Brutally Honest Rant - 12/13/06

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: End-Of-Year Rant 2006
Audio Transcripts
12/13/06

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – "Carol of the Bells" – by Mannheim Steamroller)

Good evening, and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Well it is time….

Time for me to put the broadcast toys away for a couple of weeks. Time to get my constantly-thinking mind off of the next column and the next rant and on to more strenuous things… like what kind of wrapping I should put on the presents. It’s time for the year-end break.

It’s been an interesting year… not good or great, but also not entirely bad. It was… interesting.

I hope everyone checks out the Brutally Honest Awards column, which I’ll be posting on my website this weekend. That will be the last column for me for 2006, and then I will officially be on the year-end break.

BUT we still have one more rant to go though… this one… so let’s get to it.

You know, this is the Holiday Season… even if too many Christians fail to see more than just the one celebration they’re fixated on. So to wrap up 2006 and get into 2007, I though I’d give you my own Christmas Wish List.

Now folks, when I was younger… long before I started doing online columns… people would ask me what I would want for Christmas. And for the longest time I had a long list of things that I thought would be neat to have. Unfortunately, as I’ve gotten older, my list started becoming less about the stuff that people could buy. I actually had to strain to figure out what people could GET me.

By the way folks, here’s a good way to tell if you’re getting old… when you WANT socks and underwear for Christmas. Why is it when we’re kids we keep on getting socks and underwear even when we specifically say we don’t want them… and then when we grow up we have to BEG ANG PLEAD for family members to get us socks and underwear? What’s up with that? You would think that at some point someone would remember that little tidbit from his or her own experiences.

Anyway, the things on this wish list are certainly not the kind of things that you can buy at a store, and they’re certainly not just for yours truly. Once upon a time I used to just wish for world peace, but thanks to the extremists that just isn’t going to happen. And you’ll also notice that a lot of them involve smacking people upside their heads with a flaming Yule log. I figured I’d be a little festive about it. Plus you would think that it would hurt people more to smack them upside the head with a flaming Yule log than to give them lumps of coal. After all, coal is valuable nowadays. Why reward people for being evil when you can just smack them upside their heads with a flaming Yule log?

First of all… how about a sense of REAL justice? You know, I’ve been hearing stories on top of stories of how the government screws the people when it comes to keeping the police honest. The folks at Hit and Run, Reason Magazine’s weblog, recently reported how the State of Connecticut has allowed their State Troopers in one area to hold "DWI contests" for bringing in the most DWI arrests… no matter how those arrests were made! Some troopers were actually encouraging the people they pulled over to NOT TAKE a breath test, and then of course writing them up for it when they followed the trooper’s advice and broke the law. And the supervisors? They REWARDED that! Internal Affairs washed their hands CLEAN of the matter. The same for the City of Atlanta. Their police review board routinely discounts most of the complaints of excessive police force made by its citizens.

And now we have the "OFFICIAL" report by the House Ethics Committee concerning online predator Mark Foley saying that, oh, there were some MISTAKES made… some LAPSES in judgement… but "NOBODY did anything wrong"!

Now… why am I not surprised by that pronouncement? Seriously. Why am I not shocked and outraged over the fact that these corrupt grifters and shysters would WHITEWASH the criminal negligence and criminal activities of their own corrupt brethren? It’s probably because I’ve seen this kind of criminal cover-up before… repeatedly. This is why I’m glad that the Republicans lost control of the House and Senate. They EARNED every single loss in last month’s election.

But it serves to point out that we are seriously LACKING any real semblance of justice here, especially when it comes to the criminals in government. These dickheads want to make a BIG presentation about cleaning up the streets and cleaning up TV and cleaning up the Internet and cleaning up corporations… but they don’t do SQUAT to clean up their own activities! You want to know why we the people have no respect of politics, no respect for police, and no respect for government? THAT’S WHY! And it’s not going to get any better!

So yeah, we need justice… and it also wouldn’t hurt if those above-mentioned groups also got a serious smack upside their heads with a flaming Yule log.

What else is on my truly wishful list? Let’s see…

How about some common-sense rules for our personal information? Ban ALL pretexting! That’s when someone impersonates you to get your phone records and other bills. I don’t care who does it, private investigators, big corporations like Hewlett-Packard, or the Department of Homeland Security… if you do it, you go to prison, it’s that simple. Ban ALL opt-out data-sharing deals. All of these companies that want to use our information to sell to other companies should be obligated to get our EXPRESSED permission beforehand. They can’t just send out so-called "privacy notices" that say that they’ve already sold our data to these companies and then tell us that if we don’t like it that WE have to spend the time and effort to opt out.

Oh, and the companies and government agencies that already do this sort of stuff should get smacked upside the head with a flaming Yule log.

Here’s a good one to wish for… REAL tax reform! Longtime Brutally Honest supporters know that I’m a serious supporter of the Fair Tax Bill that’s been circulated for quite some time in Congress. If Congress ever got to pass it as written, it would significantly cut down on A LOT of other problems such as illegal immigration, exporting American jobs overseas, online taxes, Social Security, ending corporate welfare… Cripes, I was going over some of the other wish list items and a lot of them could be knocked off just by passing the Fair Tax Bill as it currently exists! PLUS this is the ONLY tax program that I know where YOU GET MONEY from the government! I don’t know why I’m the only person saying this, but the Fair Tax Bill actually has the government GIVING YOU MONEY! And that’s on top of you getting 100% of your paycheck back.

Obviously there are plenty of people who profit heavily on the tax system being as punishing as it is, and those folks deserve to be smacked upside the head with a flaming Yule log.

Another good wish… shutting down all of these anti-sex crusades once and for all! All of these theocratic moralist groups that managed to get clout in governemtn and use it as their own personal mob enforcers over the past six years because they backed Republicans need to be shut down once and for all and get them OFF the backs of adult Americans! You know, it’s one thing to go after the child molesters… but when the biggest so-called "protector" of children turns out to be nothing more than a predator himself, and one of the biggest institutions that has been behind most of these "protecting the children" schemes are full of predators themselves, then you’re dealing with nothing but a bunch of frauds and they have to be shut down. And if we can’t shut them down, then they at least deserve to be smacked upside the head with a flaming Yule log over and over again until the message finally sinks into their brains.

And of course last but not least, we all of the so-called "culture warriors" out there. The people out there who think that a flaming Yule log is a good healthy symbol of the CHRISTIAN holiday season. Well guess what, boys and girls? I’ve researched Yule logs and their origins. Guess what I found out? The word "Yule" is Scandinavian. Its original spelling was "J-U-L-E" but pronounced "Yule" with a "Y". Now you’re thinking that "Jul" spelled with a "J" is some code word for JESUS, right? Nope. Wrong religion. "Jule" is the Scandinavian celebration for "Julin" otherwise known as "Odin", the Norse god of many things, including wisdom, war, magic, and death… and strangely enough also for intoxicating drink and SEX.

Yeah, all you people who think that Christmas is a purely CHRISTIAN tradition fail to understand just how PAGAN a lot of these so-called "traditional symbols" are! But the Puritans knew. That’s why the banned Christmas in Colonial Massachusetts for a whole generation. You know, the ones that banned alcohol on Sundays, shut down the stores, enforced strict anti-sex laws, slaughtered women on the mere accusation of being witches…. the very people that you’re trying to emulate today with your neo-Puritanical crusades. THOSE Puritans!

But I suppose that it really doesn’t matter, does it? At least not in the long run. Let’s get brutally honest here… this is all just a scheme for you to sell your books or to get people to listen to your syndicated talk radio show or to get them to watch your cable news channel. It’s all just ADVERTISING. You’re creating a crisis for your ready-made solution. And you’ll milk that for as long as you can get away with it. You’ll play it up at every angle. You’ll come back to it year after year, reminding people of the crisis that only exists in YOUR heads, and telling them that the only way to "win" in this "war on Christmas" is to continue to buy your books, read your syndicated columns, listen to your syndicated talk radio shows, and watch your cable news channels. And all the while, of course, being inundated with the very commercialism that you claim is ruining the season.

And the scary part is that there are plenty of people who are gullible enough to buy it all. Plenty of people who will be suckered into believing that Christmas was only about ONE religion and on ONE special day, when in fact there is A WHOLE SEASON of celebrations here. Different various social and religious celebrations sharing a common message that gets lost by not just commercialism, but also by self-important hucksters.

For those slick advertisers of their own agendas, I don’t wish a flaming log celebrating Odin upside their heads. I really don’t… because in all likelihood they’d just turn around and claim that they’re the "victims of persecution", even though they know far more about persecuting others than they ever would know about BEING persecuted. No, I do not wish that on them, because a flaming Yule log is supposed to represent fertility and good luck. Instead I wish upon them what I’ve had to endure for years… isolation, marginalization. Railing on against the wind and wondering if anyone even notices. And it is at this time of the year for people like me when such feelings become even more profound. Maybe then… maybe after they’ve walked a couple of miles in MY shoes… they can truly appreciate the importance of the season and realize that there’s more to it than just commercialism… both direct and indirect.

(Computer – some very timely holiday stuff)
(Fade Music In – "Stille Nacht" by Mannheim Steamroller)

As I bring the 2006 Brutally Honest rants to close, I want to end the rant tonight by giving some thanks.

First of all, thank you to everyone who sent me comments over the year, whether to agree or disagree with me on my rants. One such person, whom I won’t mention by name, said continually that he didn’t agree with my position but he really appreciates my passion on these subjects, and that’s really important. I don’t need to create dittoheads or blah-blah people. It would be great to know just how many true Brutally Honest Supporters I have, but just to know that there are people who ARE listening in or reading my works is really important to me.

Next, thank you to RJ Evans and the folks at ShockNetRadio.com for plugging the Brutally Honest weblog. These guys are seriously getting me interested in doing live Internet radio going again, so that’s one of the things that may start up in 2007.

And of course, as strange as it may sound, I always have to give a special thanks to all of the moralists and freedom-haters and politicians out there… because those folks really are the reason why I’m doing this sort of stuff! They’re the ones that piss me off and give me something to rant about every week in TWO different forums. If not for them, I’d probably be cobbling out some mediocre career as a fictional writer and not give a crap about this country and the direction it has taken towards tyranny and despotism. They may never earn my respect, but they at least stirred feelings of TRUE patriotism and idealism about how things should be and provoked me into expressing them for you to sift through and either agree or discard at your leisure.

And so… I guess that’s it. I hope everyone has a GREAT HOLIDAY season, and please keep checking the Brutally Honest weblog for news as to when the new season will start up again.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production, all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll see everyone in 2007!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/"End of Recording")

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