of Charlie Manson: Do you feel responsibility or remorse for the murders?  It is a silly question because you know what he's going to say:  Remorse for what, what murders, what about everything you've done to me and so forth.  It has to be asked because he's the one man who knows exactly how many people he's responsible for killing and you are looking for new information here and, if nothing else, to get a new reaction out of him.

This is not much of an interview but certainly entertaining. The interviewer is not asking many questions but really just letting Charlie do his shtick, his routine, and letting him go off on the world and what he thinks of things and letting him speak and make up for lost time spending so much of his time not just in State prison but in solitary confinement, during which the world that is still fascinated by the man gets to see how he is doing and what he is thinking.

CBS News NightWatch: Charlie Rose 1987 Interview of Charles Manson

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Source:The New Democrat

I can feel a certain sympathy for Charlie Manson because it is easy to see why he is so pissed off at a society that provided only the corrections system as an early home for him. Never knowing his biological father, with a criminal mother who rejected her son, being shipped around from aunt and uncle to aunt and uncle, and then ending up in reform school, he received no encouragement as a child or the emotional and physical skills to tackle life's demands.

I am not excusing Manson's crimes, but many career criminals in the United States emerge from similar rough beginnings. Ted Bundy would be an exception to that, as well as Manson's soldiers, but the life of Charles Manson is a lesson for society that it shouldn't give up on the younger generation, because it could come back to bite them if young people end up looking for an avenue to express their resentment or hatred for the society that neglected them.

I'm not sure there's someone more qualified than Charlie Rose to interview Charlie Manson, because of his intelligence, the work he puts into his interviews, and his vast knowledge about so much that is news-related.  His interviewing skills are unmatched.  He knows when someone is being straight with him and knows when they are leaving out important facts.  His bullshit radar is superb, and Charlie Manson found himself up against someone who was more than his match in Charlie Rose in this interview.

ABC News: 20/20 Dian Sawyer 1994 Special On The Manson Family

Source:The New Democrat 

The Manson Crime Family, which is what I call it instead of a cult, because of all the crimes they committed and people they either seriously hurt or killed, is one of the worst crime families of all time with regard to their large number of victims.  Charlie Manson, the leader of this family, was a professional criminal and, until he put the Manson Family together, wasn't a very successful criminal because of all the time he had already spent in prison.

Charlie Manson, even though he was not an educated man (I believe he didn't even make it to high school) is very intelligent and talented, has a quick mind, and knew how to use his mental skills, charm, and narcotics to make people do exactly what he wanted them to do as in the case of middle class, talented, educated, and intelligent people like Tex Watson and the Manson women.

Charlie Manson felt he had been screwed his entire life and searched for a way to express his anger and get his payback.  He found the perfect cast of characters to do his evil work, a group of people who felt lost, didn't fit into the establishment, and were looking for a leader.  They found Charles Manson instead and he led them to ruin their lives and those of the victims and their families.

Slate Magazine: Bob Garfield: 'Why I love Big Government: a Valentine For Big Government'

Source:Slate- Who needs individual freedom, when we can all be taken care of by our Uncle Sammy? LOL

Source:The New Democrat

"Seventy-two percent of Americans say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than is big business or big labor, a record high in the nearly 50-year history of this question. –Gallup Organization, Dec. 13, 2013

You are hulking and awkward, humorless and impatient. You are pathologically regimented and nerdy almost beyond belief. You are penny-wise and pound-freaking-ridiculous. Every now and then your behavior is simply reprehensible. So maybe this is perverse, because also—ewww­—you’re my uncle. But I am so in love with you."

You can read the rest at Slate

"Ayn Rand Institute Learns To Love Big Government"

Source:Secular Talk- Also in the news: Donald Trump admits to being a liar and a crook. LOL

From Secular Talk

Bob Garfield in his column in Slate today was explaining what he loved about big government and laying out a lot of the things that government does and calling them big government. The problem is that not all government is big and all civilized developed countries have a certain level of government that collects taxes to fund the operations that the people need government to do. Having a government does not necessarily mean that the government is big.

Big government actually is government trying to do too much and trying to make decisions for those qualified to make them for themselves, whether these decisions are economic or personal. 

The safety net, the Postal Service, the military, law enforcement, homeland security are not big government, but trying to replace successful private industries with these agencies in the safety net or eliminating privacy with law enforcement, homeland security and defense would be big government because people would not have the freedom they need over their own lives.

There is small government that leaves almost everything up to the private sector. There is big government that basically tries to manage the economy even if it does not own the entire economy, but at the very least tries to manage the people in the economy for their own good. 

But there is also big government that tries to eliminate personal choice and privacy because it does not trust the people to make decisions about their own lives. And these would be the differences between big government and a limited government. 

The New America Foundation: Justin King: Senator Ron Wyden Wants Children's Savings Accounts

Source:The New Democrat

I somewhat covered this last week with a blog on retirement and unemployment accounts for people so they can save for retirement and not have to burn those accounts when they are unemployed, especially for long periods of time like as we have seen in the Great Recession. But Senator Ron Wyden, the incoming Chairman of the Finance Committee, taking over for Max Baucus as he leaves the Senate to become U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, would like to empower all Americans, especially lower end middle class workers and low-income workers to save for themselves but also to start what would essentially be trust accounts for their children. He has a good idea and I hope he will push it.

We could do this simply by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is the tax credit that goes to low-income workers to get them off of the Federal income tax rolls.  We could expand the eligibility to individuals earning up to $30,000 a year and couples earning up to $40,000 a year and stop taxing savings completely up to, let's say, 10 percent of one's income so people could afford to save but also encourage employers to match what their workers put away for savings and also perhaps have a Federal match of the worker's savings as well for workers who are earning up to $100,000 a year.

I suggest allowing Americans to open two types of savings accounts that would be separate from their retirement and unemployment accounts and allow for middle class and low-income workers to for both themselves and their children and put money away that would be matched by their employers and the Feds as well. That would be tax-free as long as it is not being spent for non-emergency reasons and this would allow all Americans to build up nest eggs and not wipe out their retirement savings or consume so much in public assistance during economic downturns.