Stream-of-consciousness nitpickings ...

I am seriously squeezed for time, but I have to get an entry out. So, this one, dear reader, will be a rather off-the-wall, stream-of-consciousness product. Sort of like one of my news mash-ups, but not as structured.
Here we go:
Happy Earth Day, everyone. Now take all your recycling, toss it all in a big plastic trash bag and place it on the curb. That's how you celebrate.
I jest, of course. It makes sense to re-use what we can, but I just wonder how many resources, including water, we use up in so doing. It's great that so many former landfills are now parks or nature reserves and that formerly polluted waterways have been cleaned up. The environmentalists of the 1950s and 1960s shook us out of our bad habits and we're much the better for it.
Unfortunately, those who've followed in their footsteps have told us that we can't burn rubbish, even though the electricity it would generate would be helpful, because of toxic ash. We can't deal with ash?
They've also told us that the planet is constantly cooling/warming and experiencing bewildering changes in climate and that it's all our fault.
I wonder if we'll ever have an Earth Day that doesn't come with so much political baggage. 

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Ted Cruz—how can a dude who plays the the liberty-embracing purist conservative role boast so happily about voterless wins? Good for him, he played by the rules, but those rules change constantly, at the slightest whims of the GOP Establishment.
Cruz, if he really believes so fervently in the Constitution, should not disavow his delegates, but state for the record that he would rather have had voters deciding the contests in Colorado and Wyoming. Instead, he declared, "This is how elections are won in America." Ker-plunk!
Kim Jong-un also believes elections are won this way. Saddam Hussein was a big fan of the voter-free process.
As Michael Savage stated during his April 11 show, "We spent trillions of dollars to make sure the Iraqis could get some purple ink on their fingers and vote, and here in America we don't have a strike-force coming in from Zurich to make sure the Republican Party officials in Colorado are arrested immediately for rigging an election?" 

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Russian war planes flying in low past a U.S. Navy warship in the Baltic Sea? That's Putin keeping us on our toes, that's all. If the current administration had even one ounce worth of common sense and geopolitical street smarts, we'd be allies.
As a regular caller to The Kuhner Report put it, "If anything, it [the simulated attack passes] showed the American navy how they defeated ISIS and protected the strong-man Assad, which we should have done. So, in other words, they're telling us: This is how you do it."
During the Cold War, Russia—as the U.S.S.R.—buzzed our ships, and we buzzed theirs, on a regular basis. It should not be like this anymore. These commitments we've made through NATO understandably grate on Russian nerves. America is poking the Russian bear in his own backyard.
I've long since grown tired of Cold War redux and these putrid neo-cons who wish us to believe that Putin's Russia is such a threat. Putin respects power. If a President who: (1) cared about the job and (2) had balls was in charge, Mr. Putin would not have done this.
Instead, Putin revels in goading Obama, showing him up for the irresponsible, feckless, cowardly disgrace to the Presidency that he is, and to be honest, I don't blame him one bit.

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Back during punk rock's ascendancy in the late '70s, a Conservative member of the Greater London Council, Bernard Brook-Partridge, raged: "Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death. I would like to see somebody dig a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole and drop the whole bloody lot down it."
Man alive, just how many other entities on the face of this globe could we say that about?

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Marks and Spencer, a British department store, has been criticized for launching a "burkini," a swimsuit for Muslim women. French minister Laurence Rossignol opined that it gives assent to the idea of women's bodies "being locked up," and that women who approve of it are akin to "negroes who supported slavery".
Former Yves Saint Laurence partner Pierre Bergé said that Marks and Spencer's burkini, and the trend of other designers such as Dolce and Gabbana who've tapped into Islamic fashion, represents a "total absence of morality".
Bergé said, "Designers should not get in this market, which is the denial of fashion. I find the behavior of these brands shameful. We must teach [Muslim] women to revolt, to take their clothes off, to learn to live like most of the women in the rest of the world."
Now then, I think designers have gone overboard in encouraging women to take their clothes off. There is something very good to be said for modesty which the hyper-sexual ways of the Western world have pretty much killed off. But Rossignol and Bergé are correct in noting that embracing the restrictive clothing of a religion that does not encourage independent thought and seeks to cover women up because its hierarchy is afraid of feminine sexuality is going too far.
A letter-writer to the Metro nailed it by noting, "It's sadly indicative of society today that people accuse the French women's rights minister of racism when she attempts to stop the sale of a product designed to support a culture that views women as second-class citizens."
Exactly. Feminists, you want to combat a war on women? Well, there it is, have at it. Funny, though, you're strangely silent on this. It just does not compute in your robotic brains if the object of your distaste is not white, straight and Christian. You know, "bitter clingers."
Europe is not Saudi Arabia nor Iran. It's time people found their voices and holler "enough is enough" at the ever-encroaching mores of Islam dictating our lives.

* * *

You have to hand it to the French, they have stepped up the fight against the very encroachment of Islamic mores in their society that I referenced.
Air France, hungry for the moolah that the foolish ending of sanctions against Iran have provided opportunities for, has resumed flights to Tehran. Stewardesses for the airline revolted at the diktat that they had to don headscarves upon arrival in the Islamic Republic. Air France relented by announcing that female flight attendants could opt out of working on the Tehran route, though it would have been better if the business had shown some testicular fortitude in defending them completely rather than providing a half-measure.
However, gay male stewards have raised a stink over flying to a nation where homosexuality is punishable by death. The French flight and cabin crews union representative, Jean Marc Quattrochi, responded that the matter of "sexual inclination" is different because whereas women cannot hide their gender, gays can choose not to display their sexuality.
"The fact for a woman is that we surely know she's a woman, it's written on her passport," says Quattrochi. "When she arrives in Tehran, she will be forced to wear the scarf. For a gay person, nobody knows that he is gay."
While this is true, it ignores the spirit behind the gay flight attendants' request. It's not a matter of hiding their sexual preference, but of boycotting the land that would kill them for their choice of mate.
I'm with the gays on this one. Air France, do the right thing. You cannot have your precious Tehran route at the expense of the values of the nation you represent.

* * *

Had enough of celebrating diversity yet? A 34-year-old "Bristol" man, Ali Abdullahi, has argued that "cultural differences" should be considered in a case in which he is accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old female at a train station.
The Somalian, having previously committed other sexual assaults, approached the girl at the station in Torquay where she was waiting for the service to Bristol. The court heard that Abdullahi "behaved completely inappropriately."
The judge at Exeter Crown Court told Abdullahi, "The sex offending was not of the most serious kind, but would have been extremely frightening to both girls."
Yet, Abdullahi denied any misbehavior. The mitigation declared that Abdullahi "comes from a conservative culture in Somalia and misunderstands the extent to which ordinary polite engagement and interaction should or should not be seen as a precursor towards seeking to be physically close to someone in the way this case reveals."
In the end, Abdullahi was given a community order and told to attend a sex offender course designed to improve his conduct with young women. Yep. And I'm sure both will work wonders too.

* * *

Give it up for these rock-and-rollers, folks. They won't turn down the big bucks that performing in Japan, which does not recognize LGBT rights, or Dubai, where homosexuality is forbidden, brings in. But they can brush off North Carolina.
Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Buffett, Ringo Starr, Pearl Jam and Boston have all cancelled gigs in the state to protest the "bathroom bill" that Governor Pat McCrory signed into law. The officially titled "Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act" allows for transgendered people who have had the "corrective" operation to use the relevant restroom. But for those who haven't, they must continue to use the restroom assigned to the sex as declared on their birth certificates.
In other words, the bathroom bill states, "The sky is blue. Not purple, not red, not whatever you'd want it to be. The sky is blue."
This, according to hysterical liberals (are there any other kind?), is akin to "Jim Crow" policies. States and cities across the country have instituted travel bans on North Carolina, companies such as PayPal and Deutsch Bank have threatened to leave the state, cancelling their previous expansion projects, and the New York Times and Washington Post have written their editorial screeds in opposition.
No-one in the media dares bring up the obvious: What happens when a sex predator who declares himself to be female enters a women's restroom on that pretense? Who will address that? Not Donald Trump. Looks like "New York values" got the better of him.
We're going to need police officers on "bathroom duty" to ward off the perverts and child-molesters because of the transgender agenda and the mindless support it has generated among the sheeple who say, "But I want to be good!"
These rock performers though. Is there anyone other than Springsteen who is still relevant? None of them thought for a moment about their North Carolinian fans. The assumption is, "oh, they'll be with us."
I'd be pissed. What kind of artist does that? Opine against the law on-stage if you like, free speech and all, but don't shut your fans out. In the case of Adams, Pearl Jam and Boston, they need all they can get. Say "Bryan Adams" to most people these days and they're likely to respond, "Did you mean Ryan Adams?"
Well, I'm pretty sure North Carolina will still continue to get Toby Keith, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock. So all's not completely lost.

* * *

Speaking of rock stars ... Really now, 2016? David Bowie wasn't enough for you? You had to take Prince as well?
Merle Haggard, Victoria Wood, Ronnie Corbett, Garry Shandling, Keith Emerson, Nancy Reagan, George Martin, Paul Kantner, Alan Rickman and Glenn Frey. Hell, even Rob Ford. They've all stopped coming down for breakfast at some point since New Year's Day.
And it's only April.

* * *

Oh yeah, Happy Earth Day. I think I said that already.