new neutrality pledge

due to recent cutbacks in my consumption of news stories (from television, radio, newspaper, magazine, internet, and word of mouth) i am no longer able to stay a-“breast” of what is going on in the world. things have gotten to be a confusing mish-mash in my head. the new york state senate is run by republicans (led by joe bruno) who want to spend more on healthcare and education than the democratic governor eliot spitzer and the democrat-controlled state assembly (run by sheldon silver). so the democrats are playing the part of the smaller-government conservatives, and are opposing the “special interests” of the healthcare industry, including the service employees international union, or s.e.i.u. the s.e.i.u. is famous, or infamous, for being the most liberal of all unions, being the first to boldy support howard dean back in 2003 in the times when people were endorsing democratic presidential candidates for the 2004 primaries. anyway, lately, these healthcare labor unions, as well as groups representing the management of hospitals, all banded together to run attack ads against our governor for spending cuts in healthcare. so i guess the governor is a real conservative, huh? but i thought this governor wanted universal healthcare, didn’t he? well it turns out he does have his own healthcare plan, but he has to take money from some places to put it in other places, or some shit like that. and the state senate republicans want to send more money to wealthy school districts on long island. let me explain what the fuck long island is. there are 4 counties on long island: kings, queens, nassau, and suffolk. kings county is brooklyn, part of new york city. queens is also part of new york city. nassau and suffolk county are not part of new york city; they are full of towns and villages but no cities even though their populations are a lot higher than many cities in upstate new york (like binghamton, ithaca, elmira, utica, watertown, and many others). but what most distinguishes nassau and suffolk counties politically is that they are full of goddamn conservative republican bastards, and rather devoid of good old-fashioned liberal democrat folks. the liberals tend to live within new york city limits, or in other various strongholds across the state such as ithaca. there are many areas of the state where there is a generational ideological struggle taking place and it is unclear who will win (just like the war on terror). except in this case it is between liberals and conservatives, between democrats and republicans. the city of binghamton, and broome county which surrounds it, are both battlegrounds in this grand ideological struggle. a small urban city in the middle of a county with many rural farming areas, and in between the rural and urban areas are the suburbs, where i live. suburbs are apparently republican strongholds, and so is upstate new york, at least historically. and nassau and suffolk counties too, the 2 suburban counties on the eastern part of long island, east of new york city. but new york state is still a blue state. how come? well, we have cities like buffalo, rochester, syracuse, albany, schenectady, poughkeepsie, new rochelle, white plains, and yonkers. those are places where real people actually live. and those people who exist and actually live in those real places tend to be democrats, at least inside the city limits of those various cities. so why is it that the state senate republicans only care about the eastern half of long island, and like to waste money and court liberal labor unions who would normally hate their guts? and who the hell is this new governor, eliot spitzer, anyway? is he some kind of small-government conservative or something? cutting both taxes and spending at the same time? none of this makes any sense. it is all so mind-boggling. i mean, right here in binghamton, our mayor is so liberal he makes dennis kucinich look like ann coulter. and we have been having so many floods lately, it is like god hates us! oh how he hates us! god despises the southern tier region, and our spedies too! recently i saw stephen colbert interview my favorite local congressperson, maurice hinchey. it was so wonderful, seeing my favorite talk show host interview my favorite congresshuman. but i wonder about this michael arcuri guy, the democrat who replaced republican sherwood boehlert. sherwood boehlert was probably the most left-wing of all the republicans in congress, and he was my congressman after the redistricting; before then it was maurice hinchey, the most left-wing congressman of the democratic party and of congress as a whole. well now our left-wing republican is gone and replaced by a right-wing democrat. the new congressman michael arcuri is a member of the blue dog caucus and is doing his best to show everyone what a conservative he is. he supported the military commissions act that was passed last fall, the one that outlawed habeas corpus and allowed people to be held indefinitely without trial and to be put on trial in front of military tribunals and basically gave the bush administration everything it wanted while depriving individual liberty to pretty much everyone. and michael arcuri supports wiretaps of course; as a former prosecutor, he actually used wiretaps himself on a regular basis, in conducting his investigations, and he wants everyone else to have as much leeway as he gave himself up in utica. i remember looking at his campaign website for his position on the nsa warrentless wiretaps that were not approved by the fisa court, and he basically said that he is pro-wiretap but that congress ought to pass laws making the wiretaps legal so that they can continue uninterrupted. very nice, how much? anyway, so this dude, his first major appearance in congress that i saw, he was actually controlling the time for a bill to cut taxes for small business. now, why the hell did nancy pelosi have them introduce a bill to cut taxes for small business, when she is a liberal democrat? isn’t that back-asswards? well hell yes, but here is why. the house passed a minimum wage increase bill that was clean and had nothing else. the senate could only manage to pass it with a small business tax cut put into the bill as well in order to appease conservative republicans, to avoid a filibuster because you need a 3/5 majority of 60 votes to get anything done in the senate. so, the house, which is much more able to actually get shit done than the glacially slow senate, had to make its stuff match what the senate passed so they could go to conference committee and get the shit done. so, they took the small business tax cut from the senate minimum wage increase bill, and introduced it as a separate measure in the house, except they structured it differently, in a more liberal, progressive sort of way, to benefit smaller small businesses and not so much the bigger small businesses or the smaller big businesses. then, once this passed, this allowed the house and senate to go to conference, the senate bringing its minimum wage increase plus small business tax decrease bill, and the house bringing 2 separate bills, minimum wage increase and small business tax decrease. then the conference committee negotiates a compromise between house and senate and purges all dissent, and then the conference report is the final version of the bill, now a joint house-senate bill to raise minimum wage and cut small business tax, and this bill is given a simple up-or-down vote in both house and senate, with no amendments possible, and once it is approved by both chambers, it is sent to the president for signature, and if he vetoes it, it goes back to both chambers which need a 2/3 majority to override the veto, which usually does not happen since most bills are not vetoed and when they are the president usually has counted the votes and knows there are not 2/3 in both houses. whew! so you can see things are really fucking complicated. so when my fucking congressman is arguing small businesses need yet another tax cut, after 6 years of constant tax-cutting by the bush administration and republican congress working together to cut taxes, it seems really fucking ridiculous. cut taxes for business again? didn’t congress do that, like, a million times in the last 10 years? sure bill clinton kept vetoing it, but once bush baby became president, there were 6 years of uninterrupted tax-cutting frenzy! so having my new congressman arguing for yet more insanity and digging the hole we find ourselves in even deeper, making us have even more deficit... well that was just insane. but it makes sense, in the larger picture. democrats still need to compromise with republicans and give in to their nonsensical demands. reality check: some tax increases are good and some are bad, some tax decreases are good and some are bad, some spending increases are good and some are bad, some spending decreases are good and some are bad. that is the voice of reason, the logic of moderation, of not being an ideological hack. but ideological hacks of the conservative persuasion think tax increases are always bad and tax decreases are always good. their complete lack of logic is indefensible. and when asked to defend their ideas, they talk about the discredited theory of trickle-down reaganomics, and how cutting tax rates increases tax revenue, the so-called “laffer curve”. george bush senior never believed in that bullshit, even though dumbass hollywood actor ronald reagan did. what a joke! and now conservative activists worship ronald reagan even though true scholars believe bush senior did a better job as president. so anyway, things have gotten so complex, nonsensical, and hard to keep track of, especially thanks to the crazy antics of representative ron paul of texas (the only republican in congress i support, by the way!)... well, i have just gotten to the point where i can solumnly swear that reality, the real world we live and breathe in every day, it has gotten to the point where it is f.u.b.a.r., or fucked up beyond all recognition. there is no sense to any of the sense or nonsense anymore. truth and lies are both a mixture of fict and faction. knowbody nos what is owp and what is dun anymore. so my confusion in my mental state, regarding both the outside world and my own personal life, has become so overwhelming that my opinions have become irrelevant to me. i no longer have any regard for my own opinions, or those of anyone else, for that matter. it is all bullshit, not only what i say, but what everyone says. i cannot take sides any longer. i can no longer sit actively by and advocate my point of view forcefully. now is the time for inaction, for confusion, for not making up my mind about anything at all, and for ceasing to have opinions on things i once had opinions about. this is my new neutrality pledge: i pledge to remain completely neutral about 100% of everything, and i will maintain this neutrality for as long as i am able to maintain my neutrality about my neutrality, as well as my neutrality about my neutrality about my neutrality, and so on. i have no opinion on this or any other matter. all past opinions which i or anyone else has stated, i am now neutral on, including any opinions in this or any other blog post. so if i ever wrote anything in this blog that offended you or that you thought was wrong or disagreed with, know this: i am entirely neutral about the situation, and neither agree with you nor agree with myself. i take no sides. the only person i agree with is nobody at all, because nobody has no opinons at all. and therefore i am nobody, but that is only if it is logical to make statements like that based on the mechanics of verbal logic and whether words such as “nobody” are allowed to be used in logical deductions or if they are similar to division by zero in mathematics and make things invalid. and that is a question which i am entirely neutral on. that reminds me of a futurama episode where zapp brannigan leads the earth army’s assault on the neutral planet, which remains neutral about whether to support or oppose being attacked by hostile forces. i am completely neutral about whether that was a good episode of futurama. maybe i should look at that episode again to see. i am neutral about whether that is a wise way to spend my time.