In my not so humble opinion - IMNSHO - and LMFAO - laughing my fuckin ass off - pretty much sums up most of the stuff online, on air, and on paper.

The IMNSHO series I wrote over the past decade or so. Now having a new understanding based on the crap life dishes out, here are some more thoughts on those subjects.

Jerks get the perks is a chapter from a book I plan on writing one of these days, named Kicked in the Teeth -Reliable people get relied upon and the jerks get the perks. Wherever I worked, I found it to be true that no matter how hard the reliable people worked, they did not get any more benefits or salary increases than the people who took 2 hour lunches, arrived late, left early, and got by with a minimal effort.

I talked to people who worked everywhere from the fast food joint to the military. They all told the same story.

Now it makes perfect sense to me why so many workers just get by with minimal effort, getting the same pay as the person who is too reliable for life. Of course life works that way.

Just look at George W. Bush. He occupies the White House, and he was never even elected.

Then look at Congress. All of the members of Congress found guilty of corruption, taking bribes, or mishandling funds, serving time at Club Fed, also collect pensions. Felons cannot vote. Felons cannot run for public office. But felons who break the law while they are in the senate get to go directly to jail and also collect thousands of dollars in pensions for the rest of their lives.

So why should anyone do more than they need to do, if our taxes are paying for corrupt lawmakers?

Reliable people indeed only get relied upon, while the jerks get the perks.

So the question remains, what do reliable people have to do to get the jerks off and out of their work places?

Speaking of corruption in Congress, some idealistic people actually believe that there is a direct link between how campaign funds are raised and allocated, and the possibility of an elected official to avoid the temptation of being corrupted absolutely by power.

Those idealists work tirelessly to try to change campaign financing laws in the hopes that outside interests will not tempt lawmakers. E

Even newly elected New York Governor Eliot Spitzer believes that this is the way to "clean up" Albany. New Yorker Clean Election campaigners have worked for years to see this happen. They actually all believe that the people who hold public office today will change their evil ways if their means of campaign funding is limited.

They think that the Abramoffs working on the fringes of the political fires will somewhow go away to bribe no more. Clean elections requires a sea change in the paradigm that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Only foolish idealists would believe that if politicians only receive $5.00 or $25.00 donations, once they get that taste of bloody power, they will be above corruption.

America's third of wave of feminism is finally reaching the political shores, with more women in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives than ever before. It is true that the first wave of feminists back during Sufferage made the 21st century possibilities happen. Yet Betty Friedan believes that she led the first wave. She also believed that only women who were upper middle class and beyond were worthy of feminists attention.

The feminist third wave may be the most successful ever politically, but they have yet to carry along with them the majority of women, the women who vote, the women who work not because they want to get out of the house, or have a six figure career, but because they are the typical American family women - one paycheck away from homelessness.

Cudos to those new waving women in politics. For the first time ever, a woman, Nancy Pelosi, is the speaker of the House of Representatives, two steps away from the line of ascension to the president. Unfortunately the Democrats she leads are cowards, and will not even think about impeaching the first president of the United States who lost two elections, and now occupies the White House and Iraq..

Another first time happened on January 20, 2007. Former first lady, N.Y.Senator Hillary Clinton, jumped into the presidential hopeful waves. Hopefully the Democrats will find their courage and actually nominate her, just so we can say that for the first time in American history, a woman ran for president.

America is behind the rest of the civilized world in electing a woman to run the country. Let's see if this third wave of feminism will matter.

I still have my doubts that anything will change for the majority of American families. In the first 100 hours of the newly elected Democratic majority, they voted to cement in stone poverty for the American family for at least a few more years. These multimillionaire politicians are still so far away from the populace, that they believe that a family can live on less than $15,000 a year with one wage earning woman, or less than $30,000 with two wage earners.

Then again, these are the same lawmakers who uphold the rights of convicted felons, former members of Congress, to continue to collect $100,000 pensions while they wallow away their time in Club Fed.

September 11, 2001 the day the earth stood still as hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania. Today every time an IMD explodes or a suicide bomber goes up in a puff of smoke taking soldiers or citizens with them, or an American soldier shoots an Iraqi person, the earth stands still all over again. As each person dies and their time on earth ends, their families may continue to breathe on the earth, but their world stops. When it starts to spin again, it never quite feels the same.

September 11, 2001, the day the earth stood still, it stopped for most of the people clinging to this spinning ball as it hurls itself through space. The Internet was full of a one world feeling, with moving memorials filmed and uploaded for everyone to share.

We are now living on an earth where no one trusts anyone any more, where we are all each other's enemies, and where people are willing to kill each other because they think that their god is better.

The first amendment playing field is finally level, or more level anyway. Thanks to the Internet.

January 20, 2006, Senator Hillary Clinton announced her run for the presidency on her web page. The mainstream media reported this when her actions fit in with their news cycle. Good thing no starlets were doing twat shots for the paparazzi that day.

Today an insult cannot result in a jihad or an apology by some creep trying to keep their job. Or a mudslinging between a businessman and a comedian.

Still the favorite sling of all is still faggot. The media calls it the "F" word. But anyone can type faggot on a web page and there are no censors.

2006 was the year of the "oops" as Mel Gibson went on a tirade against Jews, Michael Richards screamed on stage in front a camera phone about niggers, and Isiah Washington called Gray's Anatomy costar T. R. Knight a faggot. They all ended up going to head up their asses rehab to save their careers. The jury is still out on Richards, but the bigots quickly flocked to see Gibson's latest racist film, and well Knight only called a faggot a faggot, and maybe he sought council fro the experts - Gibson and Richards.

All of a sudden rapper Kanye West decided that gays are not that bad afterall and no one should diss them in their lyrics. But he was not alone on the political correct bandwagon. Black, I mean African-American, entertainers decided to stop using the word nigger in their lyrics.

Of course, singing about bitches and whores is still okay.

After a doctor in Florida screwed up the lethal injection he gave to a convicted murderer, even Governor Jeb Bush called for a moritorium on permanently disposing of violent criminals. Some judge in California decided lethal injections were cruel and unusual punishment for prisoners who had cold bloody killed other people.

So what's the alternative?

Well we just found out that hanging can decapitate a murderer. That's what happened to the late and not so great Saddam Hussein's half brother.

Punishments fitting crimes, that's what we need, right.

So who should be killed for killing?

Confucious said it best, treat kindess with kindness and evil with justice. He didn't say who decides what is evil and what is justice.

Walk inside a Frederic Church painting. If you walk on the grounds of Olana today, you will see much more of Church's vision.

Olana, Church's 19th century Berkshire Mountain estate, sits on the east bank ridge overlooking the southern flowing Hudson River, the Catskill Mountains on the western horizon. After Church could no longer paint, he turned his estate into a living landscape, bringing trees in from around the region, and replanting them to change with the rotation of Mother Earth throughout the day and across the seasons.

Due to lack of funds and interest, for a long time, the landscape created by Frederic Church had been given back to Mother Earth. She took over, reclaiming the natural habitat.

A few years ago, funds were raised to give Mother Earth's design an extreme makeover. Church's illusion of of shadow and light returned to his painterly roots.

The town of Hudson, just up the road apiece, nestled against the eastern Hudson River shore, has also been made over, returning back to its roots. The St. Lawrence Cement Company threatened to disrupt this sleepy town, promising new opportunties for work, and choking cement dust. Their threat had neighbor opposing neighbor, because they were led to believe that jobs were going to be offered if the cement plant opened in Hudson.

It turns out that this was the real illusion. St. Lawrence had no new jobs to offer anyone, and they knew that, even when the handed out lawn signs in favor of the cement plant.

Finally a grass roots effort brought out the truth. The plant would choke the air with cement dust and no one in Hudson would have a new job. Hudson has been saved. This time Mother Earth wins.