Palmer Blevins Blog

I’ve been reflecting on an interview I had for an organizer position with SEIU Healthcare IL/IN last Monday. When I found out today that my “qualifications were outstanding” but “the union had decided to go with somebody else” I really was not happy.

Apparently passion and knowledge of the labor movement, my youth and ambition, and more importantly my ability to organize a Verizon store before management caught wind and fired my happy ass, was not what they were looking for.

Not only did I organize the Verizon Plus! store in Bloomington, I came damn near organizing a Verizon Wireless store in Springfield. Oh, yeah, that’s right, I only have a year of organizing experience. Then again, I’ve known organizers who have years of experience but are lucky if they can organize their desk let alone an organization.

Even though I am a bit miffed in regards to not being hired, I realize it’s their loss. After all, I only organized Verizon.

You can only hope it goes away.

Without giving away where I live totally, four years ago I bought a house near North Grand. At first, my neighbors and I did not really get along all too well but our relationship has gotten much better; and that is more than likely due to our collective disdain for some neighbors that live two/three houses down the street.

These houses in our neighborhood are nothing but drug houses and possibly dens for prostitution and other debauchery. On any given day, any given hour, there are tons of people just loitering around, making noise and just being general nuisances. They don’t work because welfare and crime pays better than an honest wage does, and they are nothing but a blight not only on the neighborhood, but the fabric of humanity itself.

Saturday morning I was walking home after getting some milk and eggs from Walgreens and the usual crowd of trash was in the street, carrying on when a girl gets in the car and is about to leave when a guy decides to jump on the hood of the car and yell “gun it!” And she did; and the stupid idiot flies over the car and lands on the back of his head on the street.

He didn’t move for a bit. The crowd of hooligans were now screaming and hollering, not because they did not have the intelligence to prevent an unnecessary accident but because one of their fellow crack-heads was now on the ground bleeding.

And you would think they would learn. Nope! Come Sunday morning two more people were doing the exact same thing; I could not help but think why do my tax dollars help keep these idiots fed and breathing? The neighborhood would be so much better if these people were loaded onto a truck and shipped off somewhere to become a burden on another society.

Khadija Abdul Qahaar, a Canadian formerly known as Beverly Giesbrecht, is a hostage of the Taliban; and she is pleading for help. I am finding it hard to feel sorry for this woman, and I do not see how her death would be on someone shoulder’s other than her own.

I will not hold converting to Islam after 9-11 against her; but the situation that she is in is of her own choosing. She went to a war-torn country without any money, without any security and without any care for the real situation on the ground for one purpose and one purpose only: to give an “alternate” (ie., pro-Taliban) view because the Western media is so “biased.” And now, she is supposedly in a life and death situation after refusing to see the history of how women are treated in Islamic societies, and after failing to see the real nature of the Taliban and other fanatical Islamic groups.

Call me a cynic, but there is something that makes me feel that she may be on the same side of her “captors.” I can’t put a finger on what it is, but I get the feeling that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Perhaps it’s her website and its seemingly pro-Taliban, pro-bin Laden tone that makes me feel that she is merely a player for the other team trying to extort some money for the cause. I could be wrong; after all, it is clear that the floating knife in the picture/video offers a clear and present danger to her.

Khadja, I’m not buying it.

What are you most afraid of? Some people are afraid of the unknown, others are afraid of being exposed. Others are afraid of being irrelevant, while others still are afraid of guilt/remorse. It would be safe to say that, ultimately, everyone is afraid of death in one form or another: not just in a physical or spiritual sense, but in the sense of losing favor in someone else’s eyes, etc., as well.

Just like everyone else, my fears drive me to do, say and write things; for the good and for the bad. My fears of being irrelevant, of not being a success, etc., have led me to not only be bitter but also angry, contemptous and apathetic as well, at times. And it is very easy to blame someone else, to play the abused martyr who just doesn’t understand why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people; for example, the good person being the individual who feels slighted when he sees someone he/she doesn’t like getting something that he or she wants. If I had a quarter for every time I got into that state; I could have bought myself a nice US Senate seat from Rod Blagojevich.

More often then not, we project these fears on others: be they institutions or individuals themselves; often times the very things they lash out at and demonize have no consequence on their lives. It’s It’s a mad final dash to prove one’s salt. So they attack or knowingly say or do something that is not only offensesive, but also hurtful to others just in order to elicit a response and feel a sense of relevancy; which is probably why Family Guy is still on Tv and Rush Limbaugh is still waddling around in a drug induced haze.

Fear could very well be the fall of man. It is what leads to anger, bitterness, apathy, guilt, remorse, revenge, etc. It is what leads to the destruction of not only the mind and body, but also the soul. And try as hard as one might to project one’s own fears and sense of inadequecy, irrelevance, anger, contempt, etc., onto another person or persons (who more often then not have no bearance on his/her existence), the ugliness of one’s own life is still reflected in the mirror.

I hate when neo-Conservatives are quick to call for others to go to war, but are quick to find any way possible to avoid fighting those very wars they support.

It also annoys me to no end when liberal leaning individuals feel the need to disparage those who opted to serve in the military. It is not difficult to create a post that says “I Love a Man in Uniform,” and have a picture of Nazi troops as the main attention grabber.

Some people are troubled by the assumption that the men and women who served in Iraq are coming back to be police officers and will be able to exercise careful and prudent police power…because after all, they were psychotic mercenaries who have an unquenchable bloodlust and feasted on little children and widows.

People can harp about post-traumatic stress all day long, but how many of them really give two craps about soldiers coming back from the battle field with PTS? PTS is a serious problem, but should not be masked for someone’s seeming contempt for those who marched into battle. Granted, there were people who abused their power in Iraq & Afghanistan; but the vast majority of people who have and continue to serve in the military served their country and knew/know the difference between right and wrong. And to label those men and women as black-booted Gestapo thugs of the Bush Administration is preposterous, unwarranted and mean-spirited.

There are plenty of people in police uniform who, if given the chance, have and will abuse their power…and they’ve never been in the military. There are plenty of nutjobs who go into the police force for the very adrenaline rush and position of power that some people are terrified that former soldiers will do if they happen to trade in one uniform for another. Were is the phony outrage over the assumption that these people won’t go crazy and decide to shoot up a place?

Finally, a man willing to stand up to murderers who use religion as a pretext for their homicidal inklings.

Lord Justice Wall, a senior judge in the UK, has declared “honor killings” as “acts of simply sordid criminal behaviour’ and ‘had nothing to do with any concept of honour known to English law’.”

I think it could be said that honor killings don’t have anything to do with any concept of honor known to civilized man. It is beautiful that the father of the children in the case mentioned in the article has been refused the right to have contact with them.

Disgraced former Governor Rod Blagojevich called it when he was impeached: that with him out of the way, the Democrats would raise taxes. I hate the notion that Blago called it right, but Governor Pat Quinn plans to hike income taxes by 50% on individuals making $56,000 or more.

This is just what working people need, more taxes. Yes, we have deficits, but why is it the responsibility of the taxpayer to foot the bill for the reckless spending that our leaders are notorious for?

I have a novel idea, perhaps it’s not really novel. How about we make the politicians who get us into these fiscal messes pay to clean them up? Instead of raising taxes on hardworking Americans we instead tax the coffers of our political leaders? For every dollar a politician is able to raise, let’s tax him/her 50%. That seems fair. But why stop there? Let’s also tax individuals who contribute to political campaigns, since they obviously have the extra cash laying around; for every dollar an individual contributes, let’s tax that person 25%. That seems fair.

Love it or leave it. How many times has a person heard a neo-Conservative utter this phrase in response to any criticism towards George W. Bush and his administration? Myself, far too many to count. During the reign of Bush & Cheney Inc., any criticism of Bush was tantamount to treason and un-patriotic. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

I thought we had this whole huge war a couple generations ago that settled the question of whether a state could secede from the Union. Last time I checked, the Union won and the Confederacy lost.

Chuck Norris has claimed that he would run for “President of Texas” if given the opportunity because “anyone who has been around Texas for any length of time knows exactly what we’d do if the going got rough in America,” Norris wrote. It seems now that the neo-Cons of this country were not able to steal another election, that they want to take their balls and go home sniveling like little wusses because they lost.

I say let them leave. Let the Limbaughs, Coulters, Huckabees, Romneys and the collective listeners of “Conservative” talk-radio pack their bags and leave if they think they can run their own country better. Let them have Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and South Carolina; and anyone who wanted to renounce their US citizenship could move to Rush’s new Confederacy but would not be allowed a right of return. The US would not offer them any sort of military or economic aid in return for their “independence.”

I think it would be a safe bet that within a couple years Russia would once again rule Alaska; and the remaining states would make nice additions to Mexico or China; and the world would see the great ineptness of neo-Conservative ideology and policy as it truly is.

Personally, I think Mr. Norris should be tried for sedition and investigated for possible links to domestic terrorists due to his talk about “cells” that would unite for secession. I think a nice stint in Gitmo would do Mr. Norris some good.

Shortly before September 11, 2001 the Bush & Cheney Inc., mis-Administration amazingly gave the Taliban $43 million on May 15 to supposedly eradicate opium.

At the time, the Taliban were hosting Osama bin Laden and his merry band of thugs; the same person and henchmen responsible for attacks on American embassies in the latter years of the Clinton Administration. And what did the US get in return for giving the Taliban money? Four planes used as missiles, two burning symbols of American economic and military power, and 3,000+ dead.

And now, President Obama wants to sit down and “talk” with “moderate” elements of the Taliban. What exactly are the supposed “moderate” elements of the Taliban? Are they the men running around not declaring “Death to America” but still throwing acid on the faces of little school girls who dare to defy sharia and try to get an education? Are the moderates those that practice “honor killings” because they found it easier to beat up on rape victims then tangle with the might of the US military? Are the moderates those who have imbraced the i-Phone?

What would happen should Osama bin Laden appear with a Coke in one hand, a Big Mac in the other, and instead of uttering “Death to Americans,” he utters “Save Money. Live Better. Wal-Mart.”? Are we then going to call him a moderate as well and just let bygones be bygones?

Negotiations with Taliban “moderates” will not win the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban and their proxies, allies, etc., need to be rooted out and eradicated. A person can rescue a wild animal, get it to eat out of his hand, and even domesticate it a bit; but there is always the possibility that the wild animal will turn if the opportunity presents itself. The worst thing we can do is trust the wild animals within the ranks of the Taliban; the so called “moderates” included.

Perhaps 9-11 was not enough for our leaders to realize that you can’t make peace with people who have no respect for life; let alone lives of those they consider infidels.

This article is featured on Helium.com

Is cell phone insurance a worthwile purchase? As a former sales consultant with Verizon, and a current customer of Verizon Wireless, I have mixed emotions in regards to cell phone insurance. Playing the devil’s advocate, let’s consider the following:

You walk into a store, sign up for a cell plan (2yr standard contract) and decide to go with a free phone out of the door. Normally that phone costs $19.99 with a two year contract, because there is a promotion going on (and you are convinced that it is a great deal) or because the phone is a garbage phone that has had nothing but problems and the store is having a hard time getting rid of the phone (even for free). The sales person starts talking insurance: $4.99 a month and it will cover manufacturing defects, loss, theft, etc., and a new phone will be shipped out to you within 24 hours should anything happen to it.

Replacing a cell phone, especially a higher end phone (such as the i-Phone or the Blackberry Storm) can be a pricey endeavor, so you are sold on the idea of insurance. Like other forms of insurance, there is a $50 deductible (which some sales people fail to mention), and there are not only limits to how you can use it, but if you get a garbage phone and it craps out on you…guess what, you are most likely going to get the same crap phone which has probably been someone else’s junk before it got “refurbished” (which again, some sales people fail to mention).

The salesperson makes his/her case for insurance (after all, it adds to his/her data sales points…which isn’t much at all, but in the world of commission and competition, every little bit helps); reminding you that after the warranty and time frame for returning/exchanging the phone has expired…you are stuck with that phone until you become eligible for an upgrade. And what will you do if that phone decides to stop working? You will have to purchase the phone at…*gasp* full retail price (which could be $50 or more than what you paid for it the first time around). Shriek!

But here’s the thing. Say the phone lasts you 1 1/2 yrs., and then decides to crap out. By this time you have spent $89.82 on insurance and will be shelling out an extra $50 deductible to get the very same phone that may or may not be refurbished and functional. But consider this: for the same amount of money to get a refurbished phone using your insurance, you can get a better phone full retail for the same price; or go to Craigslist or Ebay and get a phone for a lot cheaper than what it would be to use your insurance or buy full retail.

Cell insurance may be a good idea but in my opinion it is not a real good investment considering that the amount you pay in monthly and in deductible, you can often get a better phone for the same price…or less. And in today’s economy, it may be more prudent to not purchase it.