Comments by reverendhornibastard (page 11)

I don’t really understand what “autism” is. It confuses me that some people who can barely speak and are completely incapable of taking care of themselves are labeled “autistic” but the same label has also been applied to Dan Akroyd, Daryl Hannah, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Issac Newton and Stanley Kubrick. One of my children was diagnosed as being a “high functioning autistic.” She had significant speech delay but now she rarely shuts up. She makes straight A’s in school but still shows some peculiarities that have become her strengths. She socializes well with others, is uncommonly creative (easily composes new songs - both lyrics and melodies), has an incredible memory and shows powers of concentration and tenacity that I envy. It never occurred to me that SJG might have autism. Since I struggle to understand what the word word means in the first place and have never met him, I feel particularly unqualified to comment on the diagnosis. But SJG is only one of many unusual people that have cropped up on TUSCL and a couple of other realms in cyberspace where one of the goofiest online characters, Reverend Hornibastard, often hangs out and spews his mindless drivel. Since I eventually manage to insult everyone else, I see no good reason why I should not also offend these mental misfits.

Gawker, Good one! The lady who cuts my hair and my son’s hair was a mail order bride from the Philippines. She’s in her early 70s now and decidedly not hot. But she’s a sweet old lady. I always insist on her cutting our hair because I know she’s flat broke (her husband died a long time ago). We tip her very generously to help her out. She says she was in her 20s when she came across (so I guess Amazon was not involved). I’m sure her feet must hurt from standing up all day cutting people’s hair. She’s the only mail order bride I know personally.

Hawker, “ Why on earth are you going back to lawyering?” Because, despite my valiant efforts, I was unable to land a position as a “Strip Club Extras Trainer & Quality Control Expert.”

Our beloved orange baboon in the Oval Office says some of the DACA folks are “very tough, hardened criminals.” Seems to me those very tough, hardened criminals would feel right at home in the Trump administration!

RandomMember, “In fact you're just parroting an article by George Will that came out a few days ago.” WOW! Thanks! That’s the best compliment I’ve received in a long time! I haven’t read any articles by George Will lately but I am a big fan of his. He writes very well and I am usually in agreement with his viewpoints. Thanks again!

Cash man, “ I’m getting ready to retire in a few years. I’m not looking forward to it.” I understand how you feel. But give retirement a chance. Lots of people love it. If it doesn’t grow on you, you can always return to work later.

Electronman, I hear that in some of the trendier neighborhoods in San Francisco you can get a colonoscopy with a happy ending.

RandomMember, “Supreme Court rules on DACA tomorrow. Maybe the kids will be deported after all that hard work.” His kids don’t qualify for DACA. They were all born in the USA. I’m unsure of his wife’s status. She might be American. If any of them are deported or if they leave voluntarily, it will be America’s loss and Honduras’s gain.

The American dream is NOT a birthright. It is an opportunity to be seized through a lifetime of hard work. Those who have achieved it through decades of unflagging perseverance are usually the keenest to defend the American dream with their lives. I know plenty of people who risked their lives to reach this country. Most of them arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs and a mountain of determination. Some spent their lives driving taxis, working the cashier at a convenience store or mowing lawns. A few ended up owning a fleet of taxis or a dozen convenience stores. Their kids win all the spelling bees at school, take the top awards at the science fair and often give the valedictorian’s speech at their graduations. I refuse to believe these people are smarter than native born Americans. But I do believe these people want success a lot more than many of us. The man who for years has mowed my lawn in the sweltering Houston heat now owns a yard full of mowers and landscaping equipment. He employs a large team of laborers. I suspect he is undocumented. His kids go to school with my kids and are always stiff competitors for top scholastic honors. If they slack off or complain that “math is too hard” he laughs and tells me he kicks their butts because he doesn’t want them to be poor, semiliterate and ignorant like their hard working and very stinky daddy. I am proud to call such people Americans. These are precisely the kind of people who made America great and will keep it great despite the prejudices of those who are too lazy to roll up their sleeves and do what it takes.

Some people grossly exaggerate and overuse the idea of class warfare. It’s become unfashionable to believe in the American dream. I think that’s a shame. The fact that most poor people do not become rich people does not diminish the reality of the American dream. I will go to my grave believing in the American dream. I lived it and the dream lit my path every step of the way. I (and most of my well to do friends) were not born rich but achieved our financial success through hard work and wise use of our money. We didn’t spend our money on tattoos, oversized tires for our pickup trucks, beer, drugs or loose women. Well, OK. maybe some of us spent some money on loose women. Nobody is perfect.

Don’t confuse wealth with cowardice or poverty with bravery. Yes, it’s true that the rich can more easily buy a doctor’s opinion asserting that they suffer from bone spurs. But some rich people go to battle and some poor people are draft dodgers. Some wealthy Americans who served in battle include: Robert Mueller George H. W. Bush Ronald Reagan Gerald Ford Richard Nixon John F Kennedy Theodore Roosevelt Ross Perot Jack Taylor (Enterprise auto rentals - names after the aircraft carrier on which he served) Richard Kinder (Kinder Morgan Pipeline Company) Charles Dolan (Cablevision) Sumner Redstone (CBS & Viacom) Frederick Smith (FEDEX)

Prim0, “ Man Musk is what they want.” A similar point can be made concerning most men. They want to smell the woman. I remember a woman’s fragrance that came out in the late 1970s that I really liked. My girlfriend at the time asked me why I liked that perfume so much and I replied, “Because it smells like pussy.” My girlfriend thought my reply was outrageous but one of her closest friends who was with us when I made this comment had a great response. Without batting an eye she just blurted out, “Well, I guess he would know.”

It depends. I will spend as much as necessary on “auditions” until I find a woman I deem worthy of performing the sacred desploogination ritual. Sometimes I never find a worthy dancer before my hall pass expires. Sometimes I find the right one immediately.

I couldn’t decide between Salma and Denise, so I called a couple of world renown experts on everything to solicit their views. Loco on Ice admitted that he had fucked them both (but he was the caboose on a very long train that he and 83 other hoods ran on Denise - so he only got very sloppy 83rds), but overall he wasn’t too impressed with either one of them because of their grotesque lack of ink. I also consulted with SJG who claimed to have dated both ladies but refused to fuck them because he felt their commercial appeal and excessive wealth were an affront to his sense of taste, decency and balance in the world. And to top it all, they both refused to blow him in the backseat of his luxurious Prius while he pontificated about Gnosticism and Kale enemas. I never had the gumption to argue with experts.

You evidently don’t even read my comments very well. Are there too many polysyllabic words? I have repeatedly expressed the same disdain for those whose simplistic analyses lead them to conclude that capitalism will solve all economic woes and that socialism is the root of all evil as I have expressed for dim-witted runts like you who take the opposite but equally simplistic view of the world. Your views are so incredibly childish and one dimensional that I seriously doubt you’re even old enough to shave.

OMG! You’re still reading at the Ayn Rand level? That explains a lot!

SJG, Comic books don’t count.

SJG Get a library card.

You’re a still not making a coherent point, junior. I hope you’re not trying to imply that adopting socialism will end strife and suffering. I’ve spent plenty of time in socialist and even communist societies where, at least in theory, everyone produces according to his/her ability and receives in accordance with his/her needs. Most (but not all) such places are portraits in misery. The same can be said of some capitalist economies. By the way, do you even know which are the ten most capitalist countries in the world? Probably not. You should look into this. You will be astounded. The USA isn’t among the top 10! We rank below several countries that are usually considered far more socialist than the USA. For a guy who pretends to be so well read, you come across as astoundingly, even painfully, naïve. The world’s social and economic problems are orders of magnitude more complex than you appear to comprehend. Stay in school.

SJG, I’m sure you’re trying to make a point but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. It hardly matters. Your banal prattle bores me.

Wrong again. At least you’re consistent. There ARE some places where people live moderately well on a traditional, non-technological economy. I’m not saying there aren’t. But there are even more places where people subsist on a traditional, non-technological economy are desperately poor. That’s the base news. The good news is that they live in harmony with nature. They have fleas, lice, intestinal parasites and despite a phenomenally high birthrate, Mother Nature ruthlessly keeps their numbers in check. The kindly people of Onar on the south shore o led Bintuni Bay have lived a traditional, Neolithic lifestyle for millennia. They were untouched by capitalism. They were unharmed by it and didn’t benefit from it either. Their infant mortality rate was about 27% when I visited in 2001. I suspect it’s lower now. As for the sweatshops, how many people do you know who have worked in one? Have you ever asked them why they work there? I have. None of them work there involuntarily. They all said they work there because it’s easier than working knee deep in a rice field under a tropical sun and it pays better. I wish they had better choices but I’m opposed to taking away a choice that they regard as better because it offends someone on the other side of the world who doesn’t realize that closing the sweatshop will not improve their lives. Capitalism is neither a panacea nor a scourge. The same can be said of socialism. I know of no economy that is entirely capitalistic nor any that is completely socialistic. I regard people who focus on those labels and jerk their knees accordingly when they hear those terms as either mentally lazy or idiots.

Wrong again. Most people are poor today. Most people were poor 1,000 years ago. Damn near everybody was poor 10,000 years ago. I don’t think capitalism had anything to do with it. Try thinking beyond the cliches. The truth is more complicated but also a lot more interesting.

You don’t even seem to understand the problem. You are familiar only with cliches, slogans and half truths. Many in the third world and even the developing world if forced to subsist entirely on a traditional economy would live on the brink of starvation. I KNOW A LOT OF THESE PEOPLE ON A FIRST NAME BASIS. Do you know where Onar is? How about Saengga or Pagerungan? Have you seen how the people in those remote communities live limited to their traditional economies? I do. I’ve told some of them that there are people like you in the USA that want to close the sweatshops that they would love to land a job in. They were shocked. They asked me why anyone would be so cruel. But I explained that such people were not cruel at all. They were just sadly uninformed.

SJG, You’d be surprised how many poor people benefit tremendously from globalism. The truth about globalism might not fit your pre-existing biases. The truth didn’t fit mine either. But after having spent so many years in so-called “shit-hole” countries and having many friends and even in-laws who yearn for a job in a sweatshop factory, I can tell you without reservation that their choices before the sweatshops opened up were far uglier than anything they faces in the sweatshops. When you close down the sweatshops, the employees don’t go back to school. They take even crappier jobs or turn to prostitution so they can afford to eat. I have been approached more times than I can recall by little girls who appeared to be 12 years old or younger offering sexual favors for less than you would pay for a Snickers bar. I find that far more disgusting than thinking of those little girls stitching soccer balls in a sweatshop. Yeah, it would be even better if they could be enrolled in school but that’s simply not yet an available option to many who have to spend their days evading malnutrition or worse.

Herbtcat, The kind of wonderful shit that can happen to a western guy who lives in some Asian countries (especially Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand) especially if you learn to speak the local language is so outrageous that I am reluctant to catalog them here out of concern for being labeled a liar! You have no idea.